Taking A Swipe At Skype

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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No, it’s not me who is taking a swipe at Skype. I use Skype a lot for communicating with people. I find it particularly good for contacting friends in foreign lands, which you can do for free, but also for making paid telephone calls too.

I have been using it for over a decade, almost from it started, and long before it was bought by Microsoft. Although other flavors have arrived on the scene I stick with Skype.

It’s the comfort of familiarity, something I wish the nerds at WordPress would pay attention to instead of continually making smart-ass changes that no one has asked for or wants. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it guys!

But getting back to Skype, it has now become a victim of the snoopers – again!

This time it has been told it has to appear before a court in Belgium because it refused to hand over customer data following a request for assistance by the Federal Computer Crime Unit of the Federal Judicial Police (FCCU) in a ‘criminal investigation’.

Microsoft has been very sensitive to appearing to buckle under when requested to release information about its Skype users ever since it was alleged that it had changed the architecture of the communications software to make it more “wiretap friendly”, something which it has always denied.

Despite Microsoft releasing transparency reports stating that it had not handed over the content of any Skype conversations in response to regular law enforcement requests, privacy and security analysts remain unconvinced.

Unfortunately, as usually happens when the lawyers get to work, the fundamental importance of this case – which is government’s mania for trying to remove the right to privacy of its citizens – gets lost in spurious legal arguments.

Now, instead of defending the right to privacy, the court’s time is being taken up with deciding whether or not a VoIP service like Skype should be treated as a telecoms operator in Belgium. If it is then it would have to comply with Belgian regulatory requirements for telecoms operators and release data to the snoopers.

I said earlier that the request by the Belgian snoopers is in regard to a ‘criminal investigation’ but the alleged crimes under investigation have not been specified, nor has the identity of the suspect or suspects.

It’s another one of those government catch-all phrases like ‘terrorist activity’ or ‘national security’ that are used as a cover for intrusions into people’s privacy whenever they feel like it.

The result of this Belgian case will be an interesting marker for future attacks on the privacy of Skype users. My guess is that if the snoopers win their case then Skype should brace itself for a multitude of similar requests from governments all over the world. If on the other hand the courts rules in favor of the privacy of Skype users then the government will simply put their hackers to work and try to get the information illegally as they have done and are doing.

So it’s another one of those ‘heads’ privacy loses and ‘tails’ the snoopers win.

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911 Emergency Calls

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

A relative quick and funny post for the start of a new week. Always helps a bit to add a bit of humor to Mondays, I think.

This one is about 911 emergency calls. You would imagine that 911 calls would be made by serious people about serious events, that’s what the lines are set up for. But also because of their nature you don’t have to be qualified to use them.

When the intellectually challenged make a 911 call, the results are just about the same I reckon as when they make ordinary calls – unbelievable!

Here are a few examples.

Enjoy!

 

 

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is your emergency?

Caller: I heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the brown house on the corner.

Dispatcher: Do you have an address?

Caller: No, I have on a blouse and slacks, why?

– – – – – – – – –

 

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is your emergency?

Caller: Someone broke into my house and took a bite out of my ham and cheese sandwich .

Dispatcher: Excuse me?

Caller: I made a ham and cheese sandwich and left it on the kitchen table and when I came back from the bathroom, someone had taken a bite out of it.

Dispatcher: Was anything else taken?

Caller: No, but this has happened to me before and I’m sick and tired of it!

– – – – – – – – – –

 

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is the nature of your emergency?

Caller: I’ m trying to reach nine eleven but my phone doesn’t have an eleven on it.

Dispatcher: This is nine eleven.

Caller: I thought you just said it was nine-one-one

Dispatcher: Yes, ma’am nine-one-one and nine-eleven are the same thing.

Caller: Honey, I may be old, but I’m not stupid.

– – – – – – – – – –

 

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What’s the nature of your emergency?

Caller: My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart

Dispatcher: Is this her first child?

Caller: No, you idiot! This is her husband!

– – – – – – – – – –

 

Dispatcher: 9-1-1

Caller: Yeah, I’m having trouble breathing. I’m all out of breath… Darn……I think I’m going to pass out.

Dispatcher: Sir, where are you calling from?

Caller: I’m at a pay phone. North and Foster.

Dispatcher: ! Sir, an ambulance is on the way. Are you an asthmatic?

Caller: No

Dispatcher: What were you doing before you started having trouble breathing?

Caller: Running from the Police

– – – – – – – – – –

 

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is your emergency?

Caller: Hi, is this the Police?

Dispatcher: This is 9-1-1. Do you need police assistance?

Caller: Well, I don’t know who to call. Can you tell me how to cook a turkey? I’ve never cooked one before.

– – – – – – – – – –

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 Fire or emergency?

Caller: Fire, I guess.

Dispatcher: How can I help you sir?

Caller: I was wondering…does the Fire Dept. put snow chains on their trucks?

Dispatcher: Yes sir, do you have an emergency?

Caller: Well, I’ve spent the last 4 hours trying to put these chains on my tires and… well.. do you think the Fire Dept. could come over and help me?

Dispatcher: Help you what?

Caller: Help me get these chains on my car!

 

Today is a beautiful day

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I know an architect.

Nothing very unusual in that.

Except for one thing, this one is blind.

He hasn’t been blind all his life but from his late teens, when he was training to be an architect, he started to lose his sight due to an inherited disease and eventually it went altogether.

To his credit he hasn’t let it stop him leading as full a life as possible. Although there have been good and bad results.

For example, he insists on helping around the house but on one occasion he picked up a kitten along with the dirty clothes and promptly dumped all in the washing machine. Both the clothes and the kitten were clean at the end of the washing cycle, but the unfortunate kitten was also dead.

He also tells a story about doing some shopping at a time when his sight was almost gone, but not quite. He was in a local pharmacy and queued up at the counter waiting to hand over his prescription. He waited and waited, but the pharmacy assistant kept ignoring him. He could hear other people getting served, but never him. He waited and he waited and he waited some more, but nothing. The girl behind the counter just kept ignoring him.

Finally his patience just ran out. He was angry. He thought he was being deliberately ignored because of his disability and that other ‘seeing’ customers were being allowed to jump the queue. He spoke to the assistant who was standing right in front of him. She didn’t respond. Then he spoke louder. Still no reaction. Then he started to give forth some abuse which included a good bit of strong language. The other customers in the pharmacy all stopped what they were doing and watched what was going on.

People were a little embarrassed. Nobody intervened except for one gentleman, who walked up to my friend, put his hand on his shoulder and said quietly buy firmly, “Come over here son, and this other person will attend to your order.”

He found out later that he had been patiently queuing up in front of one of those body and head mannequins that was sitting on the counter and which the pharmacy was using to display a ladies wig, and had been hurling his abuse and angst at it and not to a real person at all.

A few incidents like that aside, he has coped quite well. He has compensated for his lack of sight by developing an extremely good memory and equally good recall. I think that proves that the more you use your brain the better it works.

What a pity so many people these hardly use theirs at all!

For a lot of years his way of designing houses was very laborious. He would plan the whole thing out in his head and then give verbal instructions to his son who would dutifully draft out a sketch of the proposed building. It was slow and tedious for the recipient of the instructions, although he reveled in the task himself – a little bit too much and too long for most people’s liking if truth be told. I know because I was the unfortunate recipient of the drafting instructions on a couple of occasions.

And then a possible solution hit me like a brick.

A Lego brick actually.

I bought a few large base sheets and he got himself some small Lego bricks and from then on he was able to draft his own floorplans, and to scale using each little brick as equivalent to one foot or whatever. It worked well for him and gave him a bit more freedom to plan and re-plan without involving anyone else in the process. I don’t know whether he still uses it or not, but I kind of hope so.

Now, what sparked this blog post in my head wasn’t him at all. It was a video that I watched recently. It’s not about architects either, but it is about someone who is blind. And it is also about the power of words which as a blogger and writer I appreciate, as I’m sure many of you do too.

It’s a nice video.

I hope you enjoy it.