Ben Tasker's Blog
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Published: Tuesday, 13 January 2015 15:07
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Written by Ben Tasker
We've heard Theresa May parroting the same lines for months, but in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, David Cameron has joined the choir of people calling for new surveillance powers.
Mr Cameron has stated that if the Conservatives are re-elected, he will ensure that there is no form of communication that cannot be intercepted by the government.
So, one of the question we'll be examining in this post, is - Is David Cameron
- An idiot who doesn't understand the technology he's talking about
- Demonstrating that pre-election promises are inevitably broken
- Planning on introducing a draconian surveillance state
- Being mis-informed by other parties
- Simply creating sound-bites to raise the chances of re-election
Most of the coverage thus far has focused on option 3 - which seems fair given that it's the inevitable result of actually attempting to do what he is claiming.
We'll also be taking a look at why Option 3 could, and should not happen
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Published: Friday, 02 January 2015 03:38
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Written by Ben Tasker
As I wrote recently, the EU definition of the Place of Supply with regard to digital services has shifted to the place in which the customer resides.
As a result of the change (and more importantly, the bureaucracy involved in both recording the place of supply and filing returns) all digital downloads within my Shop section have been withdrawn from sale.
You can read more about why this decision had to be made in my earlier post.
If, for whatever reason, you've a burning desire to purchase something that was previously on sale, please Contact Me to arrange a manual transaction.
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Published: Wednesday, 24 December 2014 18:58
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Written by Ben Tasker
I was quite excited when Mailpile was released as a beta, and it made it onto my list of 'must have a play with'. Life being life though, I didn't get chance to give it a proper go until recently.
Sadly, it was somewhat anti-climactic and I've been left feeling more than a little underwhelmed. Mailpile shows a lot of potential, but it's definitely not ready for production yet.
I ran my testing on a CentOS 6 VM, and in this post will summarise the good and the bad.
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Published: Sunday, 28 December 2014 20:25
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Written by Ben Tasker
It's that time of year - time to renew car tax. I figured I'd give the monthly direct debit a go and see whether paying the extra little bit is worth avoiding the yearly pain of remembering you need to find a few hundred quid up front.
For anyone who's not used it yet, the process of setting up is smooth and easy (in an almost distinctly non-government IT way), unfortunately it turns out there's a fairly big issue with the final step.
I should be fair, and point out that the service is provided by DirectGov rather than the DVLA directly, but IMHO it remains the DVLA's responsibility.
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Published: Monday, 08 December 2014 13:08
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Written by Ben Tasker
The shop section of my site will be closing for business on 31 December 2014 and I'll be withdrawing all digital downloads from sale.
It's not something I actually wanted to have to do, but as the changes to the EU VAT rules come into effect on the 1 January 2015 (HMRC at least are calling it VAT MOSS), the additional overhead involved in compliance means that running the shop will likely no longer be financially feasible.
The closure will include everything in my (somewhat small) shop, so
- Joomla Extensions
- Ebooks
- Credlocker Extensions
- Photos
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