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Written by Bob H
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Monday, 25 October 2010 08:57 |
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So, let me get this straight:
- Google sent cars driving around the world to gather data about the areas they pass through.
- Amongst things they captured:
- 3D topographical data
- Panoramic photographs
- Wireless signals
- They sniffed for any wifi signals that were being broadcast in the proximity and captured the raw signal.
- Some people don't have security enabled on their wireless networks
Thus, because Google sniffed whatever was about and because some people don't use security on their networks their information was gathered. It was gathered in much the same way that anyone could and frankly these people who were snooped were broadcasting their details to anyone who could hear.
Last time I checked it wasn't illegal to receive/record broadcasts, let alone those that are unencrypted! The entire process of prosecution of Google for this is a preposterous farce which the press can enjoy and which can give civil servants something to keep them occupied.
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Written by Bob H
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Monday, 24 May 2010 15:30 |
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How odd, I was looking at the statistics for this web site and I see that I get absolutely hammered by the search engines:
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| Top Total User Agents |
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| # | Hits | User Agent |
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| 1 |
44502 |
35.25% |
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp/3.0; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp) |
| 2 |
32571 |
25.80% |
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) |
| 3 |
14190 |
11.24% |
Mozilla/5.0 (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuil.com/twiceler/robot.html) |
| 4 |
6888 |
5.46% |
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Vagabondo/4.0; webcrawler at wise-guys dot nl; http://webagent.wise-guys.nl/; http://www.wise-guys. |
| 5 |
1481 |
1.17% |
Yandex/1.01.001 (compatible; Win16; I) |
| 6 |
1443 |
1.14% |
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.1; http://www.dotnetdotcom.org/,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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So, this means that 101075 hits are from search engines out of the total 126256 hits or that search engines make up exactly 80% of the traffic to this site. Nice that Yahoo and Google love me so much but the 1GB of content they downloaded over 1GB of content. Would be nice if they could tone it down a bit. I've already adjusted my crawl rate on the engines but I seem to have missed Yahoo and now have made some efforts there to correct that.
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Written by Bob H
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Monday, 17 May 2010 14:16 |
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So, in the news today was the fact that the e-Borders "RING OF STEEL" cost £1.2bn to set-up and has resulted in:
- 2,000 arrests
- 48,682 alerts
- 1,000 refused entry
- 14,000 intelligence reports
So, lets put this in context. this security mechanism designed to protect us has cost us £600,000 per arrest to date. Now, I appreciate that the initial start up costs don't reflect the future of the system, but lets assume it takes 5 years to achieve Return on Investment (most IT systems are budgeted this way) well we have now achieved a cost of £120,000 per arrest. Bargain!
So, what will £1.2bn buy you?
I will leave you to decide what value the e-Borders scheme has to you, does it make you feel more safe to know this? |
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Written by Bob H
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Sunday, 09 May 2010 12:00 |
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We are currently house hunting and that is proving to be quite a painful experience because the market really has over-inflated the price of property in the UK. I look at some of the properties and I think, why would I pay that much?! But, I really want to build my first house, however the market for land is even more uncertain. The houses that I visit have proportions that are designed for a different generation and the market seems to be under the impression they can sell a property with some over inflated price based on the value if the property was renovated less some minimal cost to renovate*. One significant factor is that we are a couple that like to cook together and most kitchens are too small, thus you either compromise your lifestyle or factor in major structural changes. With land I find that people price it based on the potential, which isn't fair because they haven't actually put any effort into giving the land value. Land shouldn't be worth some mythical value which doesn't actually give you anything in return because at the end of the day it is a location plus dirt not a virtual house.
So, if someone reading this knows of some land to buy or has some land they want to sell then let me know! I will even pay 1% commission to anyone helping me secure the purchase of some suitable land. There is an incentive for you!
* In addition many people add in the expense of moving and selling the property plus the expense of buying their next property. More on the fairness of the property market in this article on economically sustainable housing. |
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Written by Bob H
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Friday, 30 April 2010 08:45 |
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I love tigers, they are my favourite animal in the world and it is my greatest ambition to see one in the wild. I would also love to meet a tiger in person but I realise that this cannot be practical because this isn't the way that tigers behave in the real world. I don't like seeing Tigers in captivity but I understand it is good to look after them in the west for their preservation but I am unsure about socialising them. My greatest challenge however is that even though I love them I worry about preservation tourisms impact on wildlife.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2010/apr/29/india-bans-tiger-tourism |
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