TechAgility

Well I do find this amusing as last night we were just watching the Top Gear episode where Ranulph Clarkson and Ranulph May attempt to race Ranulph Hammond to the North Pole using a truck - as ever Jeremy Clarkson is forever the irreverent motor mouth and larrikin in a likeable way and we actually found ourselves cheering for Hammond to beat them with the Dog Sled.

So it’s no surprise to see Clarkson so spectacularly misjudge how easy it can be to have your Banking details abused? I guess he has learnt a little about how technology works? ;-) 

Clarkson’s ’steal my ID’ stunt backfires

Top Gear chap shoots self in foot

Gobby TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has been forced to reverse his position after he lost money after publishing his bank account details in a newspaper column.

The Top Gear presenter rather rashly published his account details in a column in The Sun to back up his claims that the child benefit data loss furore, which resulted in the loss of unencrypted CDs containing bank details of 25m people, was a lot of fuss about nothing.

Clarkson published his bank account number and sort code, along with clues to his address, insisting that the worst that could happen was that someone could pay money into his account.

Days later Clarkson was forced to admit he was wrong after an unidentified prankster set up a £500 direct debit from the presenter’s account in favour of charity Diabetes UK, the BBC reports.

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again,” Clarkson said in a column published in the Sunday Times. “I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”

Clarkson, never one to shy away from colourful or controversial commentary, is now hopping mad over the data loss. “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy,” he said. ®

Clarkson’s ’steal my ID’ stunt backfires | The Register

written by dcaddick

I have been trying Vista on a corporate Laptop over the holidays in advance of getting hold of the “Approved” corporate image for my laptop and in some ways it’s a clunker - so if you know what you’re doing and want to “trim” some of those annoying messages and confirmations then this might be just the tool for you?

Vista4Experts

Current Version: 1.0.0.1

Download Vista4Experts

Vista4Experts is kind of a treat for computer experts who don’t want security center notifications, User Account Control dialogs, automatic Windows Defender scannings, automatic update installations (which cause you to reboot your system if you don’t react quickly enough). People who want MSDN (or google) set as default search engine in the Internet Explorer search bar, who want the start menu power button to shut down the system instead of hibernating it, etc. These and many more fixes are included in Vista4Experts. All of these changes can be discarded, enabled or reversed. Vista4Experts is the first expert utility of its kind and works on every platform.
This is a free software and so it is given without warranties, this means the use of this tool is at your own risk. I take no responsilbity for any damage that may unintentionally be caused through its use.

I realize, of course, that many fixes in Vista4Experts lower Windows Vista’s default security, but that’s the difference between users who feel enough confident to decide what’s best for their system and users who don’t. Many of Windows Vista’s security features are extremely annoying to many developers and other IT experts.
I even think it’s bad that Microsoft didn’t provide a permanent way to disable the driver signature verification and making it possible only for signed drivers to run on x64 (that if the user isn’t in the mood of pressing F8 on every boot). This is my system and I want to run any driver that I want to! I’m pretty sure I won’t involuntarily execute a rootkit, don’t worry about me Microsoft…

Download Vista4Experts

NTCore’s Homepage

written by dcaddick