[Gllug] What the government is doing it IT .

[Peter Adamson]

Richard Jones wrote:

>On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 06:28:06PM +0100, Peter Adamson wrote:
>  
>
>>1) The manner in which files are saved in a file should be openly 
>>documented, allowing anyone to undersand the way in which information 
>>has been saved.
>>    
>>
>
>If you could word this a little bit better (pun not intended) then
>this sounds like a good idea. Enforcing it as a law however ... there
>are all sorts of radical implications. eg. If I'm in the middle of a
>game, and I save the game, then the state of the game should be in an
>easily modifiable format? So I can just change <player level="1"/> ?
>
Cool. I think its probably ok to make an acception of games, since its 
reasonable
to asssume the consumer would want to only use one program to access a 
saved game file.
(Just so long as the definition of "game" doesn't extend to certain word 
processors ;)

>
>I kind of agree with it, but kind of also think it's a matter of
>consumer education and free market competition. If consumers were
>better educated, AND there wasn't a certain large monopoly, then we'd
>have interoperable file formats. The implications of this are great: a
>huge secondary market for small and large companies in applications
>which modify, transform, verify, share, etc. company documents. Kind
>of what Merjis is trying to do (and can't do because we're faced with
>numerous binary formats). This secondary market could create large
>numbers of jobs ...
>
>  
>
>>2) Government officials in charge of purchasing software should sumbit 
>>an email at least once a year stating how much software / OSs they have 
>>purchased. What the cost was,
>>    
>>
>[..]
>
>What's your Lib Dem MP/MEP's motivation? What is going to get them
>press attention?
>
>Certainly not forcing officials to go through extra red tape every
>year.
>
>How about this: by not shipping billions of UKP to the US software
>industry every year, we could create local jobs and improve the
>balance of payments! (Particularly creating the local jobs bit).
>Force government departments to buy British --- and that means British
>software companies, but _mainly_ it means open source software.  By
>installing open source software, you're generating a whole secondary
>industry in support and maintenance, and guess what, that industry is
>made up of Britons. Who need jobs.
>
My experience of off-shore tech support:
I was at a hosting center when the buildings internal security system 
locked both myself,
my CEO and the security guard (who was supposed to be escorting us) inside.
It took halve an hour to get through to the US, to get them to remotly 
reset the security system!

In the end we had to use an emergency escape device to unlock the door!
Given this, No 4 is going to be keeping government tech support local :)

>  
>
>>3)All ISPs should have an LDAP server rigged up so that when a customer 
>>logs on, their IP address is associated with a unique subscriber number.
>>The LDAP server should only accept connections from trusted parties (ie 
>>the police).
>>When a police "bot" which acts on a node on a Peer-to-Peer network such 
>>as gnutella detects certain words like "pre-teen", the police bot can 
>>use protocol "x" to look up
>>the ISPs LDAP server, perform an enquiry matching the users IP address 
>>to their unique subscriber number. The bot then can make a note of the 
>>subsciber number & ISP.
>>After say 10 hits, the bot could then email the police, who could then 
>>use the unique sub number & ISP info to find out which computer had been 
>>searching for child porn.
>>    
>>
>
>I leave this to the rest of the group to discuss.
>
>Useful for me though. Next time I really need to get rid of a noisy
>neighbour, annoying spammer, nosy inlaws, etc. I'll just write a small
>virus which invades their Windoze computer and starts making
>"pre-teen" requests to Gnutella. I won't be seeing them for 15 years
>or so.
>
>Only joking.
>  
>
While you were only joking, it does raise a serious point.
The LDAP server / police bot, is only designed to give enough 
information to justify a search warrant.
So in this particular case your neghbour would only get his computer 
searched ;)

>Rich.
>
>  
>



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