Whilst reading over the comments to the video of some robotic, brainwashed OWS chanters trying to disrupt a Ron Paul speech, I noticed something that seemed vaguely familiar; a comment, which in content and form looked like many other comments I have been coming across that try and discredit Ron Paul by misrepresenting his ideas.
Unfortunately for the people who are doing this, Google can help us find out if they are an organized group or not.
Here is the root comment that looked suspiciously like many comments that I have read, from Raw Story:
You can find your own examples yourself. There are quite a few out there, with slightly different wording and in different contexts. A cursory search indicates that there might be a small group of people who are behind these comments. I don’t have time to research who they are with any precision. But we can do an analysis of what they are up to.
This activity is called ‘Glove Puppetry’ or more commonly Sock Puppetry.
Groups of people with an agenda to change the tone or direction of an online discussion, for money or the lulz, take on positions that are different to (opposition for money) the polar opposite of (opposition for lulz) the dominant group in a thread or stream of comments, to manipulate them, troll them and destroy any chance of a reasoned linear discussion.
Sock puppetry is also being done by the State, to try and influence public opinion. You can read about this practice in these links.
This is a very interesting subject, on many levels. Can Sock Puppetry work in the age of the internets? Google is only a click away from any instance of puppetry, so any lie can be instantly neutralised. Also, a Sock Puppet entering into a nest of people who are thinking in one way (correctly or not) cannot gain traction without being exposed as a troll and voted down where a down arrow is available. Sock Puppets do not believe what they are typing, they are working off of a script. Within one or two replies you can spot a Sock Puppet because their thinking and writing is not coherent. When the script comes to its end, all they have is ad hominem attacks, which means they lose.
We wrote about this as an example of Baudrillard’s ‘Mass’. You should read ‘In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities‘ for some insight into the difficulty of penetrating coherent groups of people who are thinking in one way, though in this case the fit is not exact.
In the meantime, now that you have these two examples, you know the format of the current organised poison trolling that is taking place wherever a Ron Paul discussion or stream of comments is in progress. I will leave it to you to find your own examples, and to discover who the source of these troll / Sock Puppet posts is.
Hopefully, if enough people find out about these Sock Puppets, their effect will be neutralised. Its good to refute the bad arguments of people who are misguided, but wasting time on Sock Puppets is not a good use of time.
Did you know that you cannot buy a SIM card in France without presenting State ID? Appalling!
It seems to me that they need to have a little Stonor Saunders injected into their ‘debate’, and Google Translate is more than happy to oblige:
+++++++
Cela a été envoyé à moi.
Ceci a été écrit à l’origine par STONOR SAUNDERS Frances.
Frances Saunders est l’ancien rédacteur en chef des arts du New Statesman, auteur de La Guerre froide culturelle, Diabolical Anglais et Le Diable Courtier et a été attribué William la Royal Historical Society de Gladstone Prix?commémoratif. Elle vit à Londres. Il vaut bien lire et si vous souhaitez, s’il vous plaît le transmettre à autant de personnes que vous le pouvez.
«Vous avez entendu ce que la législation créant cartes d’identité obligatoires franchi une étape cruciale dans la Chambre des communes. Vous pouvez penser que ID cartes ne sont pas de quoi s’inquiéter, puisque nous avons déjà de photos d’identité pour nos passeports et permis de conduire et une carte d’identité ne sera pas différente de que. Qu’est-ce que vous n’avez pas été dit est la pleine portée de cette identité proposée Carte, et ce qu’il signifie pour vous personnellement.
La carte d’identité proposée sera différente de n’importe quelle carte que vous tenez. Il sera être connecté à une base de données appelée le RIN, (National Identity Register), où toutes vos données personnelles seront stockées. Il s’agira notamment de numéro unique qui sera émis pour vous, vos empreintes digitales, un scan de la arrière de votre œil, et votre photo. Votre nom, adresse et date de la naissance sera évidemment aussi y être stockées.
Il y aura des espaces sur cette base de données pour votre religion, le statut de résidence, et de nombreux autres faits privés et personnels à votre sujet. Il est illimité espace pour tous les autres détails de votre vie sur la base de données NIR, qui peut être étendu par le gouvernement avec ou sans d’autres actes de Parlement.
En soi, vous pourriez penser que ce registre est inoffensif, mais vous seriez tort de venir à cette conclusion. Cette nouvelle carte sera utilisée pour vérifier votre identité contre votre entrée dans le registre en temps réel, chaque fois que vous le présenter à «prouver qui vous êtes».
Tout lieu que vend de l’alcool ou des cigarettes, chaque bureau de poste, tous les pharmacie, et chaque banque aura un terminal de carte NIR, (tout comme les lecteurs Chip and Pin qui sont partout maintenant) dans lequel votre carte peut être “glissée” pour vérifier votre identité. Chaque fois que cela arrive, un record est faite à la PIR de l’heure et le lieu que la carte a été présentée. Cela signifie par exemple, qu’il y aura un dossier du gouvernement de chaque fois que vous retirez plus de £ 99 à votre succursale de NatWest, qui maintenant ID demande pour ces transactions. Chaque fois que vous avez à prouver que vous sont plus de 18 ans, votre carte sera glissée, et un enregistrement fait à la PIR. Restaurants et licences hors exigeront que votre carte est glissée de telle sorte que chaque reçu indique qu’ils vendaient de l’alcool à quelqu’un de plus de 18, et que cela a été prouvé par l’accès au NIR, les indemnisant à partir
poursuites.
Les entreprises privées vont avoir accès à la base de données NIR. Si vous voulez postuler pour un emploi, vous devrez présenter votre carte d’un coup. Si vous voulez demander une carte Oyster à Londres Underground, ou un la fidélité des supermarchés carte ou un permis de conduire, vous devrez présenter votre Carte d’identité pour un coup. Va de même pour obtenir une ligne téléphonique ou une téléphone mobile ou d’un compte Internet.
Oyster, DVLA, BT, et de Nectar (par exemple) fonctionnent tous de bases de données très détaillée de leurs propres. Ils seront autorisés à accéder au NIR, comme tous les autres entreprise sera. Cela signifie que chacune de ces entités seront en mesure de enregistrer votre numéro unique dans leur base de données, et placer tous vos déplacements, enregistrements téléphoniques, des activités de conduite et les habitudes d’achat détaillée sous votre numéro unique de NIR. Ces bases de données, qui peut facilement s’adapter sur un stockage appareil de la taille de votre main, seront vendus aux tiers légalement ou illégalement. Il sera alors possible pour une entité non-gouvernementales pour créer une dossier détaillé de toutes vos activités. Certes, le gouvernement aura l’accès à tous les clandestins d’entre eux, ce qui signifie qu’ils auront une complète record de tous vos mouvements, de combien et quand vous vous retirez de votre compte bancaire pour les médicaments que vous prenez, jusqu’au niveau de quelle sorte de pain que vous mangez – tous accessibles via un numéro unique dans une base de données centrale.
C’est tout à fait un bond significatif à partir d’une carte d’identité simple qui montre votre nom et le visage.
La plupart des gens ne savent pas que c’est le vrai caractère et la portée des proposé de carte d’identité. Chaque fois que les détails de comment il fonctionnera sont expliquées pour eux, ils changer rapidement d’être ambivalente envers elle.
Le gouvernement va vous obliger à entrer vos coordonnées dans le NIR et de réaliser cette carte. Si vous et vos enfants veulent obtenir ou renouveler votre passeport, vous serez obligé de prendre vos empreintes digitales et vos yeux scannés pour le RIN, et une carte d’identité sera émis pour vous si vous voulez un ou pas. Si vous refusez de prendre ses empreintes digitales et oculaires numérisées, vous ne serez pas en mesure d’obtenir un passeport. Votre carte d’identité sera, juste comme votre passeport, ne pas être votre propriété. Le ministre de l’Intérieur aura le droit de révoquer ou de suspendre votre identité à tout moment, ce qui signifie que vous ne pas être en mesure de retirer de l’argent sur votre compte bancaire, par exemple, ou faire tout ce qui vous oblige à présenter votre carte d’identité émise par le gouvernement.
Les arguments qui ont été mis transmise en faveur des cartes d’identité peuvent être facilement réfutée. Cartes d’identité NE SERA PAS arrêter les terroristes; chaque Espagnol a une carte d’identité obligatoire, de même que les Bombers de Madrid, et probablement la plupart des les criminels 9 / 11. Les cartes d’identité ne sera pas «d’éliminer la fraude aux prestations», qui en comparaison, est faible par rapport au coût astronomique de cette proposition, qui seront évalués en milliards selon l’Ecole LSE (Londres des Economics). Ce schéma existe uniquement pour exercer une surveillance totale et contrôle sur le citoyen britannique ordinaire libre, et ce sera remplir les poches des les entreprises qui créeront des systèmes informatiques au détriment de la votre liberté, d’intimité et de l’argent.
Si vous ne saviez pas toute la portée du système de carte d’identité proposée avant et vous sont instables comme je suis à ce que cela signifie vraiment pour vous, à cette pays et son mode de vie, je vous exhorte à l’email ou une photocopie cela et lui donner à vos amis et collègues et tout le monde pense que vous devez savoir et qui se soucie. Le projet de loi a procédé à ce stade en raison de l’absence de renseignements exacts et complets sur cette proposition soient rendues publiques. Ensemble et main dans la main, nous pouvons informer la nation toute entière, si tous ceux qui reçoit ce qu’elle transmet. ”
Ce message n’a rien à voir avec la politique – il est à faire avec notre liberté. Mais ce sont les politiciens qui dans l’ignorance vont voter pour la carte d’identité et donc nous rapprocher de l’Etat de police qui semble être le but de notre actuelle Gouvernement. S’il vous plaît transmettre ce message – et d’utiliser votre prochain vote Élection générale pour se débarrasser des gens qui veulent détruire notre chéri démocratie.
Envoyer le traducteur de cet article, un Bitcoin à cette adresse: 14ScQgQRi2U5o6cdAJNhgyzY6w5UtwmX16
As we have been saying for years, it is impossible to secure any database, and putting the entire population of a country on a database is completely insane. The only thing that is more insane than that is to create a database of all the children in a country, and then to make that database available to over 1,000,000 agents of the state.
We also told you that the information contained in the databases proposed by the State, if compromised, could fit into a device smaller than your hand.
Now you see that once again, we were right about everything.
Some people got into a SONY database, and using a well known exploit, managed to copy the sensitive private details of ONE MILLION PEOPLE. They then posted that information for anyone to download on The Pirate Bay.
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.|________/ \______/ |__/|________/ \______/ \_______/ \_______/
//Laughing at your security since 2011!
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Greetings folks. We're LulzSec, and welcome to Sownage. Enclosed you will
find various collections of data stolen from internal Sony networks and websites,
all of which we accessed easily and without the need for outside support or money.
We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1,000,000 users'
personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses,
dates of birth, and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts.
Among other things, we also compromised all admin details of Sony Pictures
(including passwords) along with 75,000 "music codes" and 3.5 million "music coupons".
Due to a lack of resource on our part (The Lulz Boat needs additional funding!)
we were unable to fully copy all of this information, however we have samples
for you in our files to prove its authenticity. In theory we could have taken
every last bit of information, but it would have taken several more weeks.
Our goal here is not to come across as master hackers, hence what we're about
to reveal: SonyPictures.com was owned by a very simple SQL injection, one of
the most primitive and common vulnerabilities, as we should all know by now.
From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING. Why do you put such faith in
a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?
What's worse is that every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted. Sony stored
over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plaintext, which means it's just
a matter of taking it. This is disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it.
This is an embarrassment to Sony; the SQLi link is provided in our file contents,
and we invite anyone with the balls to check for themselves that what we say
is true. You may even want to plunder those 3.5 million coupons while you can.
Included in our collection are databases from Sony BMG Belgium & Netherlands.
These also contain varied assortments of Sony user and staffer information.
This means that:
the dates of birth
addresses
emails addresses
full names
passwords
user IDs
phone numbers
of SONY’s users are now out in the open FOREVER.
The Coalition is trying to shift the burden of securing the massive databases they are eager to construct on to the credit card vendors, but this will not work to make anything secure, as we have told you before.
You do not need to collect this sort of data to run a government. Governments ran quite efficiently without needing computer databases, and in fact, the very earliest instances where one was used, it was used for a bad purpose.
ID Cards are a bad thing. There is nothing good about them, they are not needed to run anything, they enslave the people who are forced to use them and all plans to implement them should be abandoned permanently.
Databases of people’s private details are always a risky proposition. If you do not need to hold a person’s personal data to do your business, you should delete that data, or give the customer the power to delete her data from your system. When you do store that data, you should expect that it will be copied, and plan from the beginning to hold as little as is necessary, and when you do hold something, make sure that it is stored using best practice methods.
What this breach demonstrates is that databases are very dangerous things. Every time something like this happens, the propositon of creating databases of people becomes less attractive… and that is a very good thing.
If you have been paying attention at all, you will have read about the mass manifestation, the acephalous Anonymous and their successful attacks on MasterCard, Visa and PayPal:
What is interesting about all this is not that the sites of these large organisations have been bumped offline, but the slick consumer grade tools that are being used to do it.
LOIC is an acronym for ‘Low Orbit Ion Cannon’. It is a piece of software that runs on Windows Mac and Linux, and every instance of it presents the user with this simple interface:
It is easy to install and run, and when you run it, the twenty five people who direct the Botnet created by thousands of installations of LOIC can pour traffic onto any website they desire.
What is interesting about this is that LOIC, which does a sophisticated job in an interface that a child can use, is now spreading everywhere because one man, Joe Lieberman, made a public statement attacking Wikileaks, where he claimed that anyone who helped the site could be committing a crime.
Glen Greenwald dispels this lie very efficiently here:
With his single act, Lieberman’s words have had the unintended consequence of spreading the knowledge of how all of this works and LOIC itself into the machines of many tens of thousands of irate, dedicated internet users and the knowledge into the minds of millions of people who previously didn’t know anything about the workings of a Distributed Denial of Service attack. Indeed, I didn’t know what LOIC was until this event took place. So many people are talking about it, Google has a realtime results box on the main results page for the search term.
The perfect storm of this consumer grade DDOS tool, social media, Wikileaks, Joe Lieberman and the cowardice of the online payment systems has spawned a game change in how the internet is going to work in the future.
These tools and the ones that will surely follow, can never be stopped. In a perfect world, where companies like MasterCard, VISA and PayPal work only in the interests of their customers, these tools would not not be used to pop them off of the internet, if they existed at all.
But that is not what is really interesting.
Its clear that there is a problem with the way payment systems on the internet are structured; they are top down in shape, with a single point of failure, forcing two parties that want to transact to use the services of a third party.
This point of failure is a problem if you are like Wikileaks and have your account frozen and your ability to receive and send money stopped. It is a problem if you want to donate to a cause the state would rather see die. Its also a problem if copycat groups styling themselves on Anonymous decides that you are evil and that you should be ‘punished’.
With a single point of failure, both the customers and the companies that run the payment services are at risk of having their business disrupted.
The same is true for DNS; the state is arbitrarily, without warrants, charges or any legal process at all, seizing domain names to shut down access to websites. Clearly DNS and the way it works is a huge problem, especially when we are talking about Wikileaks and the sites like it that will surely follow. There are already plans afoot to create a distributed DNS system; hopefully it will be robust enough to protect everyone and their domains.
As for the question of money, a system like Bitcoin is a possible solution to the problem of companies like MasterCard, PayPal and VISA who do not have the best interests of the customer uppermost in their minds:
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based anonymous digital currency. ”Peer-to-peer” (P2P) means that there is no central authority to issue new money or to keep track of the transactions. Instead, those tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network. ”Anonymity” means that the real world identity of the parties of a transaction can be kept hidden from the public or even from the parties themselves.
This sounds good. In the Bitcoin system, there are a limited number of ‘coins’ the number of which cannot be increased; when the system is twelve years old there will be 21,000,000 coins in circulation:
New coins are generated by a network node each time it finds the solution to a certain calculational problem (i.e. creates a new block), for which an average solution time can be calculated. The difficulty of the problem is adjusted so that in the first 4 years of the Bitcoin network, 10,500,000 coins will be created. The amount is halved each 4 years, so it will be 5,250,000 in years 4-8, 2,625,000 in years 8-12 and so on. Thus the total number of coins will approach 21,000,000 over time.
This is very interesting indeed. It means that there is now a greenback style currency that the state can have no control over, cannot monitor and which people can use to exchange goods. It seems to take the best parts of Chaumian e-Cash, whilst removing the bad parts, i.e. centrally controlled mint in a centrally controlled location, owned by a single corporate entity, constituted under the laws of a state. It does have some serious flaws however, one being that everyone can see your transaction history if they have your address… yikes!
The source for Bitcoin is available, so if you are minded to do it, you can set up your own identical network. Its all very intelligent, and it costs you nothing to try it out. You could even fix its flaws and release an improved version.
This is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be done to solve the problems sketched out above.
Using LOIC to knock websites off the internet doesn’t pass the BLOGDIAL demonstration test; once the act is over, just as in a demonstration, all the problems are still there:
Wikileaks can’t receive donations.
Wikileaks is still having its websites attacked by the state.
The online payment systems still cut anyone off with only a phone call from the state as a reason.
All of this is predictable from the beginning, and so, using LOIC ‘to make a point’ doesn’t make sense in the long run.
It is however, and hopefully, an iteration. Once the futility of DDOSing sites dawns on Anonymous, they might turn to writing pieces of software like Bitcoin, or simply running the Bitcoin client to help the creation and spread of the currency. Or as has just been announced something else.
They might get the millions of people who are following them to contribute financially to the effort to create a distributed DNS. They might even reproduce the work of Operation Clambake where the ‘Sacred Documents’ of Scientology were so extensively mirrored on the internet that if you search for OT3 Operating Thetan you can read it all – which is exactly what the Scientologists do not want.
MasterCard, VISA and PayPal have made a massive long term business error. In their knee jerk response to appease Joe Lieberman, they have awakened millions of people to the fact that their money and access to goods on the internet is not guaranteed if you use their services. They have awakened a software developer somewhere who is going to write the equivalent of ‘Bittorrent for Money’ that will completely eliminate their dominance of the online payments market; remember; credit cards are a 1970’s idea that has been superimposed onto the internet. It is inevitable that this system of cumbersome numbers married to plastic cards is going to be superseded. Bitcoin might be this system, it might not be. It might be one of several replacements. Either way, these new systems are coming now, guaranteed, and there will be nothing that anyone can do to stop it.
Think about this; imagine that Bitcoin is huge, with millions of users. It is running not only on laptops and desktops, but on mobile phones. It is integrated into tens of thousands of websites through its API. Some of those users run exchange services; they sit in Cafes or in dorms or offices, and they will trade ‘street money’ for bitcoins. Social networking brings these parties together to transact. Now there is an interface between the real world and the Bitcoin ecosystem that will be impossible to shut down or even monitor. You might be able to pick off one or two of the people who provide this service, but for all intents and purposes, it will be as impossible to stop this Bitcoin economy as it has been for the state to stop the illicit drug economy in its ridiculous ‘war on drugs’.
Had MasterCard and its like taken a stronger stance against the state, they would not face this inevitable circumstance in the near term, and might have been able to transition to the new styles of online payment; now it is too late – no one trusts them.
Finally on to the subject of boycotting Amazon for kicking Wikileaks off of its hosting service.
Amazon, being the rightful owner of its servers has the absolute right to refuse to serve anyone. The consumer has the absolute right to refrain from using Amazon services for whatever reason.
Think about this; imagine if Amazon was knowingly selling sex slaves or ‘murder to order’ through its service, ‘because it could’. This reprehensible and unambiguously immoral trade would be enough to cause you to boycott them. On the other extreme, because Amazon sells pornographic novels, there are some who would not use them by virtue of that taint.
Somewhere between those two poles is the Wikileaks case.
Wikileaks, by exposing the lies of the mass murdering, thieving and destroying state is a benefit to you directly. Amazon, in the act of kicking them off of their service, without being forced to do so, i.e. voluntarily, is wilfully aiding and abetting the state in its aim of covering up its deception, mass murder and theft. That means that Amazon is working directly against your interests as a human being.
Amazon is not a victim of the state, and I have been thinking about this quite a bit over the last few days; they are a willing participant in covering up the evil of mass murderers. They acted without a court order, national security letter or any other direct attack from the state. Had they received such an attack, they would be victims of an attack, but since no such attack came to them, they are and were not under direct threat.
In this instance, a boycott is justified in my view; these people are directly attacking me and everyone else by arbitrarily deleting the Wikileaks site; and it must be pointed out that they did not delete the site during the previous Wikileaks expose ‘Collateral Murder’.
Once again, if they want to delete Wikileaks, they have the right to do so; its their property. What you cannot claim is that Amazon is a victim, because that simply is not true.
Its been a very interesting week. Whatever the truth is behind Wikileaks, there have been unintended consequences that will change the internet in ways that the state has not factored in to its responses or plans, depending on what you think about the origin of Wikileaks and the people who run it.
The state is not all powerful. They cannot predict what people will do with software, and that is the truly profound game changing factor. LOIC is just the latest in a long line of pieces of software that change the way people think; Napster, Gnutella, Bitorrent, are all predecessors of this trend, Bitcoin is a new one and there are others in the pipeline. One thing is certain; the state cannot keep up with all of the developments, because there are too many people out there developing the tools and using them once they are deployed.
When the next perfect storm of software and a cause comes around the effects will be even more intense and more unstoppable; this is the trend that the state cannot resist. As they clamp down harder, the internet pushes back with an exponentially greater force.
After massive public rejection of the surveillance state, and country wide vandalism of the millions of CCTV cameras in the UK, it was decided to remove all traces of the monitoring apparatus that cast a debilitating fog over life in the UK. Like the fall of East Germany and the STASI, the changes came overnight as the revulsion over the mutated form of British life became universal and ‘went nuclear’.
“We are not going to live like this anymore. Britain has been turned into a prison, and we have had enough”
Parliament has drawn up a list of all ‘database state’ laws going back to the early days of the now discredited Blair government, all of which are to be struck off the books in one fell swoop.
“This has been a long time in coming, but the writing has been on the wall for years; the silent grumbling of the British public has turned into an earthquake of non-violent dissent. Just like the Berlin Wall, the database state has been dismantled one camera at a time in a single day, without any opposition from the police.”
That was an imaginary scenario concocted to paint a picture of how the fall of the Police State would look.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It’s from an old BLOGDIAL post.
BLOGDIAL is great because the people who write on it are:
way ahead of the pack
know their subjects backward
do not mince their words
can synthesise the facts of the present to produce accurate predictions of how the future will look
all have impeccable taste
The BLOGDIAL archives are chock full of gems like the one above, and we keep getting better and better as we hone our understanding and expand our learning.
Unlike others, who believe that writing about Liberty is likely to ‘bore readers’ we understand clearly that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Now is absolutely NOT the time to pack up and go home; in fact, it is time to redouble all efforts to push back our mutual enemies and mush them underfoot for all time.
With all of that trumpet blowing out of the way, the Queens speech has just been read, so lets rip through it.
Many of the items in it are predicated on the idea that the state is legitimate in the first place, which it is not. We can however look at each item from a point of view of wether or not it makes any sense or is good in the short term:
Office for budget responsibility bill. Sets up the OBR to take responsibility for producing budget forecasts, meaning the chancellor – who under the current arrangements is in charge of producing his own forecasts – won’t be able to twist the figures.
This makes sense, because the people in charge of the money of the state should not audit themselves or do anything like that.
National insurance contributions bill. Raises income tax allowances, so that “most people would be better off relative to the previous government’s plan”, funded by a rise in national insurance. Reallocates tax worth around £9bn.
This does not make sense. It is more borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, exactly like the completely immoral Child Credit scheme, which took money from taxpayers to give to children.
You could not refuse this ‘free’ investment money, and your child was given a unique number as an identifier. If you did not respond to the agency running this fiasco, they invested the money for ‘your’ child on its behalf and sent you as the parent or guardian, regular updates by post about how ‘your child’s investment’ was doing. A scandalous, immoral, deeply offensive and irrational misuse of other people’s money, which does not seem to appear in this speech, even though its abolition is promised.
Welfare reform bill. Simplifies the welfare and benefits system, improving work incentives and “removing the confusing complexity of the benefits system”.
We all know about the Welfare Warfare state do we not?
Pensions and savings bill. Implements the findings of the review of the state pension age being conducted by the government. Currently the state pension age will increase to 66 after 2024. The review will propose bringing that forward. The bill will also restore the earnings link from 2012.
This is another Ponzi scheme. The people who pay in today are being remunerated in the future with devalued money, thanks to the fiat pound.
Financial reform bill. Gives the Bank of England control over macro-prudential regulation in the City. Not clear yet what will happen to the fate of the Financial Services Authority.
Equitable Life bill. Pays compensation to savers who lost money when Equitable Life came close to collapse.
Where will the money come from for this? It’s another bailout, as immoral as any other.
Airport economic regulation bill. Promotes competition in the airport market, possibly breaking up the BAA monopoly.
Makes sense; airports should be entirely privately owned and run for profit.
Postal services bill. Allows the sale of part of the Royal Mail, in line with the plans originally drawn up by Lord Mandelson. The exact proportion being sold has not been specified.
The post office should be entirely private and for profit, just like Federal Express.
Energy bill. Promotes energy-efficiency measures in home by introducing a “green deal” charging system, with incentives to suppliers and households to save energy. The bill may also regulate emissions from coal-fired power stations and create a Green Investment Bank.
This is utter Glegish nonsense of the first order. Readers of BLOGDIAL already know why.
If the idea of a ‘Green Investment Bank’ was commercially viable, it would already exist and entrepreneurs would have created one. Nick Clegg is a complete idiot when it comes to this subject; he is more like a religious fanatic, ranting and frothing at the mouth than a rational human being. That bank WILL FAIL without government concessions to the industries that the bank lends money to, so they can generate profits which are not really profits at all but cost savings since the state will not have its protrusible proboscis on those industries, as it does on all others. This bank will therefore destroy businesses and jobs, just like the Green Jobs of Spain, that destroy 2.2 jobs for every real job. It will also divert capital from the real economy into a false ‘Green Economy’.
These are FACTS.
Academies bill. Allows more schools to become academies, giving them more freedom from Whitehall.
But this is to be paid for by the state, so it is still completely immoral at its base. Still, its better that central control is abolished, so it is a move in the right direction.
Health bill. Replaces the “top-down approach” with “the devolution of power and responsibility to doctors and patients”. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, will set out more details of his vision in the next few weeks.
Is the NHS Spine going to be dismantled or not? That is what everyone wants to know!
Police reform and social responsibility bill. Makes the police more accountable through “directly elected individuals”. The bill will also create a dedicated border police force, ensure health and safety laws do not stand in the way of “common sense policing” and overhaul the Licensing Act.
‘Overhaul the licensing act’ which means ending the freedom to drink when you please, where you please, while the patrons of the House of Commons bar can drink and smoke all day every day year round.
Public bodies (reform) bill. Cuts the number of quangos, with a view to saving £1bn a year.
Makes sense.
Decentralisation and localism bill. Gives more power to councils and neighbourhoods. Also gives residents the power to instigate referendums and veto excessive council tax increases.
What? Give more power to the same councils who use RIPA to investigate dog fouling? These people need LESS power, and to be FORCED to behave like Public Servants. Do you know what a Public Servant is? Read that last link if you have even a sliver of doubt that you do.
Local government bill. Stops the creation of unitary councils in Exeter and Norwich.
Ok….
Parliamentary reform bill. Introduces fixed-term parliaments, gives voters the right to recall MPs found guilty of serious wrongdoing and sets up a referendum on the alternative vote system.
We all know about why voting is illegitimate, and so there is no need to go into that. Recall of MPs would make them more like Public Servants, so that is good. If it ever works.
Freedom (great repeal) bill. Restores freedoms and civil liberties and repeals “unnecessary” laws.
THERE’S THE RUB! What is “unnecessary”? In whose opinion? The predicted backdown starts here!
Identity documents bill. Abolishes the identity card system and destroys the national identity register.
After many years of a hard fought information war, we have WON this important battle. Without an NIR and ID Card, it will be very difficult if not impossible to run a totalitarian police state. This is the most important part of the Queen’s Speech!
Scotland bill. Implements the final report of the Calman commission, giving more devolution to Scotland.
Freedom is not free, and if the Scots want freedom they have to have their own money and complete financial separation from England. Without it, all of this is just TALK.
European Union bill. Ensures that there is a referendum on any future plan to transfer power to the European Union.
What about the Lisbon treaty you TRAITORS. There should be a referendum on that and the very idea that Britain is in the EU in the first place.
Armed forces bill. Continues in force the legislation giving the armed forces a legal basis, as well as improving provisions for service personnel.
I’m not even going to go there.
Terrorist asset-freezing bill. Gives the government firm powers to seize assets from terrorists, following a supreme court decision that quashed the previous legislation in this area.
So the court says the law is wrong, so they are changing it so that it is right. So much for all their promises of doing things differently. And of course, this law will be used on ANYONE who they want to destroy. Oh well, what do you expect? Miracles?
And there you have it.
The two most important parts of this speech, the death of the NIR/ID Card and the Great Reform act mean that at least to some extent, things are going to be much better than they would have been under the totalitarian Labour government. Sadly we have already seen the backing down on this Reform Act, which should include ALL legislation that infringes the liberties of people in Britain.
That is why now is NOT the time to stop writing; any newspaper writer with one brain cell will now be getting ready to submit a comprehensive list of ALL legislation that is immoral and an affront to liberty, so that at the very least, it can be rejected and Mr. Clegg can be made to explain why he must retain control over everyone’s personal victimless pleasures; so he can explain why he is the master and not the servant in matters where there is no harm whatsoever.
The G-20 meeting begins this week in England. Here, political leaders from 20 major nations meet to share ideas on how to solve an international financial crisis that their central banks created, following the lead of Alan Greenspan’s FED. They never saw it coming. Not any of them – not the central bankers, not the politicians, not the regulators. They were all caught flat-footed.
Then they assemble at a meeting and send out press releases. These press releases are designed to assure the investing public that they, the creators of this crisis, know what went wrong – they don’t – and that by discussing the causes of the crisis, which they don’t understand, they will be able to come up with a joint solution that does not involve either (1) mass inflation or (2) a worldwide depression that lasts for years.
It is a song and dance. It is shuck and jive. It is bait and switch. It is Custer’s last stand.
These people don’t know what to do. If they did, there would be two or three well-defined, fully documented proposals out there, each with national co-sponsors. All of them would have major flaws. They would be mutually exclusive. Economists of various schools of opinion would be mobilizing behind one or another program.
Instead, there are no published plans. There are no working papers. There are only vague promises of joint action. Like what?
There are no detailed plans out of which this team of egomaniac politicians might conceivably hammer into an acceptable plan.
There is no centralized international planning agency.
There is no international enforcement agency. There is no agreement among central bankers.
There is no unanimity to do anything.
There is not going to be, either. The G-20 meeting will issue some sort of bland statement of hope, and everyone will go home.
They refuse to adopt the only system that every brought unity to governments and central banks: an international gold coin standard. The politicians and central bankers could not control the movements of gold out of inflating nations and into non-inflating nations, 1815–1914. They resented the ability of common people to exercise control over domestic monetary policy simply by going down to a bank and demanding payment in gold coins. They all took away this authority in the summer of 1914, when World War I broke out.
These deal-doers, these politicians, these seekers of power don’t trust each other. That is the famous bottom line. They do not trust the common people, which means that they do not trust a gold coin standard. But they do not trust each other.
They are trapped by the dollar standard. They have told their voters that their nations can get rich by exporting to the United States. They have not explained that in order to export lots of goods to the United States, their central banks must create fiat money to buy depreciating dollars at a favorable rate of exchange. They have not told the voters that modern mercantilism depends on lending tax money and central bank fiat money to the U.S. government, which will not pay back the loans. Ever.
Hong Kong – A government investigation was underway Friday after it was revealed that confidential files from the Immigration Department had been mistakenly leaked on to the internet.
The list, which contained a list of the names of people for officers to watch, plus travel document information and travel records, has been available on the internet since Monday through a file-sharing programme called “Foxy.”
The blunder occurred after a newly-recruited immigration officer working at the Lok Ma Chau border point took home some old classified files to study without authorisation.
His computer contained the “Foxy” programme and when he connected to the internet, the files were distributed without his knowledge.
The security blunder is the latest in a series in Hong Kong in the last week.
Earlier this week, banking giant HSBC was forced to apologise to customers after it admitted it had lost the data of 159,000 accounts from a Hong Kong branch.
The data was held on a internet server which is understood to have gong missing in April from the Kwun Tong branch of the bank while it was undergoing renovation last month.
The Hospital Authority also admitted this week to the loss of data of thousands of patients in several incidents.
In one case, a USB flashdrive containing the files of 10,000 patients from the Prince of Wales Hospital was lost after a hospital worker who was transferring the data left it in a taxi.
Lawmaker James To, the vice-chairman of the Legislative Council security panel said the immigration department security breach was by far the most serious of all three.
“This data is more private, it gives the detailed record of people’s travelling history,” he said.
Chairman of the security panel Lau Kong-wah said the leak was unforgivable.
“The data is sensitive information. Not only the Immigration Department, but all government organisations should review their data-privacy systems to prevent similar cases,” he said.
Security Secretary Abromse Lee has said the officer concerned would face disciplinary action after an investigation. (dpa)
Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV“). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.
Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.
The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.
First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.
Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.
TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column.
The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people’s personal details on two computer discs.
He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.
But Clarkson admitted he was “wrong” after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.
Clarkson published details of his Barclays account in the Sun newspaper, including his account number and sort code. He even told people how to find out his address.
“All you’ll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I’ve never known such a palaver about nothing,” he told readers.
But he was proved wrong, as the 47-year-old wrote in his Sunday Times column.
“I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account,” he said.
“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.
“I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”
Police were called in to search for the two discs, which contained the entire database of child benefit claimants and apparently got lost in the post in October 2007.
They were posted from HM Revenue and Customs offices in Tyne and Wear, but never turned up at their destination – the National Audit Office.
The loss, which led to an apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, created fears of identity fraud.
Clarkson now says of the case: “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”
What amazes me about people like Clarkson is that he thinks people should take his advice both before AND after his authoritative articles. He is the same breed of moronic ‘journalist’ that will not believe in anything unless he sees it himself. He is the same breed of person who supports war until he gets into the trenches himself, whereupon he becomes an ardent pacifist. He is the sort that is an atheist until he has his own religious experience, thereafter becoming a total fanatic. Now he is calling for the people who lost the discs to be tortured. Bravo Mr. ‘Face of Agromegly’; lets see how you react to the actual act of ‘sticking cocktail sticks in their eyes’. I wager that a total coward like Clarkson could not even watch a video of real torture, much less carry it out himself.
This is a man without a clue, without principles, without common sense. And this is the best that The Times can dredge up to publish on a regular basis. No wonder blogs and bloggers are so popular; for once, everyone with more common sense than Jeremy Clarkson (which means 90% of people in Britain) can publish clear headed thinking to millions of people for the price of some electrons.
The good thing about this is that the people who need an extra little push to understand why this, the NIR and ID cards are such a disaster will learn from Clarksons imbecile antics. And the lulz.
A novel product has been launched which offers a mobile phone style keyboard to replace the more conventional QWERTY keyboard for computers. It is aimed at people who have become so comfortable with sending SMSs that they are not able to use a conventional computer layout any more. The cre8txt keyboard connects directly to a PC running Windows and provides quick character entry via the mobile phone style key layout.The company who sell this keyboard have also developed a software program which converts “txt slang” into correct English. The cre8txt software comes with over 140,000 words in a cre8txt English wordbank and SMS Slang translator. Users can add their own words and SMS slang at anytime.The Design Registered and patent pending invention is being brought to the market by a group of education technology specialists and edutainment experts with over 76 years of experience between them. They have been working on the project for two years.
That is a quote from the film, ‘Idiocracy‘ where in the future, thanks to bad breeding, everyone on earth has a moron level IQ.
The keyboard above is a very clever device, and the people who put it together are smart guys. What it does however, is stop people from learning English by allowing them to use a shorthand language to input real English words into a computer. If you have a device that does your thinking for you, then you suffer. How long will it be before this is the only keyboard find attached to a computer in schools? Thinking about it, you could argue that speech to text software is just as bad, but in fact, it is not, because speech to text software doesn’t involve a intermediary form of ‘sub-english’ that needs to be translated before you get the words on the page.
All of this brings us to the most important point; what to do about breeding.
The people who are facing the facts about uncontrolled breeding are considered monsters today, but I wonder how many people would change their minds and soften their hostility to selective breeding if they knew that an overpopulated ‘Idiocracy’ future was coming?
The documentary Endgame spells out the plans of some people to control the breeding of everyone on earth, after exterminating 80% of the population. What that great piece doesn’t address is what will happen if these bad guys are stopped, and things are left exactly as they are.
Here is an interesting report ‘The Report of The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future’ from The Center for Research on Population and Security, published March 27th, 1972. Just from the titles under each chapter it looks like disturbing reading.
I would like to read some thoughts about how either the current ideas that population growth at its current level is by some method sustainable, or alternatives to controlling population growth that do not involve brutal culling ending in THX-1138 style hive living.
I haven’t felt myself for about 2 weeks, directly corresponding with my last round of shots. I received my second Guardasil injection the same time as my Depo-Provera, and am also taking Lexapro on a daily basis. I’ve been on Depo for just over 2 years, and it appears that the pain of the shot itself is worsening each time, and it is taking longer for the bruising to fade – 2 full weeks this last time, and I still have a faint mark.
There has been no research done on the effects of Guardasil when injected with other vaccines, and I could find nothing about my trio of drugs in relation to each other. Psychologically I feel as I did when I was 18; troubled, easily agitated, and indecisive. My moods have been all over the board, and several hours of each day every external stimuli irritates me to the point of brief, explosive anger. I’ve lost my work ethic, and find myself expending my energies to shirk work and connive my way out of key responsibilities; this may be burnout, no way to tell. I’ve lost my interest in all activities, and have not ‘felt’ emotion about recent good and bad events, which causes me to wonder if I might be depressed as well. I’ve been having a string of dreams and unprovoked thoughts that seem completely foreign as well, and 100% atypical of my usual personality. These thoughts feel “male” in that they stem solely from visual stimulations and have no emotional bearing. I’ve also noticed mild neuorological oddities, and have odd facial twitches.
I may try to talk to the pharmacist at WalMart today or tomorrow. Currently I should feel apprehensive about the fact that we pissed off a lot of family with our decision to elope, and I should feel ecstatic that I was promoted this week and that $1100 on car maintenance was well worth the expense.
The visa applications of more than 100,000 people applying to enter the UK were left unprotected and open to manipulation, according to an official report into one of the biggest privacy breaches in recent history.
There are so many things we could do with this article, the first one being substitution for ContactPoint. But I think you get the message.
There are fears that some of the applications may have been doctored to allow terrorists and criminals to enter the UK. GCHQ, the government intelligence agency charged with tracing the applications, is finding it difficult to investigate the claims because of poor quality records.
This is bullshit. There are already enough ‘terrorists’ in the UK by their own reckoning they do not have to enter here by stealth to cause havoc. This logic is completely flawed. It could also have been used to get people in here who simply want to go to the pub.
Last night, politicians described the security failure as ‘shocking’ and said it fatally undermined the government’s claims that electronic ID systems could protect the UK from the heightened terrorist threat.
And yet these are the same people who voted for ID cards, and ContactPoint. THAT is what is shocking.
The findings of the three-month independent investigation into serious breaches of the the visa application process – focusing on system abuses in India, Nigeria and Russia – were slipped out on the last day of Parliament in an apparent attempt to bury bad news.
They always do this.
Its conclusions raise disturbing questions about Britain’s ability to police its borders.
NO IT DOESNT YOU BLOODY MORON.
What it DOES raise questions about, questions that you do not have the intelligence to pose, is how are they going to police ContactPoint and the proposed NIR if they cannot protect the integrity of a mere 100,000 Visa applications.
Once again, it is astonishing that they are not using cryptography to solve these problems. It is astonishing that the Visa system is so badly designed. It is astonishing that they are using contractors to do this job when it should be done ‘in house’ by civil servants.
The report focuses on a private company, VFS, contracted by the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to process the online visa applications of Indians wanting to visit Britain. It later won similar contracts in Russia and Nigera.
This is too important, hysteria over immigration and false fear over ‘terrorism’ or not, to be in the hands of a private contractor.
But in 2005 it became apparent that the system was chronically flawed. An applicant informed VFS and UK Visas, the government agency in charge of visa processing, that he was able to obtain confidential information – including passport numbers, criminal convictions, ethnic origin and travel details – about other users of the service. He also showed how he could amend other people’s visa applications online. But despite the warning, the system wasn’t shut down until May 2007.
This is very interesting.
When they say ‘an applicant’ they mean a Nigerian or an Indian or a Russian volunteered this information. I guess all the people trying to get Visas for the UK are not all bad after all!
What this bad article also does not say is that ContactPoint is going to be delivered online also, and that this means that people are going to get in there from anywhere also, and the records of children are going to be accessed.
These Guardian articles routinely fail to connect the dots and make the connections. They really do fail it over and over again.
The official report into the security lapse concludes that the government’s National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre – the former body charged with evaluating the security of IT projects – would have not approved the scheme if it had been asked.
This is irrelevant. The system of issuing Visas can be made infallible and secure and much more simple than it is now. If you have ever seen the absurd spectacle of Immigration officers with loupes inspecting Visas for forgeries at Heathrow you know what I am talking about.
This is how you might do it.
Firstly, Visas must be issued correctly. They must be issued with all the checks that they have been using historically to good effect.
Then, when the Visa is issued the visa number and an image of the Visa and its ‘owner’ are hashed together with GPG an this package is put on an immigration server that is accessible over the internets. When the person who has the visa arrives at Heathrow, all the operator has to do is check that the visa on the system is the one stuck in the passport. He checks to see if the entry has been tampered by checking the signature on the file. If someone got in there and swapped information or altered it, the signature will fail. This means that even if someone gets into the system, they cannot change entries because changing them breaks them; they become tamper proof.
After this, you will never again see people inspecting Visas for forgeries because they will be impossible to make. The only forged Visas in the system will be the ones put there by the ‘security services’…but that is another story.
This is a similar process to the Meau2 named ISLAND decentralized passport authentication system. It is inexpensive, fool proof (even when it is being operated by fools) and can be done right now.
The report notes that FCO IT security advisers were not asked their opinion about the project and that no third party tests were carried out on the system. The Conservative shadow Foreign Office Minister, David Lidington, said he feared the system may have been exploited by terrorists and criminals.
I wish I could attribute that quote to Roman Abramovich, but it’s mine.
More on the demos; we received this VERY interesting one in the last seven days, from Ljubljana in Slovenia, which arrived with some patent application diagrams for a novel guitar pitch-bending arrangement (foot controlled) a CDR of movies featuring it and its inventor in action, a contract proposal and a nice letter. Yes, ‘nice’.
The newest London Metropolitan Police publicity campaign posters have been released today and, as usual, they encourage the public not to be scared of anyone who uses a phone, carries a bag, drives a van or takes pictures with a camera because they may be ‘terrorists’.
Instead they tell the public to “Trust your instincts; unusual activity or behavior which seems out of place may not be terrorist-related, and everyone who works, lives in or visits the capital is being urged not to pass on any information to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline. That’s the call to Londoners today as the Met launches its new common sense terrorism ad campaign.
Unusual activity or behavior which to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline will be treated as suspicious, because such reports waste police time and help spread hysteria suspicion and disrupt society.
Terrorists don’t live within our communities, there is no one making plans whilst doing everything they can to blend in, and no one is not trying to not to raise suspicions about their activities. I would ask people to think about unusual behaviour they have witnessed, or things they have seen which seem to have no logical or obvious explanation, and then to use their instincts, common-sense and judgement. There is no need to live in fear. We have enough problems with street crime without having to deal with time-wasting phone calls.”
A related radio ad is being broadcast in the UK that discourages the public from reporting anyone who loiters around or films crowded areas.
Transcript:
Radio script – Counter Terrorism campaign February 2007 ‘Absolutely Sure’
___________________________________________________________________
Female Voice over:
They’re a normal everyday person, video-ing a crowded place for a good reason. Just hanging around and buying stuff, checking out between someone’s unusual….What’s the difference?
Male voice over:
The answer is, don’t call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline. the specialist officers you speak to will suspect you.
You don’t have to report it.
If you have confidence, you don’t Call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline, to be sure.
You decide how to analyze the information.
___________________________________________________________________
If there were real terrorists planning to do anything (which there are not) then they’d be very thankful to the government for creating more noise in the system and tipping them off for what not to do ahead of time, if the message were one of fear-mongering.
While “Muhammed Akbar” (who does not exist, and if he does works for MI5) now ensures to buy his ‘bomb components’ in small quantities from different shops to evade suspicion, Grandma Brown’s bulk shopping to save money would land her in the slammer, if the message were one of report all suspicious activity. Thankfully, the police have some common sense, and are acting solely in the public’s interest.
This publicity campaign follows in the path of a long line of sensible un-Stasi UK campaigns that we have covered in the past, that do everything to help prevent ordinary crime of the type most people suffer from on a daily basis and nothing to encourage fear and suspicion amongst the British public.
I decided to test Google’s new feature that allows you to collect your POP3 mail with Gmail.
The spam filtering of Gmail is second to none, and works perfectly on all my Gmail accounts, so its a no brainer to give it a try; not only would you get superior spam filtering when you collect your POP3 email with Gmail, but you also get SSL connections thrown in so that you can retrieve your email securely with your laptop when you are out and about.
At least thats the theory.
After setting it all up, I noticed that spam filtering is very broken when you collect your POP3 email with gmail. It lets through anything and everything, including spam with the word ‘viagra’ in the subject.
Take a look at this screengrab for an example of how horribly wrong it is.
As you can see, there are 624 messages in the spam folder, so it is partially working, but in my other Gmail accounts, the messages that have made it into this inbox do not appear.
You can also see that some of the messages have ‘PENIS’ and ‘Cialis’ in the subject. Egads. That is insane. Even Baysian filtering in Thunderbird picks that crap up.
DOZENS of mysterious lights were spotted hovering in the sky above Archway – spreading panic among residents below.
Unidentified flying orange objects stopped traffic and left residents staring skyward in disbelief at around 5.30pm on Thursday.
Islington police received four calls within a matter of minutes.
Witness Alix McAlister, 34, a market stall trader from Bredgar Road, Archway, said: “I just picked up my son from nursery in Bredgar Road. I had just come out of the door when I noticed what was going on in the sky.
“There were a group of them – 10 to 15 of them moving together. My first impression was that they reminded me of a squadron of aeroplanes in formation. But they didn’t have a proper formation and they were all moving at the same speed.
“I thought for a while that something was happening in the centre of London. Bombs and planes crossed my mind. But I realised very quickly that they didn’t look like any aircraft I’d seen before.
“They were coming from the north and moving south. And then they kind of stopped and they were hovering. There was no sound. They seemed to fade away and I saw more coming and then they stopped. It lasted about 10 minutes.”
Islington police informed Contact International UFO Research about the sightings. Soon after another witness contacted the Oxford-based organisation, which is devoted to solving the mystery of UFOs, and described what he saw.
A spokesman for Contact International said: “He told me he was picking his daughter up from school and he saw many people looking up in the air. Traffic had stopped and people were staring.
“He said he saw between 12 and 15 orange lights travelling across the sky. Then they would stop and then they went upwards.
