Yeah, 4UKP is quite a bit of money, but I think it is at the price point where people are likely to go "fuck it", when the prospects of getting it back involve calling an 0845 (non-free) number and dealing with a call centre staffed by beaurocrats.
Even if your journey was only a quid (is there a journey that cheap in London? Around here I think the cheapest bus ride is over a quid these days), you're then ringing up for a 3 pound refund. The telephone call will be cheap, but will still have a cost directly proportional to the length of the call. The minimum wage in London is 7.20UKP per hour (I think, but it is more than the national minimum wage), and obviously there are lots of people earning more than that.... even for those on the lowest pay, ringing up for a refund might not even be worth their time depending on the size of the refund, what their bosses are like about spending time on the phone when at work, and the opening hours of the call centre!
As I understand it, the buses (and presumably trams) only exchange data with the big brother network at the depot.... so if a bus goes out with a working Oyster reader thing, then (in theory) it'd work all day even if the rest of the oyster network fucks up whilst the bus is out.
The Dutch group is one of three known to have cracked the Mifare Classic technology.
I haven't heard any other reports of other groups having confirmed to have cracked this system, so does anyone else know what the BBC are on about? But if they are right, then its pretty safe to say that people have been running about with cloned oyster cards for a while.
Unfortunately there don't seem to be any real details of how the copying is done, but I do wonder if the copying process is as simple as that if you can read a card you can clone it? If thats the case, if you need a new card (you will every 24 hours from what I've seen if you're using cloned cards), you just bump into someone on the way into a station with a reader about you person and clone theirs!
With there being two major fuck ups of the oyster system in 2 weeks, I am thinking that someone is really trying to make changes to the oyster system that it can't cope with...... and they would only try and really push the system if copying the cards is actually really easy, or they already have a problem with cloned cards that they're not talking about.
Really? I feel the BBC have gone horribly downhill chasing the commercial channels, especially the news.
I watched an episode of ITN's News at Ten the other evening, and it was like watching/listening to a tabloid newspaper. You know how the tabloids but key words in bold (like I have in the paragraph above) in their articles, for whatever reason they do? [1] Well, watching ITN's news was like that.... but you could barely hear the words inbetween "terrorist", "paedophile", "the McCann's" and psuedonews about the latest products on the market - which are coincidentally advertised on the same channel.
I feel the BBC has gone down a similar path. They don't have the same financial interests as commercial stations, but they feel to remain competitive they need to do what the commercials channels do. The new generation of news readers are more like actors - they don't seem to show any emotion taking about awful things, and can they switch seamlessly to the fluff news pieces that get run every day.
And the BBC never questions the state anymore. Opposition to the government may be reported on, but it is always in the same way: at the end of what little analysis there is, and then it is somehow painted in a bad-light.... as if they truly believe that if you don't toe the line perfectly, the next stop would be blowing up the houses of parliament!
[1] Thick readerbase, and/or the paper has an agenda.
Let's not turn this idiocy around. This document does not need to be "proven fake".
It needs to be proven authentic ! Dear God.
OK, why would the document fail an authenticity test? You came across as so assertive that you are sure this is fake that you appear to know something I don't. Please can you give us all a hint as to what about the document fails to convince you it is authentic? Or what criterion are you looking for that would convince you it is authentic?
Or do you just believe that the publisher wouldn't stoop as low as the things proposed in this document?
Oh and don't worry, despite the stupidity of accepting this "on sight", it will be proven a fake. Just give it enough time.
Care to speculate what will prove it a fake? Even though in your first paragraph you said "This document does not need to be "proven fake"."
Why does the layout make the government stupid? It looks very much like any corporate document, and the military will be using corporate methods for some processes within the military these days. They will definately have access to the same software as the corporate world have too.
WWII pilot briefing documents look better than this "official" document.
And WWII pilot briefing documents are nearly 60 years old. Do they look real because they weren't word processed?
And this document isn't aimed at modern pilots.... its for special forces and occupiers - people with a very different role in the military. From skimming through the document, it covers methods and tactics employed since world war II. You don't appear to have compared like with like.
Please can you substantiate your claim this is fake?
I've just recently unearthed a few old games I liked, to play them again on my XP box.... a lot of other games had no sound (or no sound you wanted to hear),
I tried recently installed the win95 game Need for Speed SE on XP, but the sound was awful and stopped even the install routine from working properly. After some fiddling about, I found that turning down direct X's sound acceleration down to nothing in dxdiag.exe solved the problem, and the game worked fine from then on.
I used to work for a company who stocked the office fully with Aerons, and I found them to not be perfect just behind my knees.... too much pressure and IIRC I found myself fidgeting after a while. But the solution was easy.... raise my feet with a foot rest so I could straighten my legs a bit, and relax a bit more.
This meant that I was in turn leaning back on the chair more than most people in the office, and the kind of management that think that IT staff should wear a shirt and tie at all times also had a problem with me looking too laid back! But a quick hint towards comfort, or lack of, soon shut them up.... they know the reason that companies buy Aerons in the first place: covering their asses from being sued for providing shitty chairs that hurt people.
Is there somewhere I can go to pledge that I won't be downloading FF3?
I feel Firefox has drifted too far from the philosophy that existed around its creation: a small and fast web browser with support for extensions, so the user can add the features they want.
The awful bar in FF3 a perfect example of a feature that should be an extension, but isn't and is forced on everyone. I don't want my hand holding when it comes to using core features of a browser, and so I'm going to say no to FF3. I feel that FF has been moving the wrong way for a while, but 3 is just too much. Hell, my laptop's Windows partition still has 1.5.highest installed because I didn't see any point in updating to FF2.
I feel sorry for people stuck with Virgin broadband.... NTL/Telewest were bought out, and it was obvious that when they were bought out the buyers were in it purely to profit heavily from the cable monopoly that NTL/Telewest had.
Not much later, Virgin brought in dynamic throttling of download speed at peak times. Then they were found to be installing spyware on their network (Phorm), then they added more throttling during the day.... and The Register is running a story about how VM are getting into bed with the BPI to police the network for pirated stuff. And the bigwigs from VM have been documented very publicly mocking the idea of net neutrality (the CEO described NN as "bollocks", IIRC).
Of course, VM sell TV and music services. They are clearly attacking the competition to this (zero monetry cost downloads from the internet, and even pay-for shit like iTunes).
(and I'm actually fine with both this and backscatter scanning if it lets me bring my damned drink with me) I don't think we will see the return of being allowed to bring your own drinks onto planes anytime soon.... taking drinks off people, then sitting them somewhere hot and airconditioned where you control the shops must be just too much of a money spinner to give up easily.
Even though your post hase been modded up to +5 (I have modifiers, so that might not be right) there are no replies.... and this isn't a proper one either.
I think the lack of replies shows how a system that supposedly exists to free government infomation isn't very approachable at all.... and the cynic in me says the authorities would have wanted it that way.
But no, I can't answer your question. That Daily Heil article mentioned numbers of councils who do use the act, and those who don't.... Wish they'd publish them too.
The login dialog. "Pressing ctrl-alt-delete to log in makes your computer more secure!" No, no it doesn't!
Years ago on an NT training course I was told that Windows and Windows alone will respond to ctrl-alt-del, so when you press ctrl-alt-del you are definately giving your password to Windows, and not a password capturing trojan.
Of course, that relies on Windows doing what it is meant to, but that's a different argument.
I went through Gatwick in February, and there's big signs and bins to get people to leave any liquids and bottles. I proceeded to down a 500ml bottle or sprite, leading to only a few very load belches, and oh-so accidentally spilt the contents of the other bottle on the floor and down the bin so I could keep the empty bottle (that didn't look against the rules).
Once we were though the scanners and shit, we had the wait by the duty free.... where they sell bottles of water and fizzy drinks along with the rest of the crap they pedal.
It was obvious that BAA (the major airport operator in the UK) are using security as an excuse to increase profits. Take people's drinks away under some jumped-up pretext, and then have the punters pay for drinks from BAA controlled shops. I had spotted the scheme when I heard about the liquid ban, so thats why I made a mess and kept a plastic bottle: they waste money paying someone to clean it up, and I have a bottle I can fill with tap water rather than have my wallet taken advantage of.
On the way home from Bulgaria, my friend had his bag searched.... they didn't like the bottle of aftershave in the bag that he'd bought on the way out. Nor did they like his 2 litre water bottle. But they checked the volumes, and the flamable aftershave was allowed but the water wasn't!!
And that's the worst thing I think about the fucking joke security in airports: they sell bottles of nearly pure ethanol just before you can get on a plane, but take away bottles of water, toothpaste, creams....
Hell, if a crackpot wanted to take down an aircraft they could start some very nasty fires in a plane with aftershaves and perfumes or bottles of very strong booze they bought in duty-free.
Oh yeah, if bottles of water, scissors, aerosols etc. are so dangerous, then why in airports do they insist on showing us big bins of what has been confiscated? The contents of some of those bins would burn rather dangerously, and I'm surprised I haven't heard of a case of someone dropping a burning book of matches into one of them.
Back in World War II British citizens who even made propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis were executed for treason.
Can you substantiate that?
As I understand it, British facists were actually only locked up in prison, and only when Britain was seriously threatened by German invasion. I think they were released before the end of WWII.
...After that, they will only need to jail a couple of people per month and heavily advertise these cases (and the sentences imposed) to keep interest in file sharing low.
No, it'll keep file sharing under the radar. There are many more private file sharing sites these days than there ever have been, and the private networks are actively increasing their privacy and security. There will be future busts of some of these networks, but they will be "small-fry" or due to flaws in the networks' security (though defending against a RIAA controlled spy is obviously difficult).
You're completely correct, it's impossible to kill file sharing by targeting the middleman. However, I think it will not be hard to do if they target the consumers engaged in file sharing.
Oh yeah, targetting the users has worked so well with drugs it'll definately work here!
Something that's usually doled out in small amounts (leave 'em wanting more) becomes basically a janitor's job. Think you'd really like to spend your day applying mods to goatse and crapfloods? Sounds boring to me.
Have you had mod points recently? I've been getting 10 at a time the last couple of times, rather than 5.
But as always, I only ever seem to get mod points when/. is full of articles that don't really interest me, and the points end up expiring. Almost guarenteed, once the points expire some juicy stories will come along!
Sky TV told my Mum to turn the coax cable around that went between the wall and the sky box when she had problems a while back (it was a faulty box though, as we thought). I guess Sky's tech support ask people to do this otherwise pointless act to actually force the user to check the cable is connected OK, and as the cable will get reseated any crud causing a poor connection will probably be wiped out too.
I bet Sky get quite a few "oops, its OK now" too when they ask people to turn a wire around.).
I have those balloons disabled on Windows. That method of alerting I have never liked, and find them very very annoying, but disabling the balloons has a downside.... alerts that used to be on normal pop-up dialogue boxes on pre-xp versions of Windows, like "your battery about to die", have been relagated to the balloons.
As the balloon alerts are used for pretty much pointless shit (the kind of shit a n00b needs a hand with, like WLANs, product activation, and touring XP...) I have them turned off on my laptop. But then I do not get any notification that my laptop battery is dying, even though alerts are turned on in the power options. I just have to keep an eye on the battery icon.
Oh yeah, when the battery does get low, normally XP will put an ! in a triangle in the systray, with a balloon above with the text of an alert. With balloons turned off, I get the ! in a triangle, but nothing to say what the problem is. Everything else in the systray will usually give info or status when you mouseover, but not the MS alert if you turn off balloons! The same icon appears if I get low on disk space, and possibly something else. If I stop a removable device like a USB drive then I also do not get notified when its OK to remove.
So yeah, you can disable the annoyances on Windows, but you inevitably get alternative annoyances which are no doubt undocumented.
Yeah, its free (zero money), but they sell versions too. This means that some features are crippled or missing: You can't schedule any kind of scanning, for example.
But all AV software is utterly shit: Avast is mildly better because at least you don't have to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, 4UKP is quite a bit of money, but I think it is at the price point where people are likely to go "fuck it", when the prospects of getting it back involve calling an 0845 (non-free) number and dealing with a call centre staffed by beaurocrats.
Even if your journey was only a quid (is there a journey that cheap in London? Around here I think the cheapest bus ride is over a quid these days), you're then ringing up for a 3 pound refund. The telephone call will be cheap, but will still have a cost directly proportional to the length of the call. The minimum wage in London is 7.20UKP per hour (I think, but it is more than the national minimum wage), and obviously there are lots of people earning more than that.... even for those on the lowest pay, ringing up for a refund might not even be worth their time depending on the size of the refund, what their bosses are like about spending time on the phone when at work, and the opening hours of the call centre!
As I understand it, the buses (and presumably trams) only exchange data with the big brother network at the depot.... so if a bus goes out with a working Oyster reader thing, then (in theory) it'd work all day even if the rest of the oyster network fucks up whilst the bus is out.
The doc that appeared on Wikileaks was an older document about the cards, not the current doc that details the cloning, so thats why it was removed.
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Censored_Milfaire_Classic_Oyster_Card_break_paper_2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7516869.stm
Says in the last line
The Dutch group is one of three known to have cracked the Mifare Classic technology.
I haven't heard any other reports of other groups having confirmed to have cracked this system, so does anyone else know what the BBC are on about? But if they are right, then its pretty safe to say that people have been running about with cloned oyster cards for a while.
Unfortunately there don't seem to be any real details of how the copying is done, but I do wonder if the copying process is as simple as that if you can read a card you can clone it? If thats the case, if you need a new card (you will every 24 hours from what I've seen if you're using cloned cards), you just bump into someone on the way into a station with a reader about you person and clone theirs!
With there being two major fuck ups of the oyster system in 2 weeks, I am thinking that someone is really trying to make changes to the oyster system that it can't cope with...... and they would only try and really push the system if copying the cards is actually really easy, or they already have a problem with cloned cards that they're not talking about.
If you thought the media corps bitch about piracy.....
Just wait and see what the electronics industry say when they start losing business to people pirating electronic products with their printer.
Of course, as a printer is electronics, even the pirating machines could be pirated!
(No, of course I haven't read the article :) )
Really? I feel the BBC have gone horribly downhill chasing the commercial channels, especially the news.
I watched an episode of ITN's News at Ten the other evening, and it was like watching/listening to a tabloid newspaper. You know how the tabloids but key words in bold (like I have in the paragraph above) in their articles, for whatever reason they do? [1] Well, watching ITN's news was like that.... but you could barely hear the words inbetween "terrorist", "paedophile", "the McCann's" and psuedonews about the latest products on the market - which are coincidentally advertised on the same channel.
I feel the BBC has gone down a similar path. They don't have the same financial interests as commercial stations, but they feel to remain competitive they need to do what the commercials channels do. The new generation of news readers are more like actors - they don't seem to show any emotion taking about awful things, and can they switch seamlessly to the fluff news pieces that get run every day.
And the BBC never questions the state anymore. Opposition to the government may be reported on, but it is always in the same way: at the end of what little analysis there is, and then it is somehow painted in a bad-light.... as if they truly believe that if you don't toe the line perfectly, the next stop would be blowing up the houses of parliament!
[1] Thick readerbase, and/or the paper has an agenda.
Let's not turn this idiocy around. This document does not need to be "proven fake".
It needs to be proven authentic ! Dear God.
OK, why would the document fail an authenticity test? You came across as so assertive that you are sure this is fake that you appear to know something I don't. Please can you give us all a hint as to what about the document fails to convince you it is authentic? Or what criterion are you looking for that would convince you it is authentic?
Or do you just believe that the publisher wouldn't stoop as low as the things proposed in this document?
Oh and don't worry, despite the stupidity of accepting this "on sight", it will be proven a fake. Just give it enough time.Care to speculate what will prove it a fake? Even though in your first paragraph you said "This document does not need to be "proven fake"."
Why does the layout make the government stupid? It looks very much like any corporate document, and the military will be using corporate methods for some processes within the military these days. They will definately have access to the same software as the corporate world have too.
WWII pilot briefing documents look better than this "official" document.And WWII pilot briefing documents are nearly 60 years old. Do they look real because they weren't word processed?
And this document isn't aimed at modern pilots.... its for special forces and occupiers - people with a very different role in the military. From skimming through the document, it covers methods and tactics employed since world war II. You don't appear to have compared like with like.
Please can you substantiate your claim this is fake?
I tried recently installed the win95 game Need for Speed SE on XP, but the sound was awful and stopped even the install routine from working properly. After some fiddling about, I found that turning down direct X's sound acceleration down to nothing in dxdiag.exe solved the problem, and the game worked fine from then on.
Might be worth giving it a try?
I used to work for a company who stocked the office fully with Aerons, and I found them to not be perfect just behind my knees.... too much pressure and IIRC I found myself fidgeting after a while. But the solution was easy.... raise my feet with a foot rest so I could straighten my legs a bit, and relax a bit more.
This meant that I was in turn leaning back on the chair more than most people in the office, and the kind of management that think that IT staff should wear a shirt and tie at all times also had a problem with me looking too laid back! But a quick hint towards comfort, or lack of, soon shut them up.... they know the reason that companies buy Aerons in the first place: covering their asses from being sued for providing shitty chairs that hurt people.
Is there somewhere I can go to pledge that I won't be downloading FF3?
I feel Firefox has drifted too far from the philosophy that existed around its creation: a small and fast web browser with support for extensions, so the user can add the features they want.
The awful bar in FF3 a perfect example of a feature that should be an extension, but isn't and is forced on everyone. I don't want my hand holding when it comes to using core features of a browser, and so I'm going to say no to FF3. I feel that FF has been moving the wrong way for a while, but 3 is just too much. Hell, my laptop's Windows partition still has 1.5.highest installed because I didn't see any point in updating to FF2.
Oh, it looks like "God" modded you down ;)
I feel sorry for people stuck with Virgin broadband.... NTL/Telewest were bought out, and it was obvious that when they were bought out the buyers were in it purely to profit heavily from the cable monopoly that NTL/Telewest had.
Not much later, Virgin brought in dynamic throttling of download speed at peak times. Then they were found to be installing spyware on their network (Phorm), then they added more throttling during the day.... and The Register is running a story about how VM are getting into bed with the BPI to police the network for pirated stuff. And the bigwigs from VM have been documented very publicly mocking the idea of net neutrality (the CEO described NN as "bollocks", IIRC).
Of course, VM sell TV and music services. They are clearly attacking the competition to this (zero monetry cost downloads from the internet, and even pay-for shit like iTunes).
Even though your post hase been modded up to +5 (I have modifiers, so that might not be right) there are no replies.... and this isn't a proper one either.
I think the lack of replies shows how a system that supposedly exists to free government infomation isn't very approachable at all.... and the cynic in me says the authorities would have wanted it that way.
I added this site to my bookmarks the otherday... looks interesting
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/
But the UK gov do seem to try and make URLs predictable:
http://www.foi.gov.uk/
But no, I can't answer your question. That Daily Heil article mentioned numbers of councils who do use the act, and those who don't.... Wish they'd publish them too.
Yeah, there's a small sign next to it asking people not to take flash photographs.
Years ago on an NT training course I was told that Windows and Windows alone will respond to ctrl-alt-del, so when you press ctrl-alt-del you are definately giving your password to Windows, and not a password capturing trojan.
Of course, that relies on Windows doing what it is meant to, but that's a different argument.
I went through Gatwick in February, and there's big signs and bins to get people to leave any liquids and bottles. I proceeded to down a 500ml bottle or sprite, leading to only a few very load belches, and oh-so accidentally spilt the contents of the other bottle on the floor and down the bin so I could keep the empty bottle (that didn't look against the rules).
Once we were though the scanners and shit, we had the wait by the duty free.... where they sell bottles of water and fizzy drinks along with the rest of the crap they pedal.
It was obvious that BAA (the major airport operator in the UK) are using security as an excuse to increase profits. Take people's drinks away under some jumped-up pretext, and then have the punters pay for drinks from BAA controlled shops. I had spotted the scheme when I heard about the liquid ban, so thats why I made a mess and kept a plastic bottle: they waste money paying someone to clean it up, and I have a bottle I can fill with tap water rather than have my wallet taken advantage of.
On the way home from Bulgaria, my friend had his bag searched.... they didn't like the bottle of aftershave in the bag that he'd bought on the way out. Nor did they like his 2 litre water bottle. But they checked the volumes, and the flamable aftershave was allowed but the water wasn't!!
And that's the worst thing I think about the fucking joke security in airports: they sell bottles of nearly pure ethanol just before you can get on a plane, but take away bottles of water, toothpaste, creams....
Hell, if a crackpot wanted to take down an aircraft they could start some very nasty fires in a plane with aftershaves and perfumes or bottles of very strong booze they bought in duty-free.
Oh yeah, if bottles of water, scissors, aerosols etc. are so dangerous, then why in airports do they insist on showing us big bins of what has been confiscated? The contents of some of those bins would burn rather dangerously, and I'm surprised I haven't heard of a case of someone dropping a burning book of matches into one of them.
Can you substantiate that?
As I understand it, British facists were actually only locked up in prison, and only when Britain was seriously threatened by German invasion. I think they were released before the end of WWII.
...After that, they will only need to jail a couple of people per month and heavily advertise these cases (and the sentences imposed) to keep interest in file sharing low.No, it'll keep file sharing under the radar. There are many more private file sharing sites these days than there ever have been, and the private networks are actively increasing their privacy and security. There will be future busts of some of these networks, but they will be "small-fry" or due to flaws in the networks' security (though defending against a RIAA controlled spy is obviously difficult).
You're completely correct, it's impossible to kill file sharing by targeting the middleman. However, I think it will not be hard to do if they target the consumers engaged in file sharing.Oh yeah, targetting the users has worked so well with drugs it'll definately work here!
Have you had mod points recently? I've been getting 10 at a time the last couple of times, rather than 5.
But as always, I only ever seem to get mod points when /. is full of articles that don't really interest me, and the points end up expiring. Almost guarenteed, once the points expire some juicy stories will come along!
Sky TV told my Mum to turn the coax cable around that went between the wall and the sky box when she had problems a while back (it was a faulty box though, as we thought). I guess Sky's tech support ask people to do this otherwise pointless act to actually force the user to check the cable is connected OK, and as the cable will get reseated any crud causing a poor connection will probably be wiped out too.
I bet Sky get quite a few "oops, its OK now" too when they ask people to turn a wire around.).
I have those balloons disabled on Windows. That method of alerting I have never liked, and find them very very annoying, but disabling the balloons has a downside.... alerts that used to be on normal pop-up dialogue boxes on pre-xp versions of Windows, like "your battery about to die", have been relagated to the balloons.
As the balloon alerts are used for pretty much pointless shit (the kind of shit a n00b needs a hand with, like WLANs, product activation, and touring XP...) I have them turned off on my laptop. But then I do not get any notification that my laptop battery is dying, even though alerts are turned on in the power options. I just have to keep an eye on the battery icon.
Oh yeah, when the battery does get low, normally XP will put an ! in a triangle in the systray, with a balloon above with the text of an alert. With balloons turned off, I get the ! in a triangle, but nothing to say what the problem is. Everything else in the systray will usually give info or status when you mouseover, but not the MS alert if you turn off balloons! The same icon appears if I get low on disk space, and possibly something else. If I stop a removable device like a USB drive then I also do not get notified when its OK to remove.
So yeah, you can disable the annoyances on Windows, but you inevitably get alternative annoyances which are no doubt undocumented.
Yeah, its free (zero money), but they sell versions too. This means that some features are crippled or missing: You can't schedule any kind of scanning, for example. But all AV software is utterly shit: Avast is mildly better because at least you don't have to pay for it.