Stephen Chapman's Blog About Anything and Everything

Privacy Law Differences

Steve — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:37:52 +0000

Different laws apply in different countries but the internet is starting to blur the boundaries. There have been a number of cases recently where the USA has commenced legal proceedings against someone who lives in some other country and who perhaps has never even visited the USA because of something that the person offers via their web site and where the USA considers that sufficient connection exists for them to take action under US law. It has been suggested that even a site hosted outside the USA where there is no US company involved in any aspect of the site may be considered to fall under US jurisdiction if the site has an international domain name.

This US approach places the entire concept of cloud computing in doubt since with cloud computing the actual location where the data is stored is not under the control of the owner and can be spread across multiple countries. In shutting down one cloud hosting provider because some people were using it to upload stolen material many legitimate businesses who were using that provider to hold their business data in the cloud have now lost it all.

One recent article I was reading suggested that it is only a matter of time before someone ends up in a situation where it is impossible for them to avoid breaking the law. All it will need for this to happen is for the US to demand access to data that an Australian has stored on a server in Australia where the site uses an international domain name. The USA will consider that to be sufficient for them to claim the right to access to that data. Of course such a small connection would be insufficient under Australian privacy laws to permit such access and so anyone complying with the US law in that instance would be breaking the law in Australia and so would have no alternative but to disregard the US law in that instance. It will be interesting to see if that arises whether someone can be extradited to the US in such a case for breaking the US law where not braking that foreign law would be illegal under local laws.

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Privacy Law Differences

“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”

Steve — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:23:20 +0000

Was rereading this book by Robert Heinlein. When I first read it the book seemed wrong in the way the odds of success were being calculated. The odds in the book were going up and down based on the amount of risk involved in the individual tasks currently being undertaken whereas it was already known that those tasks were needed and so that risk should h

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“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”

Old Science Fiction Books

Steve — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:52:13 +0000

It can be rather interesting when reading science fiction written many years ago to consider what things mentioned in the book that were considered part of the SF setting at the time the book was written that are simply a part of our everyday life now. Consider for example Robert Heinlein’s book “Space Cadet” where in the opening pages one of the main characters calls his father on his phone and another main character mentions having packed his in his bag. On reading this now you might wonder why he didn’t simply turn it off. Of course the book was written several decades before the first mobile phone. Later in the same book they send their phones home because they would be out of range from space. Of course you wouldn’t do that with today’s phones because even if you can’t use it as a phone you could still use it as a computer – something that is completely missing from the book even though computers were invented long before the book was written.

Another of Heinlein’s books, “Waldo” is in some ways even more interesting in that one of the main aspects to the story is that radiation from transmissions that we ourselves make might be harmful to us. The story discusses radio transmission of power but it closely parallels the real world concerns about transmissions for mobile communications. Of course that book also directly influenced the name given to another device mentioned in the story that didn’t exist at the time but which has since been created for real. Both in the book and now in the real world those devices are named after the title character of the book.

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Old Science Fiction Books

Star Trek

Steve — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:54:23 +0000

I have been rewatching some of the Star Trek Next Generation episodes recently. I had forgotten how annoying and inaccurate the opening of that show was with the comment “to boldly go where no one has gone before” where there wasn’t a single show in which they went anywhere without meeting someone who was already there. At least the original series used the comment “to boldly go where no (hu)man has gone before” and they did often go to places where no human had previously visited. Even the original show never went where no one had gone before because there were always aliens there already in the shows that didn’t already have humans there. A show in which they went somewhere where no one had gone before would be a very short show because there wouldn’t be very much that could happen on that show apart from the crew going crazy due to having no aliens to interact with.

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Star Trek

Japanese Whalers

Steve — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:57:39 +0000

There’s been a lot in the news lately about the Japanese boats in the southern oceans and the conservationists attempts to interfere with what they are doing. Perhaps a more appropriate response would be to send a scientific expedition into southern waters to capture and dissect these Japanese whalers in order to see if there is some physical reason for them to want to kill creatures that are far more intelligent than they are.

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Japanese Whalers

Spelling

Steve — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:06:07 +0000

Even those who know how to spell seem to rely too much on the spill chucker (sic) built into whichever application on their computer they are writing with. What they all seem to forget is that even though it can check if what you have typed is the correct spelling of a work, it still can’t check if it is the right word. There are lots of words that are similar enough to one another that the spell checker will not detect their mistake. Seldom a day goes by without my seeing something that contains the word ‘loose’ where that word makes no sense whatsoever. Of course the simplest way to check if a given word makes sense in a sentence where an antonym for the word exists is to check how the sentence reads if you substitie that antonym with the word ‘not’ in front so that the sentence should retain the same meaning. So any sentensce containing the word ‘loose’ should be able to have ‘not tight’ substituted since the sentence will still have the same meaning (if any) that it originally had. Of course if the word ‘loose’ mistakenly had one of the ‘o’ left out to make it ‘lose’ instead then the switch would be with ‘not win’ or ‘not find’ instead (depending on which meaning of ‘lose’ was intended.

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Spelling

Decimate and Deprecate

Steve — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:25:47 +0000

From what I have seen, a lot of people have no idea of what these two words mean. I have even seen some situations where someone has got the two words mixed up and has used one where the other would make slightly more sense (but not much since neither is what they are really trying to say).

Decimate has a very specific meaning – it means to kill or destroy exactly one in every ten. The Romans used to use this as an extreme punishment when one of their legions stuffed up big time. The legion would be decimated with one in ten of the soldiers being killed as an example to the other 90%. When something is decimated it means that 90% of it still exists. Many people use it where what they are saying implies that they really meant obliterated – which means approximately ten times as much damage and death as decimated implies.

I am not exactly sure what people assume that deprecated means. A lot of people writing web pages continue to use deprecated code saying that it is only deprecated. In fact so much deprecated code is still being used in web pages that the HTML standards have decide to revert to a lesser meaning. Instead of dropping the deprecated tags from the next version of HTML they are doing away with the concept of deprecated HTML and reverting to a lesser term of obsolete instead. Obsolete implies that the tag has been replaced and need no longer be used but will continue to be supported by browsers whereas deprecated means that it has been replaced and also that it is about to be completely dropped and no longer supported at all. Obsolete is a far lesser term than deprecated but the way most people treat the word deprecated you’d think their meanings were the other way around.

The other word I have seen some people get mixed up with these two is ‘depreciated’ which of course is something entirely different again.

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Decimate and Deprecate

Ned’s Head

Steve — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:32:14 +0000

Saw a documentary on the weekend about a skull that was supposedly undergoing a scientific and historical investigation to see if it was Ned Kelly’s. In some ways it seemed more sensationalist than scientific.

The first question to be answered was whether it was the skull that had been on display as Ned Kelly’s that had been stolen. This was quickly answered as a replica of the displayed skull had been made while it was still on display and the one being tested was an exact match to that replica.

The first test to determine if it was Ned’s wasn’t exactly scientific. There were 12 desth masks that had been made of those executed at the gaol and they determined that of those 12 the skull was too big to fit in 10 of them leaving just Edward Kelly and Frederick Deeming’s death masks being big enough to fit the skull inside. What they didn’t mention was that there were in fact 153 executions at the gaol and the skull could therefore have also belonged to any of the others where a death mask wasn’t made. This led to a large part of the show dealing with Fred Deeming including speculation that he might have been Jack the Ripper. No mention was made of the fact that Fred Deeming’s skull is on display in a museum in England nor of the fact that he was known to be resident in South Africa at the time of the ripper killings. When they finally got proof that the skull was not Ned’s it was implied that it must therefore be Fred’s.

Just before the end of the show they obtained proof that a particular skeleton belonged to Ned Kelly. Now that skeleton had a small section of skull with it and therefore no intact skull on display anywhere could be Ned’s.

Based on the conclusions they reached at the end of the show there was no reason whatever for including Deeming at all. The skull obviously belongs to one of the more than a hundred other’s who were executed at the gaol where no death mask is available. It was used in place of Ned’s because Ned’s skull was no longer intact and the skull was approximately the right size. Who it belonged to may never be known.

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Ned’s Head

Computer Phone Scams

Steve — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 07:29:07 +0000

I just had a phone call from someone claiming to represent Microsoft claiming that they had been receiving lots of error reports from my computer.

Now I happen to know for certain that any such reports would not get out through the firewall and that therefore such reports would not be coming from my computer. Now that leaves only two alternatives – either the person calling me has a load of viruses on their computer causing all of these mistaken reports or the person calling is involved in a scam of some sort where they are trying to gain access to my computer.

Now even though the second of these options is far more likely I decided to give the caller the benefit of the doubt and so advised them that I work in computer security. I was in the process of suggesting that perhaps there was a problem with their computer when they hung up on me.

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Computer Phone Scams

Crazy Trip

Steve — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:59:53 +0000

I don’t know why but there were a number of really crazy things that happened on my way to work this morning. Two involved cars and the other two were on the radio.

The firsat car driver appeared to be in a real hurry. Every chance he got he exceeded the speed limit by as much as he could and sped past all the other cars until he had to slow down because of the other traffic on the road. I noticed him several times over half of my trip to work. The first time was as he came flying past me just after I had turned onto the main road that I follow most of the way to work. I saw him again at each set of traffic lights that I had to stop at (usually just behind me in the other lane). I saw him a couple more times as he came sppeding past me again. The last time I saw him he was way behind me waiting for the opportunity to turn right. I had stayed within the speed limit that whole way.

The second crazy driver had the idea that simply indicating gave him right of way to change lanes regardless of whether there was already a car next to him in that lane.

The first crazy on the radio had called in to a quiz but before answering the question decided to spend several minutes complaining about something. What he was complaining about I don’t know as I turned the radio off until after he finished.

The second crazy on the radio was answering the question “how many sides does a dodecahedron have”. The prior person had guessed 6 (which is of course a cube) and this person gave the correct answer of 12 but then went on to add extra incorrect information saying that a fifty cent piece is an example of a dodecahedron (which it isn’t because A. a 50 cent piece has 14 sides not 12 and B. Not all of the sides on a 50 cent piece are the same shape since 12 of the sides are rectangles and the other 2 are dodecagons whereas all the sides on a dodecahedron are pentagons). Why add unnecessary information when answering a question if the extra info you are going to add is incorrect?

Anyway, the crazies on the radio didn’t distract me and I was able to pay sufficient attention to the crazies on the road so as to arrive safely.

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Crazy Trip