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How to remove a security ink tag

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Last Monday I was flying to Scotland for a few days to have a chat with a few of our customers up there. I thought I would show them due respect so on Sunday afternoon I popped into Marks and Spencer and bought a new suit. When I got home I set to making our Sunday roast dinner so didn't think about the whistle until about eleven that night when I went to pack. To my annoyance I found this bad boy attached to the arm. Clearly the assistant in the shop had missed it when he was putting the suit in a bag for me. At first I wasn't too bothered. After all - it would just take a bit of brute force to rip it off and all would be well for the morning. However, when I looked at the other side - my heart skipped a beat. What at first look like a simple dongle to trigger an alarm at a security gate was in fact an ink tag. I immediately started thinking of the paint bombs that are placed in bags of money to prevent theft! Was this device explosive? Was it dangerous? I soon came to my sen...
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Saving an email directly to the file system from Lotus Notes

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I have pretty much lost count of the number of times MS Outlook users who have been upgraded to Lotus Notes have asked me how to save an email either to their file system or to their desktop. The most commonly stated reason for this is so that all the emails, files and documents related to a project can all be saved in one folder on a shared drive. Most organisations now recognise that collaborating through shared drives creates a whole raft of problems including security, duplication, compliance and the inability to find the "one version of the truth". This capability is pretty much redundant to Lotus users since they have many ways of collaborating including Teamrooms , Quickr Places , Wikis , Blogs and Connections Communities . These tools include access control, search, versioning and all the various features that promote good information management. However, we must remember that users do tend to become a bit set in their ways, so if they do want to copy mail messages t...
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How an iPod integrates with a BMW

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One of the things I was most looking forward to with my new car was the fact that it features "proper" integration with my iPod Touch. The idea that I could access gigabytes of music, audio books and podcasts on the go was very appealing. Fiddling with an iPod whilst driving is about as dangerous as using a mobile phone. Also on my old car I tried using an FM Transmitter to send the output from the iPod to the car radio using FM. It was rubbish. The problem is that there are no spare frequencies in London and if you go for a long drive the available frequencies change requiring constant retuning. All in all it made it impractical. The new car features a combined 3.5mm audio jack and USB connector. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the sounds to be routed through to the cars Hi-Fi but also for the control of the iPod to be passed to the cars iDrive Control system . iDrive is far from perfect but is significantly improved since it has stopped being based on Win...
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