Who needs James Bond?

 It really takes the fun out of espionage when you sell military secrets on eBay

 The University of Glamorgan has been dabbling in international spying recently.  With the help of two other universities across the globe they decided to buy some hard drives.

 Stating eBay, computer auctions and computer fairs as their sources the University revealed that they had managed to obtain both military and commercial secrets.  It appears that important people do not seem to realise that that delete button may not do that.

 It’s the stable of a good crime drama to have computer whizzes/nerds (I prefer the former but I know how small minded some people can be) searching the hard drives of suspects for that hidden stash of incriminating evidence, so why do big companies find it so hard to realise?

 Putting ‘Destroy hard drive’ into Google gives you 1,880,000 results with pages ranging from Wikihow’s informative 7 steps to more tongue in cheek methods (boydcreative.net creatively suggests military thermite would do the job – unfortunately neglecting to mention where you might obtain some).  The BBC and which? Magazine have got in on the act as well, in an article you can see here.

 However it seems that even with all this information around companies still want to make a quick buck by selling their computers to the public.  Some other companies make a quick buck with a $50 billion currency exchange – thanks to their carelessness you could pinpoint the US consultant who put it through.

 It’s not only businesses that are careless with their data though.  The stereotypically efficient German’s decided to sell a hard drive in France – neglecting to properly delete security records and network data.

 With this information it seems that James Bond and his contemporaries might soon find themselves out of a job.  Idiocy and carelessness may yet cause more job redundancies…

Originally publised at http://www.pulsepulse.co.uk/?p=686

Pushing forwards with the old journalism malarky!

After my possible relative success that may or may not appear in the next issue of 360-gamer I’ve decided to push forwards with some of this journalism stuff, putting the theatre writing on the back burner for a while.   I’m not entirely sure why I feel the need to do this, but it could be something to do with more immediate financial rewards that could be on offer.

I’ve had the first article put in, now I’m going to widen my aim and try and hit up some internet sites.  I’m sure that some have a bit of a budget for freelancers, and if not they may even give me a real job – although that would be a bit of a pipe dream at the moment.

Once articles are in print/online I’ll try and get some links to them up here under the old ‘journalism’ page.  I know I keep promising this but I really hope to get it done now!  As well as the theatre blogroll I also intend to start adding links to various intelligent computer games people who I’ll be bugging for quotes and whatnot over the next few weeks.

I hope these grand plans aren’t scaring any of you (my family are consistently laughing at my ambitions, which I must admit is a little offputting.  But never mind eh?)

Loves

Phil

Some more details (kind of)

 

right then.  I’ve got an e-mail from the BBC asking me to sign my life away and all that.  Its all pretty standard stuff, no stealing property and no slandering the BBC etc.

Getting very excited now for something that’s still a month away! 

I had a thought last night.  What do I want from this placement?  Its a broadcast journalism placement with Midlands today so hopefully I’ll get to go out and help a broadcast being made.  I’d also like to see some of the editing and production side, although all that in a three day placement may prove too much!

I think that whatever happens I’ll just be grateful that I’ll have an opportunity that so few people have, and I’ll try and learn as much as possible!

Going to post next about my play EXPERIMENT with a final cast list.  Thought I’d divide the posts up to save confusion.

Kisses

Phil