Offmessage

Interesting blog post from Evan Davies of the BBC about Value Engineering (if you like that sort of thing, of course). That’s not the point of this post, however. What caught my eye was this comment. When did Panorama become Tonight With Trevor MacDonald? I mean really.

Ostensibly this is an article about the recent bees hate mobile phones scare. In fact, it’s a general rant about bad science and invisible death rays (and a pissing contest between the Grauniad and the Independent too).

For the sake of clarity - bee colonies really are disappearing, but the research quoted about mobile phones is apparently bollocks. As is WiFi smog and anything else you can’t see but scares you.

Marvellous…

Hum… The BBC reports today that Nokia has announced that it, too, thinks that warchalking is theft.

Clearly this is a major thing for them, but surely this is somewhat akin to Microsoft telling us that holes in their software should not be exploited. If you’re using an insecure wireless LAN it really is your lookout, in the same way as if you have a confidential phone call in the middle of a library - anyone who wants to listen can. My mate Mr White has been involved in this - he finds networks all the time (it’s part of his job). Chalking is simply pointing out where they are. Christ, in some countries they do it anyway, and EasyNet are setting it up across Brighton now, for a small monthly fee.

If you can’t secure yourself, you shouldn’t be using the technology…

(At the moment warchalking.org is down - he was looking for a new host a couple of weeks ago - I assume that the bad press has caused him to get kicked off)