The week in your words: Blunders, iPhones and brownouts

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 23 Nov 2007 at 14:52

It's happened before, and it will doubtless happen again. The government's latest data blunder resulted in the loss of 25m computer records containing information on thousands of people, leaving them open to identity theft.

Surely there's a better way of transmitting sensitive data, some of you asked - in fact, it's hard to think of a worse one. Others told us that the government has the technology, but for some reason seems reluctant to use it.

"I worked for a government department with £6,000 worth of VPN equipment at both ends - and we weren't allowed to use it because - and I quote - it would wear out," explains Bubbles15.

Despite your anger at this latest fiasco, some of you seemed to think it was unfair that it had become a political football. "Although I fully agree the ID card scam - sorry, scheme - should be scrapped anyway, it still annoys me when I hear of this kind of opportunistic finger pointing by politicians," says Greemble.

"The party in office has nothing to do with the loss of data. This was an operational blunder, not a policy mistake. Could/would have happened whoever was sitting in the Commons."

Others, such as ProfessorF, agreed with members of the opposition who said the government can't now be trusted with an ID card scheme.

"A shower of incompetents, and now we're entrusting them with all of our details in one handy place?"

Unlocked iPhones

Vodafone took T-Mobile to court in Germany this week. "What we're asking for is that they sell unlocked phones," said Vodafone, and that's just what they got.

However, T-Mobile priced the opened-up handsets at a staggering 999 Euros. At that price, plus the price of a contract, surely the unlocked iPhone isn't a very good deal?

"You would have to save a lot on the contract to benefit and I doubt that they will. It will mean that only rich idiots will buy it and then get annoyed that visual voicemail is not there and then get hit by the data costs," says Amnesia10.

It seems that most people will be better off getting a T-Mobile contract with their iPhone, and sticking with it. However, there will inevitably be a few people who feel compelled to unlock, hack and tinker with their handsets.

"People want to hack the iPhone because they want to hack the iPhone. It's not because they will get a better deal," says marklar77.

Internet Brownouts

This week we were warned by Nemertes Research that the internet could suffer 'brownouts' (either lost or unreliable connections) unless $42-55 billion is invested in infrastructure.

If this doesn't happen, then capping internet connections may be the only answer. "Well capping is simply unacceptable. Unless you paid less for a restricted service then it should be uncapped. It is just another ruse to get higher fees or charge for Web 2.0 or ending net neutrality how ever you want to put it," says a skeptical Amnesia10.

"What utter rubbish. Capping is perfectly acceptable. What is not acceptable is calling a service 'unlimited' when it evidently is not," argues qpw3141 in retaliation.