#clog

From The Register:

An Ulster used car dealer has had his dodgy cordless phone confiscated after airline pilots were entertained by “Arthur Daley-style banter about makes and prices of used cars”, The Daily Mirror reports.

Skyjockeys cruising at 25,000 feet through the Dean Cross air traffic sector – extending from Manchester to central Scotland – had been picking up “snippets of conversation” since last year, leading to concerns that haggling over used Ford Mondeos might “block out vital instructions from controllers on the ground”.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/28/dodgy_cordless_phone/]

Not to be outdone by a completely bonkers attempt to distrupt proceedings north of the border courtesy of resident nutjob Michael Stone (he of “lets’s shoot up a funeral” fame), a gentleman down south decided to stage his own little protest (this time without a gun, nailbombs, an axe and a garrotte) against what he sees as the insufferable nature of Alan Partridge lookalike/soundalike Pat Kenny.

If ever you wanted to explain the difference between the two parts of the island to someone, these two contrasting events may provide a useful starting point.

Anyway, this will come as a welcome distraction to our Pat, who is currently involved in a sticky land dispute [free registration required] with his neighbours in Dalkey, the Dublin suburb where Pat resides. Assumming this guy wasn’t his neighbour of course (which, I should point out right now, I am not suggesting!).

Twink, Ireland’s one woman panto phenomenon, has been causing a bit of a stir these last few days. It seems a tape has appeared of a phone message that she left for her ex-husband, in which Twik leaves no doubt as to what she thinks of him becoming a father again with his slut whore new girlfriend.

Someone has even made a dance remix of it and according to the sunday tribune t-shirts and other tie-in items are available.

Lucozade Bombers Defeated For Now

So they tried to bomb us again. Even worse – they are us! Have no fear though. Days before we decided to try to bomb us again UK Home Secretary, John “Resin” Reid announced the Government’s latest cunning plan to thwart those who wish to curtail our freedoms. The Government is going to make us give up our freedoms first. That’ll show ‘em!

It doesn’t stop there though, because you know those useless terror levels that the Americans have had since the World Trade Centre attacks, the ones that everybody has taken the complete piss out of the world over? (For example: “Better bring an umbrella today, the threat level is ‘Amber’. Honey, have you seen my amber sweater?”). Well now we have them in the UK too, oh happy day.

To stress the point, they (not that they, the other they) have placed the threat level at critical, which is one worse than severe, dontchaknow. This means we are to feel afraid (but not terrorised, that means they’d win) and are to be vigilant at all times. Once the level goes down, I guess we’re expected to return to being happy go lucky and ignoring all those abandoned bags on the tube.

A knock on effect of this has been that America has raised it’s level too, as the systems are in sync and… only they haven’t; they have raised the level to “Red” only for ‘planes arriving in the United States from the UK. Some alert that, they’re not just doing it to humour us then.

Of course you’d imagine that Tony Bliar would have his face plastered everywhere talking about defending our freedoms and that, only he’s not; the blighter got out of here just in time and is on a beach in the Caribbean. Lucky for him, I’d follow him, but I can’t get on a plane unless I’m naked and have no luggage. Anyway, you know what, he’s gone and left John “Two Shags” Prescott in charge. And they say the man doesn’t have a sense of humour, who’d have known?

I’d have stuck a We Are Not Afraid image on the site, but then I would have felt like a total knob.

Do you travel in a confined space every morning and evening? Are you fed up with having people shoving their armpits into your face, or coming up to you and demanding change while playing some god-awful oasis song over and over (and over) again? Or maybe they are just banging into you every single time the train or bus so much as shudders?

Ladies and gentlemen, your problem has been solved! A British conceptual artist has designed a suit for these very situations. I’ll be off to place an order right now.

Although not being reported in the mainstream media yet, it seems that the ill conceived ID Card and Database plans for the UK have been scrapped.

Not a moment too soon, although many people may not have had to get them anyway, such as Irish people living in the UK.

This can be “FND” on the wall of a local church in Leytonstone. At the bottom of the poster there is the cryptic suggestion that it is possible to chat with God, via text messaging and at no connection charge. Well, who knew.

It all started when an unemployed British sysadmin decided he wanted to get to the bottom of the whole UFO phenomenon, and find out whether strange craft sighted over UK skies for many years were in reality experimental military aircraft belonging to the United States military.

Gary McKinnon would get smoked up, fire up a perl script that scanned for blank admin passwords for machines with publically available military IP addresses, and then log onto the boxes with a VNC-style application and snoop around. Hardly hacking, but that hasn’t stopped the United States calling it the “Biggest hack of all time”

He even explained in an interview with the BBC that while he was logged onto the machines he could see plenty of people from around the world “hacking” in with blank passwords.

Instead of thanking him for exposing the shockingly awful security on machines that, the military claim, are full of information that could threaten the security of their country, the Americans instead called up London and demanded he be extradited to America.

In the past this would have required the Americans to present actual evidence in a UK court before getting their hands on someone, but not anymore. Thanks to a treaty to deal with those evil-doing terrorists, America can get anyone they want extradited from the UK, simply by lodging a request. Of course, this is not a reciprocal agreement, and so the UK must still present evidence in an American court if, God forbid, they want to have someone brought the other direction across the pond.

While there has been great interest among technologists in the UK, in a large part due to the fact that this wasn’t even a real hacker, just someone who got onto machines that some idot in the US military left without passwords, the media has generally taken the line that he is a dangerous man akin to Magneto from the X-Men. The same media has now taken up the cause of three Natwest bankers who are being extradited to America to face trial for alledgedly being involved in the Enron scandal.

Still, even if the terrorists are still coming to get us, at least we’re safe from computer hobbyists and accountants, phew!

For sale in walthamstow! I wouldn’t be seen dead in it.

The Campaign to Make Votes Count in the uk trundles on, and while some in the labour government still insist there is no need to change a system where around 30% of the vote means over 50% representation in parliament some within the party are starting to realise that the system that punished them in the 1980s may yet punish them again.