It's likely far too late for something like that. O.k. if they had put that stuff in place in the late 90s than now it wouldn't be out. I'm sure all sorts of things out there could fall under "unbreakable" now for a given term of unbreakable...

So are they going to require passwords to be numbers only and only 4 digits? That should help breaking things. It wouldn't stop/slow things when you've got existing software out there that easily lets you use all sorts of interesting passwords now a days.

Do they think that they can just cast a mass oblivate on the entire population and make them forget using stuff that has existed for the last 2 decades? Right, this is Britain that we are talking about. The country most likely to try to actually implement 1984 thinking that it's a good thing.

Oh, why am I even bothering to complain now? Folks at work like that I can use apps to unlock forgotten passwords on things like psts. They really don't want unbreakable encryption. That basically means if they lose a password that I'd never be able to help them. and they might as well delete the crap. What they want is only encryption that magically works and never keeps them out of crap even with forgetting passwords and such.

What I'm actually thinking about is your average smart phone and the various passwords to get into the damn thing. For your average person, they might as well be unbreakable. For any moderately sized modern police agency, they'd have crime scene with tools where they can basically dock any smart phone and trivially get into any of them. It's pretty much required by law for manufactures to make products for law enforcement to get into the devices if they've got physical access.

I tend to shrug it off now. Cops don't have magic technopathy powers and can just glance into your smart phones and read stuff. They've got to actually take it and usually drop it off to the crime scene tech who spends the time to do that. They only really do that if they actually care about what might be on it though. You are still protected by the same laws that you've always been protected by though. They've got rules that they've got to follow and than there the time effort equation as well. Most of slashdot used to complain that it was even possible for the cops to do that. Let's admit it. Now a days long after 9/11, we want our government folks to actually be able to get into crap if they need to.

If the government actually had a decent reason to look closely at you, there ain't anything you'll be able to do to really keep them out of your stuff.

What is this with involving lawyers at a simple decision point?
He should be grown up enough to make his own, educated decision. He is educated, isn't he?

Because most of us would actually like to click or say "no" to tons of this crap, but the only possible way that we'd be allowed to do that is with enough of the right visible back up behind us that the other side is afraid to try to mess with us over the issue.

Let's admit it, 99% of that crap if not illegal should be. We are all mostly at will employees that they don't need excuses to remove. Why do they even need to give us all this crap giving us a slight illusion that we aren't at will employees?

Even if we showed up with a lawyer over all the little BS that they would like to read and sign and they stopped making you sign it, don't you think they'd put you on a short list to be fired for any real valid reason that they could come up with? The real reason is that they like justifications to their boss when they fire you and can't instantly replace you with someone that can be your exact clone in that job slot.

Then whichever one remained would have a captive market and make money hand over fist. Or we could make our own search engine, it's not like they're a particularly sophisiticated technology. Google doesn't even let you search for exact phrases or exclude words anymore, maybe if they pulled out it would leave a gap in the market for a better engine.

You don't get it. It's not that Google would be pulling out of some British internet. It's that Britain would have to put up the great firewall of Britain to keep foreign companies out. Anyone in Britain right now can start a search engine company. Here is also another thought for you. How many of those British sites are hosted internationally? They could be indexed from anywhere in the world. You seem to think that Britain can put up its own fence to keep others out. That works in physical space. It can be made to work on the net, but you've got to put alot of effort into doing or it's just not going to happen. We are talking about kicking companies out of physical space. They'd still have total access to the web space unless Britain screwed up their internet.

The last time a US president's approval rating were as high as Obama's was 100 days into Bush's first term.
Considering how that presidency ended, I'm not sure I'd use that fact as the basis for any pro-Obama argument.

Well, what's Obama had to put up with? Swine Flu? How would you compare that to 9/11, Katrina, and Wall Street going under? I'm reserving all judgment on him until after he is out of office and that we've seen what kinda of real chaos that he can handle. So far he hasn't been stressed. If in 4 years nothing major pops up, he will get another.

I'd find it sad that he'd be labeled a great president just because nothing majorly unexpected happened in 8 years that he had to take care of. Bush would have been labeled an o.k. to good president if nothing unexpected had popped up.

This is why international corporations are packing up and moving operations to countries with less regulation and less taxation, and given that with anything that is internet based, you can run it from ANYWHERE, what the UK is doing is encouraging Google to remove any operation from their soil and to lose what revenue they get from them. And I wouldn't blame them for it.

Businesses do not exist to funnel money into politicians coffers, they exist to make money.

Actually, I was wondering about this myself. I've no idea of Google's UK assets, but let's say that they don't have any, and the UK decides to throw out random search engine taxes and tries to leach money from Yahoo, Google, and MS. If those companies just decided not to play ball and stay in other countries will doing business as usual, what the heck could the UK do?

O.k. it would get harder if the UK pushes the entire EU to take up the same sort of tax as well, but that's the worst that I see them doing.

It also overstates immigration figures, and employs Richard Littlejohn, who is a cunt.It also overstates immigration figures, and employs Richard Littlejohn, who is a cunt.

I've never heard of this person before, but after reading this single sentence, I've mentally modded your post troll and moved on. I'm sorry, but you had a great post until you put in that level of name calling.

This actually sounds like a decent idea. I mean it could be just a little online shrine to the person with a short bio, and maybe some genealogy stuff in there. If it was tastefully done, it could be o.k. The big thing on this though is setting up something like this in advance of your life or you'd have to depend on others to set up something that you may not think is tasteful.

I'm not big on to the whole on line social life, but I wouldn't mind something like this for friends and family to click on once a year to just remember that person. For a second, I thought that it would be nice if you wanted to set reminders or such so that it would e-mail you just so you wouldn't forget, but that's actually kinda of creepy. O.k. They could also do targeted ads like grave side flowers or such.

I think that's actually a silly custom. Now donating to the deceased favorite charity would be a better form of remembrance. Hey they could provide that kinda of service as well.

To the Catsouras family, I am deeply sorry for your loss, but your score to settle is not with the nebulous force of users that are the internet but with the Orange County Police Department.

I'd say that you are slightly wrong. They are with both. They should report to the Orange County Police Department for every single time some one sends them one of these.

In my opinion, it would be more heroic of you not to spend a second mortgage suing your police department but instead using that money to create awareness of hazardous driving, starting a college fund in her name, donating that money to charity in her name or doing something less destructive with it in her name.

That's not a real human reaction though. It isn't the fact that their daughter died that is the matter. It isn't the matter that the PD took the usual crime scene photos. The issues is that instead of spam, they are getting sent these crime scene photos constantly sent to their e-mail! I'd be fairly sure that those responsible were disciplined or maybe even sacked. That would have been a fine reaction if the images never were sent to the family or friends of the girl. It would be like some one posting links to the images here in this thread. That's just completely unacceptable behavior. The police and the random internet users are at fault.

Finding out the details of the girl and the accident doesn't make me too thrilled, but normally news outlets and such would report something like this in a few paragraphs with a decent picture of the deceased and folks would grieve and go on. How the heck can they grieve or go on if every time they check their e-mail some folks are sending them not just reminders of their daughter, but the most terrible pics that a parent could imagine for their child.

I'm sure these folks are hurting and are going to be lashing out. That's what every law with a some one's name in front of is really about, some one just lashing out. I think that everyone that sent her these imagines needs a $500 dollar fine and/or a week/month in jail.

How would you feel if I sent you terribly dismembered pics of you kid? You'd be upset, angry and want to hurt me in some form or fashion. You'd also want it to stop and to make a way or process so that others can't do the same thing. I understand exactly where these parents are coming from. They won't quiet until they've run out of resources. They won't run out of hurt until long after folks stop sending this stuff. Heck, it could have happened last week or a decade a go, but receiving that stuff in your mail would be just as painful!

A corporation that exists to make profit will use any means available to make those profits. If lobbying and back-room deals pay better than R&D, then that's where the corporation will put its efforts.

I don't like that any more than you, but we have to face the facts: that's how it works.

Why pay billions in R&D when you can spend maybe a few million over several years lobbying and get better results? Damn, I can't even complain about it after thinking about it like that. I mean it's the cheap easy course for large companies to try if they can. Heck, most of them are already paying lobbyist for something anyway. It's jut that its far cheaper to do that than actually develop any thing "new."

devil's advocate mode = ON

The thing is these are unauthorized users, the folks responsible for the satellites should treat all unauthorized use access as enemy agent access unless it is verified that it isn't.

How is it unauthorized if you shoot a pile of hardware into orbit where there is no real "ownership"? If these "folks responsible" can't (or won't) protect and secure it, tough shit.

O.k. if they aren't bothering to secure their stuff at all, it's their own fault. Now, if it was me, I'd aim one of those super secret death lasers at 'em and be done with the problem. Oh, it's a good thing we don't have any of them... we'd find out that's totally unsecured as well. Actually, it sounded like they were using legal methods to go after the folks that they IDed as hacking into their orbiting piece of hardware. So o.k. they may not have secured it IT wise, but they've successfully used the legal system to some what secure it against only those shown to be hacking into it. Let's be honest, the only secured most folks would consider is if it had physical or energy beams shooting back for unauthorized access.

The thing is supposed to be a military piece of hardware. I'd think that they'd have those things very locked down. Anything incoming from unauthorized users here would be physically traced back as an exercise. You know one day enemy troops would be doing this. You might as well get your side used to IDing and removing unauthorized users. O.k. I'm assuming basic abilities to trace back and ID IT threats to the military. I may be overestimating their admins.

When will people learn that you go to college to prepare for life, not just a job or career. You go to learn how to be self sufficient, to go to bed so you're not dead for classes, to show up, and generally learn to be an adult. College is an environment where a lot of people fail at that at first, but most, by the time they graduate, are capable of living on their own and holding some sort of job. College isn't just basic engineering or english or math, its basic life. If their parents can afford it, kids need to be out on their own in a forgiving environment like a dorm or college community where they do their own laundry and feed themselves.

Um, O.k. I made it through college with a BS in CS. Now, let me tell you a secret about all those friends of mine that didn't bother or dropped out of college instead. Here it's a little secret that you may not know. They all have jobs, pay rent or a mortgage, have the same bills that I do, and usually a bit more just due to be being at their place of employment longer.

You'll be highly upset about this next secret. I had a few friends go this other route. It's called the military. That environment is more physically demanding only at first. After boot camp, it stops being physically challenging and becomes as demanding as college does now on the mental level while teaching all these other life skills.

There are many times that I think our entire educational out look is messed up. It should be about teaching those kids, how to clean their homes, shop for the best products, buy food and cook or pick the best deals in fast food, how to manage rent/mortgage and other bills. All these "life skills" that you think college is for should be taught in elementary school.

Systems like the PS3 and Xbox360 have learned from this but it is arguable that soon (if not already) that will be cracked and emulated. The military should take note of this battle as now that communication with satellites has become cheap, they are facing the same cat and mouse game. So they have two options: either attempt to crush it politically (like Brazil's Operation Satellite) or live with it and prepare mitigation plan.

Um, the point of military secured communications satellites are to provide only your side communication. You don't want to provide your enemies communications. Now, allies and neutrals are an entire another question. The thing is these are unauthorized users, the folks responsible for the satellites should treat all unauthorized use access as enemy agent access unless it is verified that it isn't.

If they've got enough info on these users, and can just have the allied/neutral government lock 'em up, that's fine for today. If we are ever at war with that currently allied/neutral country, what makes you think that those individuals wouldn't suddenly be used to hack our satellites? The way that we should be trying to deal with this is to lock them out of satellites. Yes, it's a hard and constantly changing task, but that's just part of the project.

Probably the same as a 'no burn' policy put in place in most forests a century ago. Eventually the dry stuff builds up to the point where when it does catch fire, you're fucked.

Imagine a hurricane formed with the energy from 5-10 damped out storms.

Oh, you are underestimating things. Imagine it "working" for 5-10 years or decades and then all the sudden new hurricanes are 50-100 times more powerful for a few years.

I suppose. Really though I was just shocked that 11% of IT managers stated they "hate the Earth" as their reason for not powering down...

Actually, I'd think it would be much higher than that as well. Are you sure it wasn't only 11% that didn't hate the Earth?

I write this comment and still think it was absolutely retarded, but those poor bastards that were actually doing the work couldn't do 'the right thing' because it would only screw them within a couple of years because managers and politicians up stream are so broken and stupid that they reward wastefulness and punish efficiency.

You act like this happens only with the government. It happens every where. I saw it tons in school. You'd have teachers bitch about not having enough salary 24x7, but as soon as they had any money; they'd spend it on weird stupid stuff. Just so they might have the same amount budgeted for next year. In college you had department secretaries with awesome 2-3 gigs of RAM back in 96-98 because that was about the only place they could come up with to half way usefully throw money at.

Small businesses are fairly efficient if they aren't part of a chain. Chains can be efficient if they are left to live and die on their own. Some chains can subsidize entire stores. They are different though because any given store can't be wasting more than all the other stores. If an entire area wastes money, you'd get some one coming in from higher to fix things.

It's large business, education and government where this spend all the budget or you won't get it for next year really comes in though.