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Pages not Rendering Properly? Home News About me Contact Me Phorm's History Porcelain Pictures Services Projects Articles Whitepapers Getting Started With Linux Documentation Reviews Dispute Archives Page Archives Yearly Indexes Archived Links Terms and conditons of webhosting Links Sitemap Search Benscomputer.no-ip.org Copyright Information Privacy Policy	I've never seen myself as some one who could blog but they say talking helps. So In order to try and keep my sanity I have started this blog. There may be offensive language on this page, so please do not read if you are easily offended. 18th December 2006 Well Suffolk Police Have arrested a man in connection with the recent killings. Whenever I check for any updates within the media, I cannot escape their use of the word 'Prostitute', they seem to use the word to describe and define these girls. That I cannot condone, prostitutes or not they were still someones daughters, girlfriends and mothers. Being a prostitute does not mean that they ahve any less right to live than you or I. Whatever these girls circumstances these deaths are no more acceptable than if it were the Queen herself who had been murdered. No-one has the right to palce one human life above another. For those of you who still do not grasp the simple fact that these were not murders of some subclass species but in fact other human beings, imagine that they were your daughters. Imagine spending this Christmas without your child. The families have already said that they do not want their daughters remembered as prostitutes but as the loving lively girls that they were, this is the way they should be remembered, but I fear, given the way the mainstream press is going about this issue this may not be the case. For the families of Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Tania Nicol, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls I would like to express my deepest condolences, and say that I only wish these events could have been pre-empted somehow. I would like to add that I am in the process of compiling an archive of news stories about this case for historical reference, once it has been created I will set up a link. I only hope that nothing like this will ever happen again. Posted by Shifty_ben 13th December 2006 - Oh dear Anyone who watches the news in the UK at the moment will be aware fo current goings-on in Ipswich. For those across the water or those that haven't seen we have had a string of murders and dissappearances, believed to be perpetrated by one person. In other words we have a serial killer on the loose. There has been a lot of coverage of this on the news, however I felt that some may like to hear the point of view of someone who lives in Ipswich, I know many of my customers in Bury have been asking about it. Just to get those who don't know up to speed there have been 5 victims to date, all female and all prostitutes. However the fact that they were prostitutes does not in anyway detract from the severity of this crime, they were all someone's daughters. In fact as it turns out one of my old customers knows the family of one of the girls. Currently the streets are almost empty at night, people are trying to avoid going out unless they absolutely have to, more or less everyone is going with at least one other person when they have to go anywhere, I have never seen the streets so empty at night. Unsurprisingly there are a lot more Police on the streets at the moment, in fact Detectives have been drafted in from Norwich to help maintain the vigilance. Reactions to these goings on have all been of disgust, and I have heard a great many novel ways of punishing this person once they are caught. Some may recall that I do not have much faith in the Police, I want to clarify the fact that for most tasks they are unable to respond as they would normally do so because of paperwork, I daresay that most of that paperwork has been slung out of the window in order to establish a full force on the streets. I believe that when this Sick fuck is caught, once shown guilty the Victims families should have the right to decide what happens to him, human rights aside (he did after all strip these girls of their right to live). This of course will never happen, but those amongst the populace that are lamenting the fact that we have no death penalty, if this sick cunt goes inside then he is a dead man. Pure and simple, many of the convicts in the more local prisons will know of someone who knows someone who knew the family, thats just the way Ipswich is. If caught this person is dead, pure and simple. Judging by the reaction of many in Ipswich if this persons identity were to get out before the Police were able to arrest him, then he is even more likely to be dead. I would also like to clarify that although I have used 'he' several times there is currently little to suggest that it is a man, it could equally well be female. The bodies were not mutilated (as far as I know) so this does not suggest a man who 'has it in for women' The only true suggestion that the sick fuck is male so far is the fact that the street walkers appear to have gone with him/her quietly. Ill keep you updated 4th December 2006 - The shit hits the fan! As some UK readers may be aware Threshers was on the news several nights ago, it seems that the business partner discount coupon has been passed around the net a bit! at least 850000 times to be exact! Every single one of these vouchers has to be honoured so long as the stock is available in store. The analyst on the news hinted that Threshers may still be making money from it, today I am telling you that from what I can calaculate we are losing it for the most part! This was not a marketing ploy, it was quite simply an idea not thought out as well as it should be, or so I believe. We actually had someone return the wine they bought with this voucher yesterday because they had believed that the Buy 2 Get 3rd free was included, the ladies reasoning was that she wasn't paying that much for it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but with the 40% you are saving more than with the Buy 2 Get 3rd Free! Of course the B2G3F isn't included, no company can afford to do that! An interesting point I would like to make is that the analyst on the news commented about this displaying what a markup wine shops have. This is absolute bollocks, pure and simple. Firstly as far as I can tell we are making little if any profit from this deal, and secondly our single prices are what they are in order to help support the B2G3F deal. If you would like to know why Tesco's prices are so low look for a definition of deep discounting on Google. One fo their facourite tricks is to pay the tax from your bottle of wine not from what you pay for the wine, but spread it over other products. A question I regularly ask my customers when they comment on prices vs Tesco's is "Is there anything you regularly buy from a small shop? whether it be vegetables or toilet roll?" if the answer is yes then I point out to them that every time they shop at Tescos they are in fact helping to put the smaller shop out of business. The multiple grocers (Supermarkets) have a highly unfair advantage at this point in time, and there have been several calls to look into these companies. If people buy all their products at Tescos then in 20 years thee will be no more small shops, which means if the supermarkets don't stock it (for example Cloudy bay wine) you won't be able to get it. Cloudy Bay as used in the example is a wine from New Zealand, it carries quite a high price not only because of its gorgeous taste and finish but also because it is quite rare. The suppliers will only let each company have a certain amount as their production level is quite small. This effectively means you will not be seeing it in supermarkets. Once all the smaller shops are gone the Supermarkets will be able to set any price they want, keep in mind tesco may not always be cheap. I am not going to even touch upon the customer service in Tescos, I think I have related to enough people the story of the worker who told me that he didn't think "we hold that brand" when I asked where the New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs were. 28th November 2006 Well, I have actually done some more work on Manipulate, only a few extra lines all in all but it has been stagnating somewhat recently. I'm hoping to include Bluetooth authentication support at some point, currently the only authentication available requires GPG, the alternative username system is far from secure unfortunately. Manipulate is currently over 3000 lines long including modules, and I am quite impressed with what I have managed to do thus far. It is perfectly usable for its core jobs such as managing Apache servers etc. The multiple server option needs to be implemented for it to be much use on a multi-server network though, whilst the security is somewhat lacking I do not think it wise to enable that option just yet. Bluetooth is an idea for authentication with the plus sides being that person has to actually be there or in the vicinity to authenticate (or at least their bluetooth device does.) However it requires a bluetooth adaptor on the system and is also open to abuse, especially in an office where the system may be used by a lot of people. Other ideas of authentication are still on the board but I will look into that soon. I am intending to post the tarball of version 0.5 when it is released, as although the web update function does work, version 1 seems a long way away, some of the changes are so huge that it makes far more sense to download the tarball, especially as I do sometimes break the updatescript when working on the system. It had been my intention to write the entire system in a BASH script, however I am begining to think certain elements should perhaps be written in another language, authentication particularly. Well thats all for now, i am going to delve back into Manipulate and do some bughunting! 19th November 2006 I had an interesting conversation with a customer yesterday, it's not often that our customers will start ranting about the government without me saying something first. He seems to be following my thought lines with a lot of what he saud, especially about binge drinking and the like. One comment he made in relation to the UKs plans to put black boxes in cars and charge per mile was fairly true though. He said that he had spoken to a lot of people who weren't happy about the plans, but no-one was doing anything about it. His view was that if everyone who was not happy about it simply said "Fuck you, you are not having my keys to put that fucking thing in my car!" the plans would be dead almost immediately, after all even the government cannot take 27 million people to court. I think this illustrates a further point, people in Britain are always complaining about the government, but very few people seem to do anything about it. We need to come together and tell the government very firmly to stop. The situation is not helped by the fact that the British no longer get to vote for a party that they like, we only have a choice of whether we vote our current government out or not, given that none of the opposition seem any better. It is time that the British public did something about this stalemate, it is time to get these fat greedy politicians out of power, and replace them with someone with a cut of moral decency. The longer we leave it the harder it gets, though I do not believe many people will be falling for Mr Blairs false promises this time round. The general election is still some time away, so all we can really do at the moment is hope that Labour do not fuckm up our country anymore than they already have. But in the meantime look at all the political candidates in your area and start evaluating now which people hold the right moral fibre, try and evaluate it not just on your local candidate but also on who is likely to be PM if that party gains its majority. It is time that this stopped, so far I have met no-one who is even remotely pleased with how the government has served us. I truly believe the only reason that Labour won the last general election was because noone else was any better. This has to be changed before the next election otherwise Britain is doomed. Remember which Government is spending your hard earned money on things that nobody wants - wars, ID Cards, Biometric passports that have already been cracked, black boxes. Lets get shot of this government and pray that the next one is slightly better. Posted by Shifty_Ben 14th November 2006 - Money, money, money Well at some point I get the huge pleasure of paying the taxman a visit. Once again it would appear they have fucked it up, but given that the government taxes absolutely everything thats no real surprise. I worked out today, on my basic wage I should be getting taxed around about �14 a month with another �16 on top of that for National Insurance. I have never seen them take anything even remotely as low as that. Everybody is after your money nowadays, you hear a lot of people say why should I pay tax? the government does nothing for me. It doesn't quite work like that sadly. I had an education (though not the education my parents wanted due to the catchment system, we were literally on the wrong side of the road!) so whilst my education was of a fairly poor standard I believe I am partially paying the state back for that. However that is all they have really done for me. I rarely use the NHS, my NI payments certainly cover the expenses I run up when I do use the NHS. As for the theory of the government maintaining highways, every time they change the road (resurfacing etc.) they manage to make it all the more dangerous for bikes. The government is currently too focused on getting itself fat, and is no longer paying attention to what its constituents need and want. I will be insisting on my rebate as I am not willing to give this government any money whatsoever. Of course I have to pay a little towards them, and as I say I want to re-imburse them for my crappy education but other than that I do not wish to even know this government exists anymore. For example, the governemnt taxes your income, and then your purchases (including rent), and if you are one of those nice people who saves up their money to leave to their children or grandchildren, then when the inheritance is left the Taxman will try and take a cut of that as well, despite the fact that they already got their share of the money when it was paid to you. The whole idea of taxes comes from the day of greedy kings trying to bring more money into the treasury, and in reality the motivation behind some of our taxes has never really changed from that. There are without a doubt very very few states that do not tax their population, and I am certainly not suggesting that taxes be done away with altogether, however things have to change.l Far to many crimes are criminalized, it may seem fair to imprison someone who DOS's a site, but don't forget it is the taxpayers who will pay for their 'accommodation.' Certain crimes should certainly be criminalized, but the lesser crime should not, it is a waste of money and a waste of resources. I recently wrote in this blog about how the government was criminilasing everyone by creating so many 'nothing' laws that no-one knows what is legal anymore. This is the issue, tax money needs to be better spent, education and healthcare are sorely lacking. Not to mention the brains department within Traffic and roadways planning. One day, I hope Britain will have a government with brains, morals and a sufficient intellect to realise that they are pouring our money down the drain, not to mention the waste of resources created by the numerous fuck ups that people encounter everyday when dealing with government agencies. As to those politicians who are asking for more funding, more taxes on areas such as binge drinking I say one thing; "Fuck off, you are not having any more of my money than I can avoid giving you" I am so tired of checking my finances every month and finding I have been bled dry by the taxman. Posted by Shifty_Ben 11th November 2006 I took my bike test again yesterday and failed, but it was a fair cop, my U-turn was the worst I have ever done and knowing that I had failed on that my riding became somewhat dejected. In fact I very nearly got hit on a roundabout as we were returning to the test centre. I never saw the woman in the car coming, and have no idea how she got past the queue of traffic blocking the roundabout in that direction. Luckily I saw her in time to do an emergency stop but not soon enough to avoid getting a major for failing. I had an interview on Thursday for a new(ish) job. I say newish because it is with the same company, but at a different branch and a different job description. SO as of the 1st of December or around about them I will be an assistant manager. Still nothing from the Parking lot, but its Sunday tomorrow so I know there won't be anything tomorrow (No post) hopefully Monday or Tuesday there will be something, otherwise I will set the wheels rolling on the next stage, though I may have to decide what that will be. There has been some interesting discussion about this over at Linuxformat.co.uk. All in all an interesting week but thats the way it goes. Posted by Shifty_Ben 05th November 2006 My Apologies Today has been a busy day, and I apologise for the slightly strange look the site has adopted today. the reason this page and the Index page currently only contain one posting is because I have done another page split. It won't look so bad once I have Posted some more stuff to each of them. We are slowly getting there, however and I will be posting some more stuff by the end of the day with any luck. It looks like I may have a promotion on the way, it will mean working at a different branch, but I think the change will probably do me good. I decided recently that I need to either start moving up the company or leave it, as fortune would have it I was told about a job within the company which means more pay, better benefits and more responsibility. I still hvae to interview for the job, but hopefully I will get it. Posted by Shifty_Ben Page 2 Page 1

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