Monthly Archives: October 2008

ID card staff lose security passes

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Not only does the UK seem to have an uncanny way of losing their huge centralised databases unencrypted, they also have a hand in losing the physical cards the data is supposed to go on. Which means that it won’t be a problem to fake ID’s in the UK, no matter what biometrics and clever IT jiggery they put on them: not only do you have access to the original database data, you also have no need to forge anything as you have the physical backup as well!

Daily Express | UK News :: ID card staff lose security passes

Designer feet!

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This is the new trend in cosmetic surgery: getting your feet done! Apparently your feet are incredibly sensitive, so this is an intense and painful procedure which could result in not being able to walk for months.
What do you get in return?
– shorter / longer toes
– the toe cascade (the curve your toes make) is “improved”
– getting rid of bunions
– straightening out your toes
– getting rid (maybe) of cankles (when your calf appears to go down all the way to your ankle)
– making your feet more slender (this is a major operation!)
– filling out the pads of your feet with botox so you don’t feel the pain of wearing shoes that are way too small for you

Of course, the crooked toes and bunions are created by systematically wearing shoes that are way too small and only wearing high heels.

I think this is a great thing as, yup, I’m a fan of attractive feet, but seriously, it would be much much better if you just wore a variety of shoes which actually fit your feet and you’d never need these operations in the first place!

Second Solar spaceship

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The Second Solar spaceship, designed by Different Futures and constructed for the Sensapolis fun park earlier this year, is a three-level, 850 sq m interactive replica of a real shuttle, albeit one better suited to exploration of the cognitive rather than the galactic variety.

The interior of the installation, which includes a 3-D cinema, a laboratory, a warp-core, a medical centre and an alien breeding ground, was designed by Clostermann Design in conjunction with Kohlbecker Architekten.

Total awesomeness.

Jaqui Smith wants all your base

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The UK Home Secretary has turned into a full on foaming at the mouth lunatic. After Lords shot down her attempt to be able to keep prisoners in custody for unreal periods of time without any reason or cause, here comes her 2008 data communications act, in which she wants to be able to keep all records of all communications (telephone, email, browsing, mobile phone, text messaging – EVERYTHING) in a centralised government database. Where we know, from the UK government’s past efforts at keeping databases, the data will be kept safe. If by kept safe you mean lost on an unencrypted USB storage device. And where, of course, the data won’t be used for unlawfull purposes. Such as following around ‘political dissidents’. Or sold to third parties, like BT / Phorm.

UK MoD determined to give away all it’s base

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Unbelievably, after losing data on all current and ex- RAFpersonell plus dependents (and yes, that includes financial and bank account as well as personal data: NB. the numbers range from 5,000 to 50,000 to everyone depending on what you read) from a cupboard in a deserted (and minimally guarded by the army) airbase at Innsworth on unencrypted USB drives on 27/9

El Reg

(a href=”http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/uk/news/article_1433386.php/Theft_from_air_base_latest_data_loss_in_Britain_”>M&C

The MoD has now lost data for 600,000 or 100,000 (depending on who you believe) military personell, or half the armed forces. They were stolen from defence contractor EDS (why the fuck did EDS have this data in the first damn place?!) on… yup… an unencrypted USB disk.

Daily Express

Yahoo

Now, wouldn’t you have thought since losing all these other centralised databases this year, they would have learned to at least put some encryption on these disks? It’s easy to do and you can even get good, solid encryption for FREE!

Centralised databases used to track dissidents

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Terrorism tracking databases are now being used in the US to track people with political leanings that the police, well, just don’t like. Such as opposing the death penalty, for example. 53 nonviolent dissidents have been found to have been inserted deliberately into the terrorist tracking databases. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And where is your ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’ argument now?

router firmwares

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If you have a crappy old router there are open source ways to upgrade them using alternative firmwares:

There’s Tomato for Linksys’ WRT54G/GL/GS, Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54 and other Broadcom-based routers.

It features a new easy to use GUI, a new bandwidth usage monitor, more advanced QOS and access restrictions, enables new wireless features such as WDS and wireless client modes, raises the limits on maximum connections for P2P, allows you to run your custom scripts or telnet/ssh in and do all sorts of things like re-program the SES/AOSS button, adds wireless site survey to see your wifi neighbors, and more.

Then there’s dd-wrt based on the Linksys software but since completely rebuilt.

Among other features not found in the original Linksys firmware, DD-WRT adds the Kai Daemon for the Kai Console Gaming network, WDS wireless bridging/repeating protocol, Radius Authentication for more secure wireless communication, advanced Quality of Service controls for bandwidth allocation, and software support for the SD-Card hardware modification.