My computer was flooded with pornographic pictures

Hi Mike,

Just because they didn't show you anything other than what they did, does not necessarily mean they didn't have data they didn't search through.

As you probably know, in the US, under the Freedom of Information Act, since modified to hardly meet the intended purpose, it was perfectly justified to mislead the requester.

For instance, a request to the FBI could yield, "no central records found", while they could have had a file cabinet full of records on someone in a state or regional storage.

Likewise, they also could send a request for, "more information" about yourself, if you wished the request to continue. Naturally, most people simply dropped the request at that.

Finally, if someone determined that it would be bad for the government, they could deny any information.

Someone I know quite well used to work for the federal government, and had seen his own personnel folder, including the manila envelope portion they used to take out before letting someone see their folder.(don't know if they still do that...probably all by computer now anyway.) When he requested info from the FBI, despite having seen something written about him by the FBI in his own folder, he was told they had no central records.

Of course HP wouldn't be as devious as the government...

Did Charlie have stuff? I'd imagine he'd have been more of a target!

Boguscomputer

Subject: Vole Tale

So, I built my friend a new PC (just new not shiny as this was an XP machine). Everything was fine until I tested his internet service. It so happens that my friend lives in the sheep country of northern California, where DSL cannot tread, so he uses Vole's own MSN dial-up service. Now, Vole being Vole and Windows XP being Vole and MSN being Vole, one could be forgiven for thinking that the dialer built into XP would be adequate to the task for connecting to MSN--in should go username and password, find a local dial-up phone number, launch Internet Explorer and off we go! Well, not quite.

No, after much consternation (not in any way aided by an ability to get to a live Vole customer service biological unit), I finally decided that I had underestimated Vole. It turns out that the XP dialer isn't enough. You have to download this suite of Voleware (all 145Mb of it) that gives you a customized interface to the Internet and everything else you could ever want to do with your PC including a customized dialer interface which I found much more cumbersome than the one Vole designed into XP.

After getting the dialer interface to work, I was able to go into add/remove programs and eliminate the software suite and keep just the dialer so it is possible to connect and then just launch regular Internet Explorer. As a final insult, however, Vole decided that after connecting using its utility that it would provide a sentimental token of love for the customer by leaving a little box in the middle of the screen that lets me know I am connected to the Internet and giving me an option called disconnect. Again, Vole had it right in the first place with the XP dialer where, after connecting, a little modem icon is shown in the tray at the bottom (nicely out of the way).

After telling this tale to my friend, he said he thought all dial-up service was that way. The triumph of pervasive mediocrity!

Rick Petrucci

Subject: Uk Euro

I had exactly the same problem here in MA , USA a few years ago. The MANAGER at a local American bank refused to accept that the UK still sued the pound and refused to exchange 20upk notes taken by a relative only the day before from an ATM at Heathrow.

It was mind blowing. The manager refused to call up their exchange program or pick up a copy of any near by paper where we wanted to point out that dollar:pound currency market was still a thriving industry....

PC Reeveshall

Subject: British society is worse than I thought

"Services for passengers can be built into first class passengers' tickets, or paid for by second class passengers."

You know, the way this is written, it kind of seems like first class passengers will either pay for broadband in their ticket prices, or, alternatively, have their broadband provided, gratis, by the *second class* passengers.

I know Britain still has a strong class system, but this is ridiculous!

David.

Subject: Barcelona difficult to make. Er, says Intel

HA! doesn't surprise me that a company who somewhat simply glued two dual core CPU's together to say something like that. Well, their "quad" does work it's making them some bucks.

I won't buy one. But still it's makin them some easy bucks for the moment.

Look at MS... Let's glue a bunch of third party ideas to XP and call it Vista. Is Vista a "new and improved" OS? (IMHO) no.. does it "look" pretty? yes. Is it worth the headaches and reduced system performance most are seeing? definitely not. I won't buy that either.

True quad easy?.. Prob not. But I see Barcelona spankin Intel's butt when it hits the streets. I'm collecting my pennies and patiently waiting.

LoCatus

Subject: Non-relational databases

Mark's letter is spot on the money ... the only reason relational databases are so popular is marketing money and the lemming instinct among PHBs.

Relational Theory is a branch of Pure Maths - a subset of set theory. And as Einstein said about Maths, "as far as Maths relates to reality, it is not certain, and as far as it is certain it has nothing to do with reality".

C&D's laws are (intended as) mathematical axioms, and indeed, one of them (the one about the database designer being forbidden from knowing anything about the implementation) actually FORBIDS the scientific enquiry as to "does this thing actually work in practice?".

That's why Cache is growing fast (it's a multi-dimensional, post-relational, call it what you will database based on MUMPS). That's why IBM's U2 databases are doing so well (they're multi-dimensional, multi-value, post-relational, call it what you will databases based on Pick).

One of my favourite war stories is the company migrating from U2 to Oracle. The consultants, after spending SIX MONTHS optimising one single query, proudly announced to management that they "were now 10% faster than that old dinosaur database". At which point, the guy who maintained the "dinosaur database" being in earshot, he piped up and said "you're running Oracle on a twin Xeon 800, and you're PROUD of being just 10% faster than U2 running on a Pentium 90?"

(Oh - and I'm prepared to bet real money that the query on U2 had been thrown together in ten seconds or so, with no attempt at optimisation :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Subject: GBP

I wouldn't want to buy those expensive ass things either. Listen up, I'll give you $1.50 US for each GBP....I think I'll hold on to them as our currency continues down the toilet.

Glen

Subject: HD DVD group claims it's trouncing Blu-ray

I really do find it funny some of the claims companies like to make these days. First it was the RIAA claiming they deserve 1.6 trillion from Allofmp3.com, then it was Microsoft claiming Carmack was going to DX10 when he already said he sees no point in it and opengl is about to be reborn plus works on more systems, and now its Toshiba claiming victory. 100,000 out of 250,000 standalone units, now add in the 3.37 million ps3's that have been sold plus usable pc drives/burners and blu-ray trumps HD-dvd greatly in terms of overall hardware sales and market penetration. Plus there is the fact that there are more tech companies supporting blu-ray, more movie companies supporting blu-ray, blu-ray already holds more despite the fact TDK hasn't yet released the 200gb discs, and basically every halfway decent industry analyst has gone on record saying they expect blu-ray to win just with varying timeframes.

Toshiba also recently made claims it was going to add hd-dvd drives to all its laptops. Bad idea given most of their customers wouldn't realise they are there let alone know what they are not to mention it would kill their profits or kill their sales due to massive price increases. Only their Qosmio line has ever gotten HD-dvd, not even the $2,800 top of the line satalite got it as an option they had so little faith in people wanting it. On the off chance they actually do put them into their entire line all it will do is bring retaliation from the Blu-ray Disc Association, probably in the form of an increase in Blu-ray drives in Apple's, Dell's and Sony's.

Daemeon6

Subject: Teacher wins right to appeal on 40 year clink

Nick, I do not know this teacher or the details of this case but will appreciate if you can pass this on to the authorities in case you know someone. I agree with this teacher's claim. I was sitting in a business meeting and was searching the web for something relevant to our meeting. All I know is that I clicked onto something that sounded very relevant (this actually downloaded the spyware) and about ten minutes later my computer was flooded with pornographic pictures. I simply could not start the browser without also starting the pornographic images. In the end, I had to reinstall everything on my computer to get rid of these images.

Wayne

Subject: Piracy on US Campuses

Hey, After now reading two articles on P2P networks on US Campuses, I thought I might explain a bit of why the school's have taken very little in the way to stop the sharing of files on campus.

The RIAA can actually be blamed for the universities not cracking down. If a student on campus is torrenting with off campus seeds and one of the RIAA watchdogs catches it, the university is the one who got sued and they were responsible with turning over the student to make the lawsuit go away. Now with IP addresses on campus being reset either bimonthly or monthly, this becomes very difficult to do and the school normally can't identify the student by the time the lawsuit is brought up.

To save themselves, the schools know about the P2P networks and do very little to stop them. Our school has a very large DC++ network (2300+ users, 60+TB of data), but it is all behind the school's firewall and therefore shielded from the watchdog companies. The school knows that if they shut down one P2P network, we can just set up another (and have in the past), so they just leave it alone. In the end, the students get access to the music and movies we want and the school doesn't get in any legal trouble.

As for these networks taking up too much bandwidth, that is being solved by many universities. My school has throttled down how much bandwidth the P2P network can use 7AM-6PM so that it does not interfere with normal operation on campus, but lets it use as much as possible at night.

As a final note, these P2P networks do have their legit uses. We share class notes, pictures, e-books, etc. that are all available online for free simply because you get a much faster transfer rate when going in network for them. I'm not saying that this is a big portion of the network (my legit share is no more than 2GB of the 475GB I'm sharing), but it does have legit uses.

In short, allowing these networks to exist is happening because it is easier for campuses to limit them rather than destroy them and saves them a lot of hassle in the long run.

Chris

Subject: Gates at Harvard

Doctorate in Law? LOL x 2 at least :)

My girlfriend got het doctorate the same day and she almost fell asleep when Billy was nagging on the podium ;-). Clinton was there also the day before but You couldn't get near form the crowd.

But hey, Clint didn't make Vista so... ;-)

P-modo

Subject: Dell in China....

Dell could have problems with it's direct sell method here, as not many people have credit cards, at least outside the East Coast Cities, mostly it relies on having booths in computer markets where some people just order it for you from the Dell website, which I was rather disappointed in, if they are going to have a business front, they had better be able to make it competitive, they wouldn't budge on prices, though I'm a foreigner here, and therefore, it can be difficult to get the best bargain. One look at a white face, and the price goes up considerably. I have no doubt that they don't have trouble with high volume business, but the average Chinese person wants to haggle and touch the computer before they buy it.

Justin

B>Subject: HP has got nothing on Mike Magee

Hi Mike,

Not surprising, they just tell lies. There's a DB filled out by all managers who hire contractors, holding comments about the contractor and whether to hire them again. HP will tell you that it doesn't exist but an ex-HP manager friend of mine confirmed she'd used it. It does have certain implications for contractors if they piss off a manager with access to it, as they can suddenly find themselves persona non grata, and no way to appeal.

It's not surprising; when I was contracting for the Leasing division, their audits were always of a different set of figures than the management actually used. HP Leasing always got a nearly perfect audit, just leaving one or two things for the auditors to find and therefore look OK to Price Waterhouse,

all the best,

Chris M

Subject: Microsoft tells hackers how to take apart its IIS

Hi Nick, This is, I've noticed, a beginning of a new trend of how Microsoft does business. Rather than fix the problems in its products, it would rather cite the "unsupported" card and give people a really good reason to upgrade (like releasing the details of how to hack a previous version of its IIS product).

After all, it would surely result in a few nice fat Windows Server 2003 sales - probably a good thing since Vista is selling so abysmally. Customers can either take it or leave it, since Microsoft is so confident they won't switch to any other platform - after all, who on Earth uses that Apache thing anyway?

But wait a minute. Apache happens to be the most deployed Web server software in the world - and it's free, open and works on just about anything. Surely Microsoft's customers have to be thinking about the idea of moving to an alternative Web server. And while we're at it, why don't we just look at why we're paying for Windows to run our servers, rather than Linux?

Something in the back of my mind is telling me that this will backfire horribly for Microsoft, but one thing is certain: This whole episode is one more reason why we need laws that prevent vendors exposing their customers to risks with bad software and poor security. It does not take too much of a stretch of imagination to compare this to say, VISA documenting an exploit in magstripe cards - and then saying "Everyone go to chip and pin." The consequences for VISA would be easy to imagine.

Oliver.