Ravenstoke, Alaska is a town where the men currently outnumber the women ten to one. In order to rectify the situation it adopts a bold new strategy to attract women to their town.
It works out rather well for them.
Tags: humour
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Month: June 2005
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Curious email
Bizarre email I received today which was sent to the email address I use for correspondence on National Identity cards.
Perhaps you already know, we help companies “Go Public.” The President of our company is a securities and corporate lawyer.
Please visit our site to receive information regarding how any company can go public. We have several research reports available on this subject.
If you are aware of a company that may be suitable for this please let us know. We are happy for you to be amply rewarded for your help.
The Benefits of being a public company are many. It is a valuable and powerful tool in achieving your goals.
If you would like to learn more about “Going Public” please visit our site. You can also email us at [email protected] for the quickest response as opposed to pressing reply.
Sincerely,
Shaun Anthony
http://www.tcigp.com
It seems like Spam or perhaps a phishing attack but having visited their site it isn’t I think either of those. Quite odd indeed.
Tags: ID cards
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It ain’t just a piece of plastic
One of the greatest reasons for my opposition to the National ID card, aside from the fact that I think it technically flawed and incapable of fulfilling any of it’s major objectives, is not the card but the National Identity Register.
The BBC News has the list of the 49 different pieces of data that will be stored. The most worrying being the final three.
Records of provision of information
* particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual’s entry has been provided to a person
* particulars of every person to whom such information has been provided on such an occasion
* other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.
That is for every time your identity is verified against the data in the register a record will be made of when and where and any other pertinent information of that process.
With the increasing likelihood of people being requested for proof of ID by many organisations and companies this record will soon become a trail of your life. Where and when you rent videos or borrow a book from a library, when you go to the doctor or dentist, when you leave the country to go on holiday.
Tags: ID cards
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Greatest American, Ronald Reagan?
You gotta be fricking kidding me.
Yahoo News: America Names Ronald Reagan Their Greatest American
America has chosen Ronald Reagan as its greatest American. Throughout Discovery Channel’s GREATEST AMERICAN campaign, more than three million votes were cast via aol.com/greatestamerican, text and toll-free numbers to name the person who America thinks most influenced the way we think, work and live.
When voting closed at 9:10 (ET) during the series’ live finale, Ronald Reagan was named the winner with Abraham Lincoln running a close second.
His son, Ron Jr, hinted that his father’s recent death may have helped swing the vote, I think that’s probably correct. Whatever you personal views about Reagan he did have a considerable effect on the US and the world but was his contribution to America greater than that of Lincoln or Washington.
I think this BBC survey from a couple of years ago is much more to my taste.
Tags: politics
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Hapland redux
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Password security
Write Down Your Password
Microsoft’s Jesper Johansson urged people to write down their passwords.
This is good advice, and I’ve been saying it for years.
Simply, people can no longer remember passwords good enough to reliably defend against dictionary attacks, and are much more secure if they choose a password too complicated to remember and then write it down. We’re all good at securing small pieces of paper. I recommend that people write their passwords down on a small piece of paper, and keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper (i.e. their money) in their wallet.
In related news the BBC reports on a survey carried out by IT security firm Cyber-Ark that reveals that major companies’ computer passwords are ‘up for grabs’.
Half of IT managers employed by large-sized companies believe it would be relatively easy to gain the core passwords for their computer systems.
I disagree with the tone of the story which suggests that physically securing paper copies of core passwords in a safe or locked filing cabinet is less secure than digitally securing them.
Cyber-Ark would appear I believe to be biased as they offer technologies to digitally secure passwords and manage identities. I think as long as the company had a security policy that was followed in regard to access to any safe that contained core passwords this would be as secure as needed.
Tags: computer security, security
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UK Government to sell your ID
A report in today’s issue of the Independent on Sunday by Francis Elliott, Andy McSmith and Sophie Goodchild reveals that Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash
Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this week.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an initial cost of £750 each.
This seems to be a desperate move by the Government to ensure that they regain the public support for the scheme as the expected cost has continued to rise the support has decreased.
In seeking to offset the cost by selling off information they hope to gain the public’s support again. Of course if they follow through with this proposal they not only will have rescinded on their pledge that “unlike electoral registers, the National Identity Register will not be open for any general access or inspection” but will compromise the security of the National Identity Register.
The greater the access to the Register there is the more likely that the information will make it into the hands of criminals or terrorists therefore increasing the likelihood of identity theft that the Identity Card scheme is designed to prevent.
The National Identity card bill will be going before parliament yet again this coming Tuesday. Government whips are confident of winning Tuesday’s vote, but opponents are predicting that the process can be killed off before implementation due to the ever-rising costs and the now apparent risks of database breach or failure.
EDIT: Thanks to Murky.org I’ve discovered some additional links of possible interest.
ID cards: a child’s view, even a child can see how flawed the scheme is.
In today’s Sunday Times we discover that costs may force ID cards to be cheap ‘chip and pin’, thus doing away with the biometric system that although imperfect and flawed in many ways would be a much more secure system for verifying that the card was held by the true cardholder. Ironically one of the primary motives for the proposed card in the first place was that the US was insisting on taking biometric data on all visitors to their country.
It really does seem that the government wishes to install an ID card system by any means possible even if those means totally undermine the security of the system and make the ID card utterly unable to fulfil any of the objectives it’s introduction is meant to.
Edit: 28/06/2005
The Home Office has denied a report the personal details of millions of Britons could be sold to help pay for the introduction of identity cards in this BBC report ID card database ‘not for sale’.
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A lost art reforged
In these times of increased werewolf activity it is a good thing that the dying art of forging silver bullets has been given life again.
Actually, not many people ever made silver bullets. It’s a difficult process, and their efficacy against werewolves has never been scientifically proven.
Scientifically proven or not I believe that the growing threat of Werewolves must be addressed somehow and I’m putting my trust in silver bullets. [via]
Please note that the above post is not a thinly veiled allegory where the threat of Werewolves can be be replaced with the threat of Copyright infringement and the term silver bullet can be replaced by DRM. I believe that DRM technologies have even less efficacy against copyright infringement than silver bullets do against Werewolves.
Tags: copyright, DRM, werewolves
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Cinema tales: Old lady lies
More of those damn OAPs blighting my life. 😀
One old lady who was slowly making her way past the cinema on her Zimmerframe saw me standing by the door and told me that she didn’t like modern films and hadn’t been to the cinema since Rudolph Valentino.
Lying so-and-so. I suppose it’s possible as she was a very old lady but as he died in 1926 I think it is highly unlikely.
Perhaps it was his untimely death that caused her to stop going to the cinema as he was mourned by a great deal of people. Over 80 000 mourners turned out for his funeral and Hollywood legend relates the story that thousands of women lined the streets, causing riots. Several of his fans were even said to have committed suicide.
Tags: cinema
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