Acer could be right - except that I would say that there is no noticeable demand for linux from Acer customers.
Acer never hears of any of its customers who use Linux. It should listen really.
The biggest linux market here in the UK are large enterprise organisations. I've worked with large UK gov and financial organisations to take on Linux (mostly on server side it has to be said) and they would never dream of including Acer on their ITT lists.
I would say that here in the UK, the only organiations who have the all round product set for the enterprise customer to support Linux are HP and IBM. I've seen Dell attempt to provide consultancy but they aren't ready yet (hopefully we'll see this soon). UK Gov is looking at linux for desktop use seriously now after many NAO (National Audit Office) documented successful server room implementations.
Acer are looking at their market and the types of customer - except for their expensive "Ferrari" range, most of the notebook sales are in the low-end GBP299 to GBP399 (which is very cheap in rip-off Britain) and their desktop and server range is an 'also ran' that most corporate departments have never heard of.
In terms of notebook sales, IBM/Lenovo has it wrapped up with the Thinkpad range (my X41 is fully supported by fedora 7), one large bank I worked at buys 20,000 of them a year. Look in the business lounges at LCY/LHR/EDI and it is Thinkpad heaven.
If (and when) Linux hits the mainstream home market, then Acer will have a market to tap into - but if they are not planning it now then they will miss the boat and Dell will take the lead. Note that the Sunday newspapers mention Linux now on a regular basis and the BBC mentions OSX and Linux in the same sentence as Windows on most of its media (because they are not allowed to market individual commercial organisations).
The thing that bugs me about Acers statement is that it is very chicken and egg
not just WELL, but also here in the UK at least) text talkers/BBS such as CheesePlants House (1990), Olajier (1991) and of course most ended up on Monochrome BBS which is still running today and has active user accounts that are over 16 years old. The latter has had diaries (allbeit, not web-logs) for all users since near the beginning.
one thing about the text BBS's - they are so much faster and easier to use than modern forum websites...
I'm using Puppy Linux because my (Fedora 7) Lenovo Thinkpad broke and I'm using an old Dell latitude LS400 for work.
The Dell has a "Designed for Windows 98" sticker on it - bollocks to that, it is brilliant with Puppy. Not only is it ace to use and fast, but it also works with my 3G USB modem for internet access.
Hopefully in the future we'll see "Designed for You, you lovely customer" stickers. Maybe that can be a new Linux motto and we can produce wee stickers with the penguin on it.
Anything that Ubuntu's (deserved) enormous critical mass can do to further the Linux cause, then that's good for all distributions. Even little old puppy will benefit from hardware manufacturers open sourcing their drivers for hardware. I feel bad now for leaving my old Dell Latitude in the loft for 3 years.
when we originally wrote the system - the business requirements said "must support IE" - obviously, I was a Linux early adopter at the time and got quite pissed off at that and retorted that there were 48 versions of IE at that time (think all the minor versions in iMac, Windows95, 98, NT4 etc). Originally, it wasn't going to work with anything but IE ** shock ** horror **.
it was the early days. It was 2000 and we thought that there would be a myriad of user interfaces for all the new fangled internet connected devices being proposed, like 3G, DoCoMo, your fridge etc.
getting the SKY Satelite Digital stuff to work was really really painful because SKY just didn't have the platform for delivering this sort of content. The main driver was so Abbey could put an advert on the telly with the Director of IT sitting at Paddington station platform on a big red sofa looking at his telly managing his accounts.
The old easter egg on the system was that the expires tag was my exact birthdate and time. I think it has been changed now - someone was probably wondering why it was set to 30th June 1973.
Abbey National had a WAP mobile solution in 2000 that was simply a thin presentation veneer on their J2EE eBanking platform (that also served SKY Digital Satelite TV at the time). It was never very popular and has been switched off now - which is a pity because the guys working on this really struggled to get it the interface to work on a 12x6 char screen!
back in the day (1998), I designed a mobile banking product for the palm pilot for the consultancy I worked for - the idea was that you could sync the palm pilot using IR through the front windows of the high street bank securly. needless to say, it never sold. for those that developed palm apps; it uses the palm prc identifier "BANK" !!!
The bank I'm working at now is going down the mobile banking route. Here in the UK the operator of one of the largest cash machine (ATM) networks LINK is producing a national white labelled system so that all banks can buy into it at low risk. One of the problems with this is that with some 2 factor authentication schemes using the mobile phone will end up losing "a factor" and will have to use other 2 factor schemes such as one time passcode schemes or the APACS CAP EMV Cards with a card reader.
The problem with the mobile devices is their security of static data - as much blogged by mikko at f-secure
The problem with these figures is that they do not represent "bang for buck" in that it is makes it fiscally advantageous to mark what some people would classify as normal run of the mill product development as "R&D".
Also, it would be far more interesting if we could determine the R&D spend that has come about from open source software (academics) or is directly spend on open source software (IBM, HP et al).
It is only a hunch, but I think the open source software has enabled, and consumed a massive part of global research and development -- but significantly, is not costed.
also, if you put this level of detail (see parent) into a stored procedure then it is much easier to unit test the database separately and hand over reponsibility of that unit test to the "database team". It allows the database element to have a version on it's own independant of the source code.
I find that (in big teams, where multi-tier applications are being produced) it is far better to maintain tier separation and avoid having sql code in the app servers or worse, the client - because any minor database change has a ripple effect time and cost impact on other parts of the team.
also; choosing this methdology makes offshore development easier where, perhaps for security reasons the database team is local and the application developers are somewhere else. I've seen this where the dba's and the sql coders where local because the client had risky non-functional requirements and preferred to keep the database people local.
At work I use DB2 on Z and Oracle (including RAC) most of the time. Sybase seems to be getting rarer in the finance industry nowadays. I've never seen mysql or postresql deployed in a very large organisation (yet!). It would be nice to get slashdotters to say if they're using postresql or mysql in large organisations.
I'm a community councillor in a medium sized Scottish town - it's an unpaid position that allows the community to have a say in the running of the town. I'm also a techi - but I hate the idea of speaking CCTV.
We do have CCTV in Stirling, but the control room only has enough operators for each set of eyes to look at 20 or so cameras - so, usually, the cameras are only used to see "what happened" when the crime has already been committed. they are useful during an incident where they can be trageted on an ongoing situation to gather evidence.
We also have a community warden programme where "real people" (tm) are paid to deal with anti-social crime (i.e. the stuff the police don't have time for) but they can also get the police when things are serious. They have a remit to engage with schools and young people and we get them involved so they know who the bad kids are and instead of beating them into submission in a "police vs us" scenario, they engage and build up a rapport and breed mutual respect. Most of the time it is just kids hanging out drinking buckfast and getting hopelessly pissed and causing a nuisance.
I would much rather have a high visability presence on the streets that can be identified as real people rather than a faceless camera operator to this sort of anti-social crime. interestingly (for our english neighbours) - street crime has reduced since the smoking ban - because there are always people around on the streets that keeps a natural order on friday and saturday nights.
in terms of "what is wrong", there is a big political debate in the UK at the moment about "rip off britain" where many commodity items and digital products are typically charged 50% more than other countries. This is the reason why there are so many stories like this going around. The BBC managed to really embarass Bill Gates on Microsoft Vista launch day asking why Vista was twice the price compared to the USA and (illegally) more expensive than France. Bill Gates was obviously poorly informed by his staff and answered poorly.
Also, from a legal point of view; EU member states have a trade agreement that used to be called the "common market". This means that a consumer in Italy, should not be prevented from buying a product at the same price as a German or a Brit. This is why Europpeans can shop around the EU looking for the cheapest prices for products - e.g. Italians buying Mercedes in Germany, Brits buying fags (cigarettes. please!) from France and Spaniards buying mobile phones from the UK.
Any company that prevents cross border trading, is breaking the law. The problem with iTunes, is that it does not allow a Brit to buy at French prices and so on because the user is registered in their home country and is forced to buy at the domicile prices. This restriction only happens on digital products because physical products can easily be purchased in the country of ones choosing by showing up and buying the stuff over the counter.
I don't see this as an Anti-USA argument - it is an EU problem with the subsidiuaries of Apple, such as Apple UK and Apple DE etc not co-operating and profiteering in an illegally segmented market.
just think of the outcry if Apple charged 57% more for iTunes for customers that live in California versus those that lived in Nevada and had a different prices for each USA state.
this is the situation in europe. The countries are all 'states' within a unified europe, akin to the united states of america. European "countries" share a currency (except a minority) and share a common legal platform.
Quite why a digital downloaded product has such a differential is beyond me - the iTunes servers are offshore and so do not fall foul of any 'extra' taxation and the product is identical for all customers. The distribution cost is paid for by the customer (the local broadband/network charge) - costs in US$ (for easy comparison, at todays rates) are:
US$1.32 per download in Europe
US$1.56 per download un the UK
US$0.99 per download in all of the United States of America
mind you. that's not as bad as the sony playstation 3 or Microsoft Windows Vista that both are immensely more espensive in the UK than the USA for identical products.
Interesting that they sent you a letter - especially since there is no way to repudiate that you received it, and no way for you to confirm they sent it.
I am not aware of USA FBI procedures, but surely if they required sensitive information then a uniformed officer would knock on the door, get the informant to sign whatever the equivalent of the Official Secrets Act and then conduct the information gathering - subject to evidence gathering rules so that the evidence can be used in a subsequent trial.
Also, this case sounds so much like pre-texting or a sophisticated social engineering hack - my view would be:
+ write a return letter to your local fbi office quoting the ref number to say you have received it and ask that they contact your secretary to book an appointment. ball in their court, all legally done, polite and none of your clients information leaked to a 3rd party.
EMV cards have two data items for the PIN usually called online PIN and offline PIN but pretty much all banks have the same value for each.
The key worry about this 'attack' is that the electronics could be changed easily:
get the mag strip by asking the customer to swipe
gets the PIN value
completes the transaction using the EMV chip
stores the mag stripe and PIN value
reuse the card in an ATM/Store that does not require chip
This fraud has already been perpetrated at a Shell garage in the UK when a bloke in overalls came into the Shell store to say he was the engineer to check the Chip n PIN device. The Trintech unit had a fault so that it would not self destruct when opened and a simple memory chip was added to the device. The bloke in overalls went back a few weeks later to 'check everything was OK' and took back the memory chip and had the card details and PINs - resultant fraud loss was GBP 1m; although not sure how much was recovered.
I'm very wary of Tesco stores (UK) that swipe the mag stripe before inserting the card into a chip reader then ask the customer for the PIN - they effectively have the strip and the PIN which is enough to make a new card. The problem is that the chip cards have the legacy mag stripe to work in foreign ATMs and non-chip compliant stores.
The way things are going with APACS CAP - punters will be inserting their PIN into any old keypad, so it'll be getting worse before it gets better.
yes, because building on the success of the device distros such as openwrt, the multimedia mini-itx distros and so on, GPL distros will be able to bundle new "enterprise device" distributions that combine MySQL, JBoss, Java and J2EE application code - this will allow some cool enterprise devices like a "groupware device", "workflow CRM" distro etc that will now be able to use the power of J2EE/Jboss but all under GPL licence.
you can imagine that the hardware resellers would love to be able to sell a tin box+SAN kit with a CRM distro on board without the problems associatedof cross-licence agreements & certification with MS etc...
if I have a rack mounted hub in a rack full of servers, I put the hub in backwards so the ports are facing the rear of the rack. This way, it is much easier to diagnose cable faults because you can trace them from the hub to the cable arm and into the server.
it saves having to walk along to the end of the racks and round to the front every few minutes. In big machine rooms - this is a good thing. believe me.
Don't you just love it when:
folks put a 1U hub in the front of a rack and then stream all the wires underneath using up a 1U space. grrr.
someone wires a rack with 5 metre cables but doesn't realise you can shorten them.
none of the cables have cable labelling.
when straight through cat5 cables aren't labled
there's any use of 50 micron fibre optic inside a cabinet. slap. snap. oh crap.
The above PDF gives advice to financial institutions on how to submit STR (suspicious transaction report) to the treasury. The interesting thing is that it is not an offence to submit an incorrect tip off (STR). Also, the PDF shows some of the internal workflow for the STR - which would pass through NCIS (National Crime Squads, now SOCA) before reaching other interested parties.
Anyone who has bought a car, boat, house or any expensive item by law has to show valid identification and a transaction form is completed and sent in. When I recently bought my car, I had to take my passport in and the dealer filled in a form and photocopied my ID!
Even the UK version of PayPal has an inbuilt limit at GBP4,100 that will temporarily freeze the PayPal account until the account holder has validated their identity - this is reported and sent in and used for tax collection and STR purposes.
Here in the UK, the HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs) have automated programs running on eBay to see if individuals are running businesses and not declaring the VAT (Value Added Tax, 17.5%) from the revenue. They target everyone, but chase up on anyone selling more than about £60,000 (US$110,000) worth of new goods, or more than £60,000 of profit on second hand goods. Also, they are keeping an eagle eye out for those not declaring the income from ebay activities on their tax forms.
Also, eBay makes UK users fill out an anti-money-laundering form and performs an additional verification once a paypal account receives £4500 (US$8300). This probably goes into the UK Gov anti money laundering and terrorist profiling systems.
Most IT folks who run home businesses should structure them carefully, because they could be subject to higher rate tax of 40% on profits plus 17.5% VAT. If you setup your ebay/paypal account as a limited company then you will only pay 25% tax and VAT can be paid as an offset percentage (agree with tax man) between 9 and 17.5%.
Since EU citizens may purchase goods (for personal use) from other EU states freely without incurring local taxes then spanish citizens should simply purchase their blank DVDs and CDs from other EU member states that do not have such a tax. I'm sure some enterprising slashdotter will setup a spanish language blank-media-sale website based in the UK.
The EU has been extremely vigilant to ensure that free trade can continue over the borders - even where local taxes are being compromised. USAians: It's like buying your stuff in a state with lower sales tax.
I've been using FreeNAS for a while on an old laptop - I use this for simple home backup. The benefit of using an old laptop is that it is battery backed, low power & heat and has a small form factor. FreeNAS is great for rejuvenating laptops that have buggered screens.
I've had a lot of experience installing enterprise NAS systems - including Microsoft's appalling 2003 storage edition. I bought about 6 of them for client (pre-installed on HP hardware) and found them to have very poor failover with clustering that really didn't work. These NAS's had HBA cards in them for SAN Access (HP EVA5000's) and basically the Windows could not cluster SAN connected disks. So, a copy of RHEL, Serviceguard and a fresh updated Samba and the exact same hardware performed as a properly clustered NAS and I also had a client whose eyes were opened to Linux.
I found FreeNAS easy to configure and certainly headed in the right direction (when user rights are sorted out). It has a stronger feeling of solidity than Windows Storage edition - i.e. "It does what it says on the tin" functionality rather than a hacked down version of 2003 Server where you are never sure what you have got and what will install on it. e.g. Can Windows 2003 SE use veritas clustering? who knows? win 2003 server can.
Group digital sales increased to £112.1m from £46.9m. Momentum remained strong during the fourth quarter, with group digital sales more than doubling to £41.2m
Group operating margin increased by almost a full percentage point to 12.0% from 11.2%. This improvement was driven by higher revenues, a greater proportion of revenues from digital, and the delivery of previously announced cost savings
Underlying diluted earnings per share increased by 19.8% to 15.7p from 13.1p
So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.
for anyone who drives a lot the UK with headsets - I can heartily recommend that you don't get the ones with the pulsing blue LED's. At night, whilst at a rather brisk pace on the motorway, the LED flashes blue which will every now and then reflect off the (right hand in the UK) drivers window which will look not unlike the blue flashing lights of a police car in your wingmirror.
nearly crapped myself the first time this happened.
rd
I was an architect for a mobile phone fraud detection system that had MPH as a category for fraud detection. If the phone was used 450 miles away within 30 minutes then the phone's fraud score would increase by a certain value. This in itself would not block the phone - usually phone fraud would trigger a number of events and the score would rise substantially and fraud could be investigated.*
The same applies to National ANPR (Automatic number plate recognition) - which from recent news articles, we know already exists. We know this because the July 7th bombers white VW Golf was found and the recent shooting in a Bradford travel agency used ANPR to detect a vehicle that lefrt the bradford area and arrive in London. ANPR was first brought into use after the February 1996 Docklands IRA bombings. Police cars used to catch up with stolen cars that had entered the Isle of Dogs ANPR system outside my apartment in Westferry rd on most friday/saturday nights!!
* all was going well until RAF pilots landing at lossiemouth had their phones investigated after high-tailing it up country at mach 2.
rd
Re:What other pre-web services are out there?
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monochrome in the UK has been running since late 1990 and continues to do so today. Started out before the UK had a widespread IP based network, then it moved to telnet and now most people log in over ssh. It still looks the same as it did 15 years ago - which is a very good thing.
Whilst I think Cuthbert was daft for lying and that was his mistake, I would have also panicked...
have a look at http://www.dec.org.uk. They are currently supporting as campaign to help the worthy cause of the situation in the Niger. Click on the donate button and you will be taken to a shocking rendition of a 1997-esque payment page that looks awful. So I imagine our man Cuthbert looked again at the dec.org.uk site and it looks bonafide enough and also the whois entry stacks up.
I remember at the time that the BBC News carried a story at, or about the time of the Hogmany (31st Dec 2004) regarding fake websites. I could only find this story on BBC website 6 days after the alledged incident.
so our man cuthbert panics. As you can see the basic link and page to securetrading.net (not even a.co.uk). Remember that 31-DEC-2004 is a friday before a long holiday weekend. So there will no-one to phone. He looks at the certificate for the server-side SSL - "Secure trading Ltd" a UK company. But the whois entry is privately registered and does not have any standard company details on it - it is also registered abroad (which isn't a big worry, but remember this is a UK gov't sponsored website)
My next port of call is Companies House - where all UK Ltd companies have to be, by law, registered. So using their webcheck facility - it is company number 04591066 with an address in south east london. Not a government organisation, but seems wholly owned by another unknown company UC Media? securetrading.co.uk? no, they're someone else. back to companies house - searching for UC Media, can't find them, but there is an entry for UC Group Ltd at the same address. bingo. hang on. there are two insolvency notices on this company...
I don't know why people (such as in TFA) presume that all open source coders are amateur home coders. Take a look through at a kernel changelog and you'll see many email addresses of individuals at IBM, HP, SGI, SuSE, Redhat, Intel, Nokia to name just organisations I recognise in the first 15% of the 2.6.11 kernel changelog. Commercial organisations recognise that by contributing to OSS projects they are enhancing their reputation, selling orthoganal products and retaining key staff for the benefit of the organisation.
I think the important part of OSS is that teams are built on individuals' technical ability rather than race, creed, colour or indeed paymaster.
Slashdot Mirror
Acer could be right - except that I would say that there is no noticeable demand for linux from Acer customers.
Acer never hears of any of its customers who use Linux. It should listen really.
The biggest linux market here in the UK are large enterprise organisations. I've worked with large UK gov and financial organisations to take on Linux (mostly on server side it has to be said) and they would never dream of including Acer on their ITT lists.
I would say that here in the UK, the only organiations who have the all round product set for the enterprise customer to support Linux are HP and IBM. I've seen Dell attempt to provide consultancy but they aren't ready yet (hopefully we'll see this soon). UK Gov is looking at linux for desktop use seriously now after many NAO (National Audit Office) documented successful server room implementations.
Acer are looking at their market and the types of customer - except for their expensive "Ferrari" range, most of the notebook sales are in the low-end GBP299 to GBP399 (which is very cheap in rip-off Britain) and their desktop and server range is an 'also ran' that most corporate departments have never heard of.
In terms of notebook sales, IBM/Lenovo has it wrapped up with the Thinkpad range (my X41 is fully supported by fedora 7), one large bank I worked at buys 20,000 of them a year. Look in the business lounges at LCY/LHR/EDI and it is Thinkpad heaven.
If (and when) Linux hits the mainstream home market, then Acer will have a market to tap into - but if they are not planning it now then they will miss the boat and Dell will take the lead. Note that the Sunday newspapers mention Linux now on a regular basis and the BBC mentions OSX and Linux in the same sentence as Windows on most of its media (because they are not allowed to market individual commercial organisations).
The thing that bugs me about Acers statement is that it is very chicken and egg
rd
one thing about the text BBS's - they are so much faster and easier to use than modern forum websites...
rd
The Dell has a "Designed for Windows 98" sticker on it - bollocks to that, it is brilliant with Puppy. Not only is it ace to use and fast, but it also works with my 3G USB modem for internet access.
Hopefully in the future we'll see "Designed for You, you lovely customer" stickers. Maybe that can be a new Linux motto and we can produce wee stickers with the penguin on it.
Anything that Ubuntu's (deserved) enormous critical mass can do to further the Linux cause, then that's good for all distributions. Even little old puppy will benefit from hardware manufacturers open sourcing their drivers for hardware. I feel bad now for leaving my old Dell Latitude in the loft for 3 years.
rd
when we originally wrote the system - the business requirements said "must support IE" - obviously, I was a Linux early adopter at the time and got quite pissed off at that and retorted that there were 48 versions of IE at that time (think all the minor versions in iMac, Windows95, 98, NT4 etc). Originally, it wasn't going to work with anything but IE ** shock ** horror **.
it was the early days. It was 2000 and we thought that there would be a myriad of user interfaces for all the new fangled internet connected devices being proposed, like 3G, DoCoMo, your fridge etc.
getting the SKY Satelite Digital stuff to work was really really painful because SKY just didn't have the platform for delivering this sort of content. The main driver was so Abbey could put an advert on the telly with the Director of IT sitting at Paddington station platform on a big red sofa looking at his telly managing his accounts.
The old easter egg on the system was that the expires tag was my exact birthdate and time. I think it has been changed now - someone was probably wondering why it was set to 30th June 1973.
rd
back in the day (1998), I designed a mobile banking product for the palm pilot for the consultancy I worked for - the idea was that you could sync the palm pilot using IR through the front windows of the high street bank securly. needless to say, it never sold. for those that developed palm apps; it uses the palm prc identifier "BANK" !!!
The bank I'm working at now is going down the mobile banking route. Here in the UK the operator of one of the largest cash machine (ATM) networks LINK is producing a national white labelled system so that all banks can buy into it at low risk. One of the problems with this is that with some 2 factor authentication schemes using the mobile phone will end up losing "a factor" and will have to use other 2 factor schemes such as one time passcode schemes or the APACS CAP EMV Cards with a card reader.
The problem with the mobile devices is their security of static data - as much blogged by mikko at f-secure
rd
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Also, it would be far more interesting if we could determine the R&D spend that has come about from open source software (academics) or is directly spend on open source software (IBM, HP et al).
It is only a hunch, but I think the open source software has enabled, and consumed a massive part of global research and development -- but significantly, is not costed.
rd
I find that (in big teams, where multi-tier applications are being produced) it is far better to maintain tier separation and avoid having sql code in the app servers or worse, the client - because any minor database change has a ripple effect time and cost impact on other parts of the team.
also; choosing this methdology makes offshore development easier where, perhaps for security reasons the database team is local and the application developers are somewhere else. I've seen this where the dba's and the sql coders where local because the client had risky non-functional requirements and preferred to keep the database people local.
At work I use DB2 on Z and Oracle (including RAC) most of the time. Sybase seems to be getting rarer in the finance industry nowadays. I've never seen mysql or postresql deployed in a very large organisation (yet!). It would be nice to get slashdotters to say if they're using postresql or mysql in large organisations.
rd
We do have CCTV in Stirling, but the control room only has enough operators for each set of eyes to look at 20 or so cameras - so, usually, the cameras are only used to see "what happened" when the crime has already been committed. they are useful during an incident where they can be trageted on an ongoing situation to gather evidence.
We also have a community warden programme where "real people" (tm) are paid to deal with anti-social crime (i.e. the stuff the police don't have time for) but they can also get the police when things are serious. They have a remit to engage with schools and young people and we get them involved so they know who the bad kids are and instead of beating them into submission in a "police vs us" scenario, they engage and build up a rapport and breed mutual respect. Most of the time it is just kids hanging out drinking buckfast and getting hopelessly pissed and causing a nuisance.
I would much rather have a high visability presence on the streets that can be identified as real people rather than a faceless camera operator to this sort of anti-social crime. interestingly (for our english neighbours) - street crime has reduced since the smoking ban - because there are always people around on the streets that keeps a natural order on friday and saturday nights.
rd
Also, from a legal point of view; EU member states have a trade agreement that used to be called the "common market". This means that a consumer in Italy, should not be prevented from buying a product at the same price as a German or a Brit. This is why Europpeans can shop around the EU looking for the cheapest prices for products - e.g. Italians buying Mercedes in Germany, Brits buying fags (cigarettes. please!) from France and Spaniards buying mobile phones from the UK.
Any company that prevents cross border trading, is breaking the law. The problem with iTunes, is that it does not allow a Brit to buy at French prices and so on because the user is registered in their home country and is forced to buy at the domicile prices. This restriction only happens on digital products because physical products can easily be purchased in the country of ones choosing by showing up and buying the stuff over the counter.
I don't see this as an Anti-USA argument - it is an EU problem with the subsidiuaries of Apple, such as Apple UK and Apple DE etc not co-operating and profiteering in an illegally segmented market.
hope that helps,
rd
this is the situation in europe. The countries are all 'states' within a unified europe, akin to the united states of america. European "countries" share a currency (except a minority) and share a common legal platform.
Quite why a digital downloaded product has such a differential is beyond me - the iTunes servers are offshore and so do not fall foul of any 'extra' taxation and the product is identical for all customers. The distribution cost is paid for by the customer (the local broadband/network charge) - costs in US$ (for easy comparison, at todays rates) are:
mind you. that's not as bad as the sony playstation 3 or Microsoft Windows Vista that both are immensely more espensive in the UK than the USA for identical products.
rd
Interesting that they sent you a letter - especially since there is no way to repudiate that you received it, and no way for you to confirm they sent it.
I am not aware of USA FBI procedures, but surely if they required sensitive information then a uniformed officer would knock on the door, get the informant to sign whatever the equivalent of the Official Secrets Act and then conduct the information gathering - subject to evidence gathering rules so that the evidence can be used in a subsequent trial.
Also, this case sounds so much like pre-texting or a sophisticated social engineering hack - my view would be:
+ write a return letter to your local fbi office quoting the ref number to say you have received it and ask that they contact your secretary to book an appointment. ball in their court, all legally done, polite and none of your clients information leaked to a 3rd party.
rd
EMV cards have two data items for the PIN usually called online PIN and offline PIN but pretty much all banks have the same value for each.
The key worry about this 'attack' is that the electronics could be changed easily:
This fraud has already been perpetrated at a Shell garage in the UK when a bloke in overalls came into the Shell store to say he was the engineer to check the Chip n PIN device. The Trintech unit had a fault so that it would not self destruct when opened and a simple memory chip was added to the device. The bloke in overalls went back a few weeks later to 'check everything was OK' and took back the memory chip and had the card details and PINs - resultant fraud loss was GBP 1m; although not sure how much was recovered.
I'm very wary of Tesco stores (UK) that swipe the mag stripe before inserting the card into a chip reader then ask the customer for the PIN - they effectively have the strip and the PIN which is enough to make a new card. The problem is that the chip cards have the legacy mag stripe to work in foreign ATMs and non-chip compliant stores.
The way things are going with APACS CAP - punters will be inserting their PIN into any old keypad, so it'll be getting worse before it gets better.
rd
you can imagine that the hardware resellers would love to be able to sell a tin box+SAN kit with a CRM distro on board without the problems associatedof cross-licence agreements & certification with MS etc...
rd
it saves having to walk along to the end of the racks and round to the front every few minutes. In big machine rooms - this is a good thing. believe me.
Don't you just love it when:
The above PDF gives advice to financial institutions on how to submit STR (suspicious transaction report) to the treasury. The interesting thing is that it is not an offence to submit an incorrect tip off (STR). Also, the PDF shows some of the internal workflow for the STR - which would pass through NCIS (National Crime Squads, now SOCA) before reaching other interested parties.
Anyone who has bought a car, boat, house or any expensive item by law has to show valid identification and a transaction form is completed and sent in. When I recently bought my car, I had to take my passport in and the dealer filled in a form and photocopied my ID!
Even the UK version of PayPal has an inbuilt limit at GBP4,100 that will temporarily freeze the PayPal account until the account holder has validated their identity - this is reported and sent in and used for tax collection and STR purposes.
not a new story, move along please.
See an explanation here.
Also, eBay makes UK users fill out an anti-money-laundering form and performs an additional verification once a paypal account receives £4500 (US$8300). This probably goes into the UK Gov anti money laundering and terrorist profiling systems.
Most IT folks who run home businesses should structure them carefully, because they could be subject to higher rate tax of 40% on profits plus 17.5% VAT. If you setup your ebay/paypal account as a limited company then you will only pay 25% tax and VAT can be paid as an offset percentage (agree with tax man) between 9 and 17.5%.
rd
The EU has been extremely vigilant to ensure that free trade can continue over the borders - even where local taxes are being compromised. USAians: It's like buying your stuff in a state with lower sales tax.
the EU has open borders. so use them!
I've been using FreeNAS for a while on an old laptop - I use this for simple home backup. The benefit of using an old laptop is that it is battery backed, low power & heat and has a small form factor. FreeNAS is great for rejuvenating laptops that have buggered screens. I've had a lot of experience installing enterprise NAS systems - including Microsoft's appalling 2003 storage edition. I bought about 6 of them for client (pre-installed on HP hardware) and found them to have very poor failover with clustering that really didn't work. These NAS's had HBA cards in them for SAN Access (HP EVA5000's) and basically the Windows could not cluster SAN connected disks. So, a copy of RHEL, Serviceguard and a fresh updated Samba and the exact same hardware performed as a properly clustered NAS and I also had a client whose eyes were opened to Linux. I found FreeNAS easy to configure and certainly headed in the right direction (when user rights are sorted out). It has a stronger feeling of solidity than Windows Storage edition - i.e. "It does what it says on the tin" functionality rather than a hacked down version of 2003 Server where you are never sure what you have got and what will install on it. e.g. Can Windows 2003 SE use veritas clustering? who knows? win 2003 server can.
Some highlights:
So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.
for anyone who drives a lot the UK with headsets - I can heartily recommend that you don't get the ones with the pulsing blue LED's. At night, whilst at a rather brisk pace on the motorway, the LED flashes blue which will every now and then reflect off the (right hand in the UK) drivers window which will look not unlike the blue flashing lights of a police car in your wingmirror. nearly crapped myself the first time this happened. rd
The same applies to National ANPR (Automatic number plate recognition) - which from recent news articles, we know already exists. We know this because the July 7th bombers white VW Golf was found and the recent shooting in a Bradford travel agency used ANPR to detect a vehicle that lefrt the bradford area and arrive in London. ANPR was first brought into use after the February 1996 Docklands IRA bombings. Police cars used to catch up with stolen cars that had entered the Isle of Dogs ANPR system outside my apartment in Westferry rd on most friday/saturday nights!!
* all was going well until RAF pilots landing at lossiemouth had their phones investigated after high-tailing it up country at mach 2.
rd
monochrome in the UK has been running since late 1990 and continues to do so today. Started out before the UK had a widespread IP based network, then it moved to telnet and now most people log in over ssh. It still looks the same as it did 15 years ago - which is a very good thing.
have a look at http://www.dec.org.uk. They are currently supporting as campaign to help the worthy cause of the situation in the Niger. Click on the donate button and you will be taken to a shocking rendition of a 1997-esque payment page that looks awful. So I imagine our man Cuthbert looked again at the dec.org.uk site and it looks bonafide enough and also the whois entry stacks up.
I remember at the time that the BBC News carried a story at, or about the time of the Hogmany (31st Dec 2004) regarding fake websites. I could only find this story on BBC website 6 days after the alledged incident.
so our man cuthbert panics. As you can see the basic link and page to securetrading.net (not even a .co.uk). Remember that 31-DEC-2004 is a friday before a long holiday weekend. So there will no-one to phone. He looks at the certificate for the server-side SSL - "Secure trading Ltd" a UK company. But the whois entry is privately registered and does not have any standard company details on it - it is also registered abroad (which isn't a big worry, but remember this is a UK gov't sponsored website)
My next port of call is Companies House - where all UK Ltd companies have to be, by law, registered. So using their webcheck facility - it is company number 04591066 with an address in south east london. Not a government organisation, but seems wholly owned by another unknown company UC Media? securetrading.co.uk? no, they're someone else. back to companies house - searching for UC Media, can't find them, but there is an entry for UC Group Ltd at the same address. bingo. hang on. there are two insolvency notices on this company...
I'm sorry but I would have also panicked.
I think the important part of OSS is that teams are built on individuals' technical ability rather than race, creed, colour or indeed paymaster.
rd