Category: Uncategorized

I wrote a while ago about the power (or lack of it) that certain parts of the UK seem to be suffering from. Last Thursday, users of Clara.net, PlusNet and many other ISP sited at Telehouse Europe hosting site in Docklands experienced a major power outage. A major cable apparently burnt out!

Some users were offline from 8am till the middle of the afternoon. Telehouse have not said what caused the cable to burn out, but apparently a full investigation in under way!

Is this start of things to come as more and more high-energy users are concentrated in one place (Docklands) without sufficient infrastructure to support them? I’m not with either Clara.net or PlusNet, but I wonder if my ISP is hosted at the Telehouse site? I’ll have to find out!
Tags: Docklands, Power Supply, Electricity Supply

Powered by Qumana

Further to my previous post on the uncovering of further Vietnam War atrocities, the Los Angeles Times (LAT) reporter team of Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson have uncovered further information of more atrocities including suppression of facts of suspected atrocities by senior US Army personal.

This new LAT report centers around US declassified records that show that while the US Army was working energetically to discredit a retired Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert, one of that era’s most decorated solders – who had openly described some of the atrocities in a report to senior officers – military investigators were uncovering prisoner torture and mistreatment that went well beyond what he (Herbert) had described in his report.

The discovery of this new information obtained by the LAT reporters under the US Freedom of Information Act – FOIA (something that seems to work rather better than over there than in the FOIA UK!) of additional atrocities committed during the Vietnam war further exposes the sad truth that the 1968 My Lai massacre was not the isolated incident the US Army tried to portray.

The new report, a must read for anyone that has followed the history of the Vietnam War can be found here – you may need to register with the LAT to gain access, as it seems they have changed how you can access some of their pages – I have a PDF version of it, which I can mail to you if you cannot get hold of it via the LAT site.

The report makes very interesting reading and in fact and shows that US Army perhaps now fully understands that these further recollections from another era will be used in comparison with what went on recently in Iraq – Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the original atrocities enquiry task force, said the declassified files provided important lessons for dealing with the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. “If we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we’re doing with Abu Ghraib and similar atrocities, we’ll never correct the problem“.

All credits are due to the LAT reporters for a ongoing good job well done, the Gen. John H. Johns quote in this post is from the same LAT article.

Sad reading for all concerned, but I think we have not heard the last of this or the follow up Iraq story.
Tags: Vietnam War, Abu Ghraib, LA Times, PDF

Powered by Qumana

News today showing that UK Army recruitment is up by 9% is probably a good thing. But where are the Army being used today in the various areas of the world?

A deployment map showing where the Army is being used was released by the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) in January 2006 and picked up by the BBC in this article.

What I find interesting about these figures are just how many troops are still stationed in Germany, 22,000! These are said to form part of the so called Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) which according to the BBC article, the UK is a lead nation. A recent use of ARRC manpower has been through contributing numbers for a deployment in Afghanistan. Despite a high focus on exercises, perhaps a better use of some of these troops being deployed to Southern Lebanon might well have curtailed some of the mess that that country now finds itself in.
Tags: BBC, UK Army, Afghanistan, Lebanon

Powered by Qumana

Went away for the weekend to Montgomery – [2], Powys in Mid-Wales or as I remember it used to be called the Welsh Marches [2]. Fascinating area of Wales and not one that I had explored much before.

I used to pass through this area some 25 years ago on the way from where I then lived, to Dyffryn Ardudwy [2] when we enjoyed the wonderful sandy beaches of that area including Tal-y-Bont and Harlech.

Montgomery has an interesting history which probably accounts for it diverse population (small still today) and many of the interesting aspects of the town, still amazingly small.

If you get a chance, visit and enjoy this lovely area of Wales.

Tags: Wales, Marches, Castles

Powered by Qumana

What is it about women drivers in People Carriers? It seems that being in one of these vehicles with an obligatory sign in the back window that they have one/two/three babies on board seems to give them the right to mow down pedestrians any where, any time, any how!

I speak of an incident this afternoon, when I am already on the second stripe of a Zebra Crossing and Mrs (or maybe it was Ms.) Whatever blindly sails past me as I struggle not to walk into her ‘lethal weapon‘.

Looking at the lady to my right who had first stopped to let me cross, we both mouthed to one another some obscenity as the lunatic driver speed off wondering about what to get her husband/partner for dinner, or wondering what little Jason/William/Rottweiler was doing in the back of her ‘van‘ oblivious to my shaking fist!

Perhaps I should have walked into the careless driver, but then I expect she would have still driven off to assault yet another pedestrian target without a care in the world. Do I have her licence number? No. But who really cares about it anyway, certainly not her.

But as a suggestion, perhaps she should change the sign in the back of her car to IDIOT ON BOARD, that probably describes her better!

Powered by Qumana

I was out driving my car this morning listening to BBC Radio 4 Today programme and heard the report about the 12 year that had inexplicably management to circumvent all the new security measures at London Gatwick Airport (LGW) and eventually get onto a Monarch Airlines aircraft!

The reporter, Keith Doyle, reported that the first thing that anyone knew about it was when Airline staff noticed the boy sitting down with a snack and drink and then released that he should not have been there! The  BBC news web site also quoted that “Staff only realised the boy was a stowaway after he had sat down and been served with a soft drink” I wondered why his boarding pass had not been checked as he entered the aircraft in the first place.

Moving on to my next time in the car and its time for the BBC’s World at One where in an interview with Tim Jeans, managing director of Monarch Airlines, said that his presence had been detected when airline staff had asked for his boarding pass on entering the plane by the boarding door.

Two points here, a) having travelled for many years, I have always been asked for my passport/boarding pass at nearly every stage of the journey from check-in to plane seat how come the boy wasn’t? b) in the wake of the recent alert, I would have thought that even more attention would be paid to everyone that is pass through the airport irrespective of age!

To date, I have never felt any nervousness about flying, but this incident does not fill me with huge confidence for my next flight, which by the way is with Monarch Airlines from London Gatwick!
Tags: BBC, Monarch Airlines, Gatwick Airport

Powered by Qumana

Further to my previous post on when Delete does not really mean Delete.

I came across this story in my copy of the Sunday Times that I purchased while I was away in Mid-Wales over the weekend. It again stresses the need to make sure that you wipe the hard drive of your computer before you dispose of it, adding that re-formatting of the hard drive does not always ensure that your data is destroyed.

The article does not list software programs that do this job, but does mention the Blancco Data Cleaner, full details on the link page. I’ve not used this program but it does seem to make some very good claims, cost of around £16.95. Has anyone heard about or used this?
Tags: Computer Scams, Nigeria, Delete Key, Sunday Times

Powered by Qumana

When I first heard last week that all hand baggage had to be checked into Hold luggage due to the terrorist alert, I wondered how long it would be before people lost their bags! Also I wonder how many people will have had their Laptop/Mobile/Digital Camera stolen.

Today, I learnt of two people that this has happened to, one couple managed to get away on one of the first planes after the delays unwound, but found that their bags were lost and when delivered two days later, found that all valuables had gone (Laptop/Mobile/Camera) and one person abandoned going due to the queues, but could not get their checked bag back straight away and guess what he received the case, the Laptop had gone!

Looking at the inevitable insurance policies finds of course they do not cover any terrorist related incidents! Strange world isn’t it when the ordinary person looses out all the time whatever the reason!

I wonder how long it will be before the Authorities to tell us what the basis was for this alert and how much information led to all the actions at Heathrow over the past week.
Tags: Heathrow, Laptops, Mobile Phone, Digital Camera, Terrorist, Insurance

Powered by Qumana

If you watched tonight’s Real Story programme on the BBC and if you did what I wrote in the title above and you did not make sure that you deleted all the information on your computer hard drive, then you may well have a big problem.

I am amazed that people still don’t understand that data is NOT really deleted from your PC when you use the ‘DELETE’ key, as all this does is to tell the computer not to track that data anymore and that the computer can now use the space that the file previously used .

The only way that you can be 100% sure that your data is removed from your computers hard drive is to use one of the many secure delete programs available that overwrites all of your old computers hard drive data with random characters (0’s, £’s, ?’s) and to make sure that it does a good job, it does this a number of times.

Free Programs such as Mark Russinovich’s (this is the guy that uncovered the Sony Root kit debacle last year) and Bryce Cogswell’s SDelete; Object Media’s secureDelete; Heidi Computer’s Eraser are available for download over the Internet, you should of course only use these after you’ve moved you data on to the your new computer, sound obvious I know!

There are also of course many commercial (paid for) programs that include secure delete options. For me, the only true way to ensure that none of your data goes AWOL, and this is what I have done ever since I’ve worked with computers, is to either a) keep the disk and to reuse them as second/third discs in other computers, or b) physically destroy them, by running a screwdriver down the connection pins to break them, and then knocking some of the chips of the control board if it has one. Finally if I could, I’ve opened the drive and broken the platters inside! However if you try this yourself, be careful as you will be exposed to sharp bits of metal and other potential hazards.

One thing for sure, none of my data will ever end up on a council waste tip. Make sure that your data doesn’t either!

Powered by Qumana

Picked up on this news article today, sounds a bit like sour grapes on the part of Gina Ford with serious over reaction focused on MumsNet.

I wonder what Gina Ford wants to get out of the threats that she (through her legal team) has made to MumsNet – sorry I forgot to use her correct title “The world famous author and expert on baby care” as her legal team call her in their threatening letter to MumsNet ISP. Funny though, I’ve never heard of her!

If Ms. Gina Ford was trying to get some publicity about her own web site and the expertise that she has about babies, I think she may have under estimated the backlash that will probably now come here way. Perhaps she might now want to also become a expert on Public Relations, god knows she needs it!
Tags: MumsNet

Powered by Qumana