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From: Rowland McDonnell on 2 Feb 2010 14:58 Geoff Berrow <blthecat(a)ckdog.co.uk> wrote: > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > > >> Do make sure you have that tinfoil the right way round, ok? > > > >AH, a plain ungarnished gratuitious insult. > > What do you expect if you run around telling everyone the sky is > falling? > > Be reasonable and I might take you seriously. I see - so you deal with the fact that I've objected to you insulting me by coming back with more grossly insulting put-downs. Fair enough - you're rude, intolerant, and intolerable. Now I know. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 2 Feb 2010 14:58 Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > James Taylor <usenet(a)oakseed.demon.co.uk.invalid> wrote: > > > I'd heard there were people who didn't give a damn about being tracked, > > identified, and profiled, but I had no idea they really existed. Do you > > not accept that a certain amount of privacy is necessary for freedom of > > thought and thus required for a healthy democracy? > > No. Anything is theoretically possible of course, but the risk involved > here is vanishingly small. The risk is unassessed by you. What makes you think that you're in a position to make any such assessment? Seems to me that you're just making a complacent assumption. My assumption is that I don't know what the risks are, but if the risks do happen to be bad, then there is a chance of catastrophe. But of course, any time one speculates about the risk of a catastrophe without firm proof it's certainly going to happen and nothing can stop it; why then, one is derided as a tin-foil-hat wearing paranoid maniac. > I know that there are people who worry a lot > about this kind of thing, but I think they're wasting time. You're silly if that's what you think. Read about Oedipus, the GCHQ computer. It was a bit special: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8490464.stm> Its database searching performance was unmatched by commercial computers until the 1990s - and yet they replaced the thing with something better in 1962. What do you think about their current likely abilities, eh? The point is that they can get so much information on you that the concept of privacy is *already* dead. It died years ago - I suspect it died during the 1980s in the UK. I'm worried - but not overly worried, because privacy is dead and that's that: no use crying over spilt milk. Society's got to catch up, that's all - but it's not the end of what little liberty we've been permitted during my lifetime. That's not how things go. > > You don't really want > > to walk blindly into a police state (oh, that's a bad example because > > the UK is already there) into a Big Brother society do you? > > That's a ridiculous statement. Have you ever been to or worked in a > genuine tyranny? If you think that's what der DDR was, I have. In the 1980s, it was just as shabby as Britain had been a decade before - but the shops weren't as well stocked. The GDR/DDR was the most oppressive Soviet-aligned European state. It wasn't all that bad - even with what I've found out since about the Stasi, it wasn't all that bad. Most people got by perfectly okay despite all the snooping and awful oppression. > If you think that Britain is now a Big Brother state, > then I can't believe that it's possible to have a rational discussion. A Big Brother state is one where the state keeps an eye on the population *all the time*. Our government does indeed do that. Your interenet useage is logged, your car journeys are tracked and logged - all by government agencies, as admitted by the government. What's the betting odds that the government has a link up with the banks and whatnot to keep an eye on what you're doing with your money too? I'd bet on it - and I'd not expect to get good odds at all. As I mentioned elsewhere, New Labour is `fascism with the hatred taken out'. I should have mentioned that most of the nasty oppression has been removed. But scratch under the surface, and you'll see the real thing. Of course it's nothing like an old fashioned oppressive dictatorship. That way of doing things is stupid. Much better off doing it the New Labour way - bribe the population with a high standard of living, with ready access to credit to buy plentiful cheap consumer goodies. Etc. Model your world on Huxley's warning, not Orwell's - that's what Bliar and Broon did. They gave us an oppressive Big-Brother-snooping state all right, but one more like that in Brave New World, not 1984. So it's shiny new housing to replace the old stuff we jsut *had* to demolish, and snazzy new fancy drinks every weekend out in your fancy new togs, which you bought because the fashion changed and you can't not keep up with the latest fashion, can you now? We've not got the crumbling tenemants and Victory gin world - we got the shinier one. But with BB snooping, if not apparent in other ways. Brave New World described just as much an oppressive tyranny as that in 1984. Or have you forgotten? Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Geoff Berrow on 2 Feb 2010 19:03 On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 19:32:59 +0000, peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk (Peter Ceresole) wrote: >James Taylor <usenet(a)oakseed.demon.co.uk.invalid> wrote: > >> I'd heard there were people who didn't give a damn about being tracked, >> identified, and profiled, but I had no idea they really existed. Do you >> not accept that a certain amount of privacy is necessary for freedom of >> thought and thus required for a healthy democracy? > >No. Anything is theoretically possible of course, but the risk involved >here is vanishingly small. I know that there are people who worry a lot >about this kind of thing, but I think they're wasting time. I'm glad to see you're as level headed as ever Peter. Hello again by the way, it's been a long time. -- Geoff Berrow (Put thecat out to email) It's only Usenet, no one dies. My opinions, not the committee's, mine. Simple RFDs www.4theweb.co.uk/rfdmaker
From: James Taylor on 2 Feb 2010 21:55 Rowland McDonnell wrote: > James Taylor wrote: > >> You don't really want to walk blindly into a police state (oh, >> that's a bad example because the UK is already there) into a Big >> Brother society do you? > > We *HAVE* a Big Brother state. [...] > It's a police state when the cops run things. > > They don't. Ok, I see that distinction. I was using the terms inaccurately. -- James Taylor
From: James Taylor on 2 Feb 2010 22:04
Rowland McDonnell wrote: > Jack Campin wrote: > >> I've no idea what sort of data Flash cookies encode, anybody know? >> I'd bet a police forensics team could call on somebody who does. > > I'd bet that the /typical/ police investigation team would not know that > there's anything to find out in that direction. I think they have a department of specialists for that, so the "typical" investigation team just boxes up any seized computers, sends them off, and waits for the results. You can be pretty confident that a police forensic team will have automated tools for listing browsing history, HTTP cookies, Flash cookies, bookmarks, stored passwords, etc. -- James Taylor |