I just came across this article on ZDnet from Richard Stiennon and felt I had to say something about it as it’s the most rubbish I have read in a long time and displays a complete misunderstanding of the issues at hand from a so called “industry consultant”.

“Evidently the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee is discussing classifying IP addresses as personally identifiable information. That is crazy talk of the third degree. They think of IP addresses as physical addresses when they should think of them as freeway exits. I, for instance, live nearest to exit 69 , Big Beaver Road, off of I-75. (yeah, yeah, its a big joke around here). And, of course, that exit number can change at anytime, arbitrarily. I can see how the clueless can be confused by IP addresses.”

Not everyone has a dynamic address you know, and a static address is personally identifiable information and should be protected as such. You can often resolve an IP to a physical address using an ARIN or RIPE search. Even with DHCP, some cable/DSL providers assign the same MAC address with the same IP everytime, which in essence becomes “your” IP until you replace your modem.

A google search for my own IP throws up results for server logs of many sites I have visited in the past. While the Commission have come up with some crazy rules, this is one of the better ones. Crazy talk? I don’t think so, not if you value your privacy.

A few months back I purchased a Meade ETX-80 telescope and managed to get everything up and running. I was able to view some excellent shots of the Moon and also of Jupiter. Part of the draw of this telescope is it’s “Autostar” controller, which once programmed and aligned allows you to simply enter what you wish to view and it will turn and rotate to zone in on the object you selected.

There is also the option to connect the telescope to your laptop and use the AutoStar package to it. I was going to purchase the cable to connect it up until I came across the Meade MySky. It’s not available just yet, but it looks excellent. You can simply turn it on, point it at a object, and then pull the trigger to identify planets, stars, nebula and galaxies. It has a 480×234 full-color LCD screen, uses SD cards for storage and a 12 channel GPS unit. Best of all, it will connect to my existing ETX-80 telescope and control it too. I’ll have to get my hands on one as soon as they are available.

A (not so) simple number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

 

 

 

 

Earthlings has certainly given me something to think about, and I hope it gives you something to think about too.

 

 

 

 

 

 
I’ve never been a big fan of meat, but my wife and I have decided to try cut it out completely.We’ve also decided to give up the smokes too! Giving up cigarettes and meat in one week? I’m almost scared I’m going to become one of those health freaks I have always hated!

Here are some pictures of the total lunar eclipse currently happening across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. I’ll be updating the pictures throughout the night.

Update 00:13 4th March: As usual the Irish weather has come along and is trying to ruin the spectacle! A bit of high cloud cover has moved in which is causing photography conditions to deteriorate.

Update 01:46 4th March: Well the moon has now left the Earth’s Umbra so it’s all pretty much over. The cloud tried to ruin things at the end but was high and thin enough not to block out everything. All in all it was a pretty good night. It’s times like this though that I wish I’d invested in a Cannon EOS 30D or 5D but my old Fuji S5600 still produced some good shots.

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While the guys at Rubyred Labs are not busy developing web and mobile applications they’re out scouring Silicon Valley to find schwag, the t-shirts, ballcaps, notepads, stickers, keychains, and other booty blaring the slogans that define Valley tech companies. For US$30 (including shipping) they’ll send you a Valley Schwag care package packed with different stuff, including a t-shirt, stickers and other interesting stuff.

After pestering them to support shipping to Ireland, they finally gave in and agreed to ship here! My package arrived a few weeks back and contained a minglenow.com t-shirt, some stickers from Webshots, Mashery, RooftopComedy and Compete, a Turistas shot syringe, a set of Perplex City puzzle cards and a copy of The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. Now all of us outside of the Valley can get in on the schwag action too!

A colleague of mine recently asked me to have a look at a laptop they had purchased in one of the large computer stores over Christmas complaining of all the usual symptoms of a virus/trojan/spyware infection. I agreed to have a look at it and clean it up.

After clearing down the most obvious pieces of malware, I set about running Windows update. To my amazement, not one single patch had been applied to the machine, nor even automatic updates enabled. Remember, this machine, a brand name laptop, was just purchased in late December of 2006 from a large computer store. In this day and age, selling a laptop with a fresh install of Windows XP without any patches applied is akin to selling a car without any seat-belts, lights or brakes!

While the laptop is “usable”, as the car would be, it is most certainly not safe for use in any way. I have no doubt that the machine was compromised within minutes of it being connected to the Internet. Within less than two months, 19 pieces of malware had made their way onto the system, all the usual suspects were there including Blaster, NetSky, MyDoom and even ProAgent.

The person in question had made quite a few purchases on-line, including one for WinAntiVirus2006, which did nothing but add more malware to the system and certainly didn’t remove any infections! I told them it would probably be a good idea to contact their bank and have their credit card cancelled as I’m pretty sure something or someone had got a hold of it and it was just a matter of time before it was used.

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s time for a license to sell computers, or at least a basic set of standards a retailer must adhere to before being allowed to sell computers. It doesn’t need to be anything draconian, just some simple rules that ensure that the computers being sold are not putting people at unnecessary risk of on-line fraud, spyware infestation and possibly identity theft.

While I strongly feel that users in general need to be better educated about the need for applying updates, using good anti-virus software and so on, I feel the retailers also need to take some responsibility for the products they sell. Getting back to the car analagy, it’s like the car-dealer telling you after buy the car you need to fit the brakes and the seat-belts yourself.

Well it’s official, I am once again a student! Nearly 10 years after I finished school, I’m finally going to college. I decided to take two Open University courses, M150 - Data, Computing and Information and T175 - Networked Living: Exploring Information and Communication Technologies

So far everything is very straight forward and pretty much as I expected. Some things on the course are very, very simple but it is still interesting non the less. My main worry is that I’m not going to take it seriously and end up getting caught out further down the line.

How do other people deal with taking university courses in something which you have 8 years practical, hands on, experience with?