I wonder why successive governments seem to want to put themselves into this particular firing line. It's as if Obama periodically gets a call from the NSA saying "Hey, go call the limeys and make sure they're doing as we asked". Us Brits then have to "look busy" but then get these things defeated by a small margin so that we can say "we tried really, really hard".

... and if you're using a Fortinet, think very carefully about blocking the "unrated" (aka. uncategorised) 'category'. Doing so means practically half the Internet is unavailable, and franky, I'm bored of having to ask to have things categorised. If I access them and they're not categorised, then get them categorised - they shouldn't have to wait for me to fill out a boring captcha form every bloody time.

I got a Microsoft Certified Professional about 20 years ago. I passed it after 4 days of training and tests, having only every really done a bit of desktop stuff along the way (in my unix jobs) before that. The actual Windows admins on the course all failed it first time around. Why? because the test required you do it "the microsoft way", and not the way that literally every admin in the world does it. As I had no idea what that was, I just recalled what they'd just told me the day before rather than using any sort of experience.

I also sat the Checkpoint exams around the same time (having done some pretty crazy weird setups for various complicated customer requirements). I failed the 'basic' and passed the 'advanced' (and so failed the qualification). That fact that's even possible reminded me that there's really no value in these sorts of exams. I never bothered even asking if I could take a re-sit.

Vendor certifications are really a measure of how well you can regurgitate the kool-aid.

You can use the same ball bearings to pad out the explosive for maximum shrapnel*. You can't do that with mercury ;-)

* Learned that by watching "Homeland". The list of stuff we should be banning just gets longer and longer!

Their CQ (now AEM) website CMS product also has more holes than a sieve. When they produce 'security packs', they refuse to tell you what areas they touch with it "for your security". In other words, they just give you a binary blob that may, or may not, break random aspects of your application but don't tell you what areas to test. Funnily enough, this isn't something Gartner bothered to look into before they took the money to put CQ into the 'magic quadrant'.

It's not so much they can't write code, its that they can't manage themselves in any meaningful way. Anyone buying Adobe products for anything important needs their head examining.

indeed. All that's really happened is that Apple fans have missed out on Flash's 'killer app': http://www.misternicehands.com...

I would say many things about him (some complimentary, even), but being 'in the open source community' isn't something I'd say about Bill gates.

first you get a whole lot of very confused sysadmins during an outage ;-)

The thing I'd worry about is that they'll make him 'nice'. He's supposed to be the kind of guy that shoots first and the kind of guy that only an ex-jedi could sufficiently second-guess to trust. I'll bet they'll make him into someone who's basically a good guy that occasionally slips up with the odd victimless crime (but only because he's desperate).

If he doesn't have to hose out the blood of the previous owners of the millennium falcon at least once in the film, it ain't worth watching ;-)

oh let me see now... because programming a 'real' computer is quite an abstract experience, or else a pointless one. Programming something with lights and buttons is far more immediate, and has a smaller learning curve. Kids up and down the UK will soon be writing scrolling messages to each other with this, where none of them did any sort of programming before.

This isn't a game-changer by any means, but it's a nice toy that will (hopefully) help a few kids realise that programming isn't all that hard, so long as you think about things in the right way. Maybe those same kids will want to go into tech jobs, or maybe they won't, but this little gadget looks like they'll have some fun at the very least.

How about "the ease of distribution of Slackware 2.1" (ie. came on 73 floppy disks you had to download each one via FTP over ~64K lines) ?

My main bank account was set up online. I didn't just pull down "Mr." from the list of titles - I picked one of the others. Now, any time they call me, I ask them "Can you tell me my title, please?". Often it's met with some confusion, but at least it offers a modicum of assurance they really are $BANK. Every once in a while they call from one of their published phone numbers, which adds another layer of assurance, I guess.

They once called me to verify a transaction. For whatever reason, they felt the need to ask me countless security questions - after a few, I just said "Okay, please send me a secure message on the website with your phone number, and we'll continue this conversation there". Again, much confusion, but it all happened.

I'm not saying this is "secure", but forcing someone to send you a message on a website is a whole lot more difficult than having them just war-dial you and try their luck. I reckon I weeded out 99% of the 'bad guys' that time. GCHQ/MI5/MI6/NSA/CIA etc probably would have defeated me, but maybe not in the time it took them to do it.

I'm inclined to agree, however, sometimes those blunders can be helpful. Not so long ago, Obama was talking about some sort of military deployment into Syria. For such things, it's generally considered that us Brits will go along with whatever the yanks want, so we'd have had to go too (just like Iraq, which wasn't even legal).

Cameron put forth a motion, which needed a vote. However, he did it with such a short time scale (because he's "eager to help"), that he was defeated and thus, the UK could not participate in the Syria plans.

We can argue about whether the US/UK should or should have not gone into Syria at that time. Had it happened though, it would have been another illegal war with undefined objectives, and a huge expense for the UK (which was very contra the 'austerity' of the time). As such, keeping out of it seems like a wise thing to have done. Of course, it wasn't followed with a proper, UN based plan or anything which is arguably why Syria is in the shit state it is now, but that's another problem.

As for this one though - it's pretty obvious he's been leant on by the Americans again. If it gets through, then the NSA gets a whole new avenue of data collection, and if it doesn't, then the NSA/Obama/etc don't lose any political capital in the attempt. I suspect the latter as it's unworkable. For example, I'll make sure my servers all talk gibberish to each other constantly, should any laws against encryption be passed. Who's to know if it's data or cyphertext?

Duh! because they're supposed to be upholding national security, fighting terrorism etc. An NGO such as Amnesty is no threat to national security, is not a terrorist organisation, and is not a terrorist sympathiser. Thus, it should be entirely off-limits to these government organisations.

Just like most citizens should be off-limits too - except none of us are - we're all on the "watch list" which runs a regular 'grep' of our online lives just to make sure we didn't do something we shouldn't. If we google the 'anarchists handbook' or whatever, then we get onto the next level up in the watchlist, and so it goes on until we reach the heady heights of "suspected terrorist" when miraculously, GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 suddenly decide to look the other way while we go ahead and bomb a city, chop up a soldier or shoot some sunbathers.

Venus has an excess of women, and Mars has an excess of men. Or so a book I once read seemed to make out.