Just playing about with my new phone gifted from my aunt. Love the e-mail features though a way to kill the t-mobile branding would be good?
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We’ve had months of headlines about the dangers of MySpace, Bebo and the other social networking websites. The US Government has been making regulatory noises, the media boiling and bubbling cases of toil and trouble online, and schools all too eager to write home warning of their perils. The schools irritate me the most, actually, with their brazenly populist appeal to parents attempting to score a few easy brownie points by saying ‘We blocked Bebo’ as if it had been a gigantic struggle.
How curious, therefore, to see the following on BBC News today. As part of an effort to deter bullies in schools, children will be able to vote on the worst offenders in their school via a website.
“Bully Beater is part of the School Poll service used to gauge children’s opinions on a number of subjects. It lists all pupils in a school alphabetically, allowing their peers to rank them on a bullying scale.”
(Emphasis mine)
Oh good! So anyone with access to this website would have a list of every single pupil in the school. Will there be logins? Sure. Aren’t there logins to Bebo and Myspace too?
On a much better note, Yahoo and Windows Live Messengers have now linked up, as long promised. That’ll be more scary online people to talk to then… 
I happen to have a fairly generic Hotmail address as a ‘spare’ e-mail account, and routinely get e-mails from companies where someone has signed up to a website using my address.
The best behaved include an ‘activation link’ before the account can be used, verifying that the e-mail address really does belong to that person before allowing them to use the site. (Bonus points for including a ‘deactivation link’ in the e-mail straight away, that makes my life a lot easier.) Sadly, a great number of websites decide to take everything on trust and happily send out a welcome e-mail without doing any verification.
OK… so no big deal. The initial e-mail usually includes a username and password so I can log on, close whatever stupid account has been opened, and move on. In the rare and annoying cases where no ‘Delete my account’ is available I can always change the e-mail address (no verification, remember?) and password, ensuring it becomes a dead account that no-one has access to. Good. Shame on you for abusing my e-mail address in the first place.
Today, however, this happened with Juno Records. Not only did they happily let someone sign up to this site, they also allowed them to buy products on it, all without checking the e-mail address was genuine! It gets worse. Here’s a screenshot from the site:
Juno Account
This is sloppy design that puts people at risk.
I’m pleased to say that we finally have a comprehensive backup system for our home network, an important part of computer administration which up to now has been slightly disparate and disjointed. The new hardware – an external 160GB Seagate hard drive connected via USB. We also picked up some DVD+Rs to replace the current CD-R regime for certain documents that can be stored off-site.
Interesting, when taking into account the documents stored on all 4 PCs (including photos, music and video) the total cost only comes to a little over 20GB which leaves plenty of room for expansion! 
I hope everyone has been sticking with The Apprentice too – very good episode tonight I thought. Especially Margaret ‘Mother Hen’ Mountford’s comment (sorry, just what we call her 
) that they were dealing with “A winger, a liar and a planner”! The weaker ones are definitely being whittled down now (after a couple of unfair firings earlier) which should lead to an exciting climax. I think Ruth is the strongest at the moment, with Ansell also impressing to some extent. Paul… well, he has a chance.
Oh, and that wonderful moment in life when a vending machine gives you extra change? I got 50p from that today 
A little while ago I stumbled across Ebon Musings. It’s a very well argued Atheist site with nicely written essays so I sent the author a note to say so. Well, while I was in New York an email landed in my inbox to announce the launch of Daylight Atheism – his new project in blog form.
I’m always wary of ever acting like Atheism is some sort of cult, with binding beliefs or philosophies. It’s not a group and it’s not a movement, and there can’t be any leader or structure, because it’s not a religion – it’s just a state of belief. So I’m not at all promising that it will reflect my own views (although chances are they’ll be pretty close 
). That disclaimer aside: go check it out. Worth reading, especially as written by an American who finds himself in an increasingly fundamentalist country.
And on a totally different note – I fulfilled a lifetime ambition today and bought a copy of Broadcast, ‘the weekly newspaper of the television and radio industry.’ Hurrah! I missed the news about FilmFour launching on Freeview in July too. 
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
