oh oh oh, just take a look at this. OK the title to this post is a bit misleading, but still encryped disk in laptop only discovered when taken for a repair and bought on eBay. Confidential government data!
Month: March 2008
The power of your and my personal data
You know I think it is always interesting to read the government’s efforts in cleaning up IT security. I don’t just refer to the UK, I refer to any government that seem to be suffering a similar malaise.
It is too often that government bodies invest enormous amounts of money in IT security projects. My question is how the hell can they expect these to work when the underlying business processes are flawed? To automate these flawed business processes are IT processes, and then these need to be secured. So we need to secure the IT systems that are automating flawed business processes. Makes sense? LOL 😉
Governments around the globe are collecting more and more personal data on us, including our DNA. They are pulling this together into a centralized repository. The power of this information to somebody else (whether legitimate or not) speaks for itself!
Online harmonisation in this world?
So it seems that Pakistan is blocking ‘blasphemous’ videos causing chaos due to routing miscalculations and error on the worldwide network. It seems that Pakistan’s attempts to block YouTube from their own population disrupted YouTube access around the world. This problem was gradually repaired (though still points to serious infrastructural issues). Read more in Lauren’s post…
Then there is China that sensors Google’s search engine. The difference between the two, is that the first felt strongly about video content that shouldn’t be viewed locally that subsequently disrupted access for many YouTube users worldwide, whereas the second is a political decision for a country, that impacts only that country.
It is a challenge, globalisation, free speech and this conflict with our differing cultures, perceptions, opinions, etc. I guess the future will bring a harmonisation… at least online, I guess we can always dream…..
The Herman Saga
Loyal blog readers… do you remember that I posted a post on 22 December, you remember about Herman. Well I thought it was well overdue to give an update. I owe you this much….
After bringing Herman home, I plugged him in and he ran around the house cleaning, his lights flashing. As far as robots go, he was very happy, lots to do and I could tell from his quiet hum that he felt as though paradise had arrived. However, I have to admit, and this is hard, being technical and all that,, that I plugged Herman into the wrong power voltage (you remember he came over from the US). I should know better! Anyhow there was Herman returning to his docking station in the kitchen having toured the house the last 1-2 hours, and he blew! That was the power supply, Herman’s food source.
My husband, who incidentally by now was pretty impressed (having thought originally, oh oh, another of Karen’s little gadgets) because Herman was in fact VERY good. The house was clean, and I cooked dinner whilst he cleaned.
So I went on the US web-site to buy another power supply. I tried here in Europe. Then tried to order from the iRobot site, but you had to have a US address AND credit card. In the end a HP colleague from the US ordered this for me, paid for it and then posted Herman’s food source. It was him and another colleague that had helped me find Herman when I was over there before xmas. However it came back… some problem with postage…even though he had taken to the post, had it weighed, etc., he was thinking about taking it to the Swedish embassy next and placing in a ‘diplomatic pouch’. LOL 🙂 my US friend is not deterred by this. He is even more determined to get this packet to me in Sweden. It is becoming almost a saga – The Herman saga, which is not over….
Although since buying Herman there were a couple of developments:
1) A couple of my friends went straight out and bought one themselves (although I forgot the name of their iRobot) they managed to order the whole thing in Europe.
2) And my mum read my blog, quite intrigued by Herman, this was funny, I didn’t know she was reading my blog until then. And it has been fun listening to the latest update from my friend (and HP colleague) in the U.S., on the latest in the Herman saga.
March 2008 already!
Well here we are March, and here I am feeling pretty disgusted about my lack of blog activity during February. Time flies when you’re having fun. Work is flying, me too, I get to be home sometimes! The book is ready (almost) for the editor, except that the 2 days vacation I was going to take this week to finish it, has been sort of canceled 😉
Does that ever happen to you? Well if I can just get this book out the way…the editor is waiting… then I can have a life outside of my work… do you know what I mean? Do you have a life? You know normal people have this.. a life. I heard that this is what normal people have… I am still trying to work out what this is….