Posts by Alan Brown

Chairman, CEO of Nominet ousted as member rebellion drives .uk registry back to non-commercial roots

" I am very surprised that the FCA has not become involved"

Unless actively asked to get involved by the organisations in question they (and the fraud squad) will NOT poke their noses in unless the cases are so blatent that they MUST get involved or lose face

This is why fraud and corruption in councils are almost never investigated unless there's an actual change of management (Even when auditors produced a report showing evidence of seriously dodgy behaviour, it was imposssible to get regulators/investigators to look at it)

Re: Nominet needs to open up its books

"This would of course mean no more trips abroad to promote these back-end services i.e. “jollies” as was Las Vegas."

Flying First Class, of course....

Re: One question

> This takes a bit more resourcing than "a bloke in a shed at the bottom of his garden".

The resourcing involved isn't hugely expensive

Most of the money was being spaffed on non-core functionality - meaning the tail was well and truely wagging the dog

"The considerable challenge is that the remaining directors have reportedly been unanimous in opposition to Resolution 1, let alone Resolution 2 which they blocked."

This is chapter and verse repeat of what happened in 2001 with DOMAINZ

Presumably Simon et al have studued how to deal with that

Re: Employment law still applies

If forensic audits are suspected to be likely to find gross mismanagement/miscondict then the payouts might be withheld pending those results

Especially if there's a high chance that paying them out early would result in future clawbacks being difficult

Re: Nominet Mistepped every way possible.

I'm quite sure Simon Blackler studied what happened in New Zealand with ISOCNZ/DOMAINZ to avoid past mistakes

Good on him

Re: The next move

a FORENSIC audit

Thgere's a world of difference here

Take it from soneone who's been down this path before, they WILL argue an "audit" is sufficient to avoid having the liabilities land on them

All an accounting "audit" does is to verify the columns in the books add up. A full forensic audit actually looks behind the umbers and looks at what money actually went where, for what reasons

Expect the remaining and former board members to throw every possible legal obstruction at preventing them being held to account and their activities exposed. "Commercial sensitivity" and "contractual secrecy" are both items likely to figure highly in the reasons

Grotesque soundbyte alert: UK government opens wallet to help rural areas get 'gigafit'

"Wake up and ask about the 'contention' ratio?"

You won't get an answer other than "This is commercially sensitive information and we won't release it"

Re: Stunning News!

it's a bit like the case of the traffic lights in Stourbridge (Birmingham) whose pelican crossing lights barely scraped inside EU regulations for delays after pushing the button and time allowed to cross the road (and only after being altered because they wreen't legal befoirehand)

Councillors were quoted in the local papers as "It complies with the reguilations! You can't fdo better than that!"

This was a road with a VERY high level of pedestrian fatalities because the layout encouraged drivers to hit 70mph in a 30mph zone, and anyone crossing against the lights was in mortal danger because drivers travelling that speed had less than a second to avoid them as they came around a blind bend

The problem is that "complies with regulations" was a 90 second delay after pushing the cross button on a dead quiet road.... You can imagine how many pedestrians will actually wait that long - plug DY81YD into www.crashmap.co.uk and scroll about to see the carnage

Re: Alternatively ...

"OpenReach upgraded the village with the exchange to FTTC with government money,"

There's a reason for that: It's all they had to do in order to prevent WISPs getting EU money for broadband rollouts. As soon as they announced FTTC plans, any EU broadband grants for WISPs went up in smoke.

BT bankrupted a number of WISPs in this fashion. In the case of Cranleigh/Ewhurst in Surrey they delayed boradband rollout in the area by at least 5 years and ensured that even now (12 years later) a lot of people who would have had WISP broadband can't get a working DSL signal

You were lucky you can get a competing FTTP company in. A lot of areas (especially in "less rural" locations) are finding they're stuck with a choice of Openreach rotten cables or Virgin stupid contention ratios

Re: Alternatively ...

"We still have paper insulated wires to our village circa 1940's. All encased in a lead pipe"

BT have repeatedly given cast iron undertakings to the ICO that this stuff no longer exists in their network (nor does aluminium)

If a bunch of caravan-dwelling nomads were found to have taken posession of said non-existent cable then theoretically they couldn't be prosuecuted for it, as it's an item BT have repeatedly told the government was gotten rid of years ago.....

Re: Alternatively ...

Reliability would be nice.

a consistent feature of the FTTC around here (which stucks out line canine gonads if you're using smokeping) is constant microdropouts

I guess that's a kind of "reliability" all by itself.

Re: The Cumbrian connection!

"The latest batch that have been bought won't fit on our lines for $reasons."

Wouldn't be the first time.

Deployment of trains to replace slam-door units in Surrey was delayed by over a decade because it was "discovered" AFTER DELIVERY that the existing power infrastructure couldn't provide enough ergs to drive the new units' traction motor starting current across 90% of the SE rail network

Re: Evidently N.Ireland, Wales and Scotland are not in the corners.

I'm on the edge of london (within sight and sound of the M25) with BT (Zen) quoting £52k for fibre on demand and 300/100 absolute maximum

FTTP stops 200 metres from me.

Helllooooooo Starlink!

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

" I don't think that commercial 'pay-for' software is a great evil that needs to be defeated"

The problem a LOT of people were objecting to (and why FSF was founded) was that peoples' work was being taken and incorporated into payware - frequently with attributions stripped. I had this happen myself on a number of occasions

Software piracy is rampant and the largest bunch of IP thieves have good lawyers backing them up

That this is mostly a USA-based problem should hardly be surprising. The USA's industrial base was BUILT on wideranging state-sanctioned IP theft, so the attitude "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too" is utterly pervasive (see Edison and the Lumiere Brothers for one example)

On the Epstein topic:

The problem there is onion layered

Several of Epstein's associates clearly knew what was going on and/or were part of it

A lot more were simply accreted by Epstein because it made him look more credible and those individuals had no idea whatsoever what was going on (essentially their only interaction with the Epstein Travelling Roadshow was as names at social events)

A bunch more were accretionary hangers on wanting to make a name forthemselves by being associated with the the names that were in the outer orbital shells

Some of the information about who knew what in the deeper layers might come out via Maxwell's trial (but I doubt it)

> I've not seen or heard any "crazed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist" from Stallman.

his second amendment stuff comes pretty close to this mark

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Re: "Things were purposefully not documented"

"No way the 'senior' developer could have come out of this looking good if he disclosed it - awful behaviour which he then doubled down on by getting her fired to prevent disclosure"

This is Board of Directors and "employment lawyer" material - but I'll guarantee that SD was golfing buddies with appropriate BoD members

Re: "Things were purposefully not documented"

" I would have no problem mentioning that the reason for dismissal was because I walked in on X and Y bonking each other on the office desk."

A cleaner did that at NZ's Massey University in 1990 - the unversity Vice President (BigMan) and his secretary.

The cleaner was sacked and immediately went to his union. The secretary was sacked whilst BM was merely reprimanded - which raised an utter shitstorm. It cost the university a LOT of money/prestige as many other items which had been covered up started coming out. BM was eventually forced to take early retirement - it turned out he'd been screwing a lot more than just his secretary (figuratively speaking)

Re: One place I workded...

"Don't get me started about the Home Office!"

A large numbert of people who work in "civil service" do so BECAUSE they couldn't hold down a job in other arenas

This actually holds true across many $LARGE organisations(*) but employment in government departments has traditionally been a tried&tested way of hiding embarrassingly large unemployment statistics across many countries - "western democracies" and "socialist republics" alike

(*) When I was much younger we used to call it "management featherbedding" - and was usually done because the more people there are working under a manager, the higher his salary grading and the bigger the retirement package awaiting him at age 60 - as such there would be significant increases in departmental staffing in the 3-5 years leading up to XYZ's retirement which would almost immediately be slashed by his incoming replacement

Where did the water go on Mars? Maybe it's right under our noses: Up to 99% may still be in planet's crust

Re: hold on trigger

It does look like there's a lot of actual water ice just under the surface too

Probably a mixture of both ice and mineral bindings

With Nominet’s board-culling vote just days away, we speak to one man who will publicly support the management

Re: Sounds like a right devious little shit

"part of Nominet's problem was it's embarassment of riches, and the temptation to enrich themselves. "

Not exactly new. ISOCNZ/DOMAINZ trod this path 20 years ago. It's looking terribly familiar to colonials

If trajectories are matching, Haworth's next gig might be ICANN chair

Ofcom says no price controls on full-fibre broadband until 2031, giving BT's Openreach the kick to 'build like fury'

if you have Starlink at 300/100, do you need it?

Re: Getting paid twice then

"Signup for starlink"

Seriously.

The deposit is 100% refundable, Starlink get to use the preorder numbers in their press release and if you change your mind. loaning Elon £85 to scare Openwound into actually providing customer service is a pretty good investment

https://www.starlink.com/

Re: Oh I wish....

"Maybe that nice man Mr. Musk from the computer shop who has a sale on for Starlink is an alternative route?"

Maybe: he's taking preorders. Put down your 100% refundable £85 deposit to reserve your place in the queue

The advantage of doing so is that when Starlink announces orders numbers it makes BT look bad and might make them realise there's a tank on the lawn with 75mm gun pointing at the front windows.

Re: There's no need for this

"HS2 is about capacity. Speed is just a side effect."

more specifically, HS2 is about FREIGHT capacity on the east/west mainlines.

Getting faster passenger services off them essentially doubles the amount of frieght that can be shifted on them.

The actual cost of HS2 is in the noise compared to the economic benefit of making more capacity available on the other mainlines

Re: £1.70 more ... justified due to the speed and reliability fibre offers over copper

They charge more for the same reason a dog licks its b****

"Because they CAN"

Re: Meanwhile out in the boonies

or even <1 mile from the M25 (I can see the lights from my living room window along with the lights on passing HGVs and I'm close enough to HEAR the traffic)

If you're in an area with ECI cabinets, don't expect to see FTTP anytime soon

Re: Meanwhile in the real world...

"current prices at least are an order of magnitude greater than a fixed line connection"

100/20 for £80/month is about 25% more expensive than Zen. It's planned to bump to 300/100 before the end of 2021, which puts in itn FTTP pricing territory and at that speed the £365 dish cost is CHEAP

Encrypted phones biz Sky Global shuts up shop after CEO indictment, police raids on users in Europe

Re: Talk about painting a target on your back

if you truely REALLY want to destroy the narcotics cartels there's a really simple low cost answer

Decriminalise, treat as a heatlh issue and give addicts clean cheap supplies

The ACTUAL cost of a medical-grade knockout dose of heroin or cocaine is still far less than £1

When you realise how fantastic the profits are you understand why this keeps happening - it's not about the drugs, it's abotu the MONEY - and the police are busy hoovering up money too - they don't want the "war" to end because it would make them unemployed

Portugal is a good example of what happens when you take the Dutch exeroeiment to its logical end. There are virtually no pushers left operating in the country - why try to sell anything when you can't make a profit from the addicts?

oh, but "power", "control", "criminals", "rule of law"

Funnily enough one of the knockond effects of the Portuguese approach has been a major drop in minor crime as addicts no longer mug or steal to support their habits.

There's a lot of money to be made in selling fear and authoritarianism

Belgian cops crack down on encrypted phone network Sky ECC in 200 overnight raids as firm denies criminal ties

Small fry

"Police and prosecutors boasted of seizing 17 tonnes of cocaine and €1.2m during a post-raid press conference."

The UK annual cocaine trade is estimated to be worth nearly £9billion per year alone

This sounds like change from down the back of the sofa as far as the larger fish are concerned

Big problem: Nominet members won't know how many votes they're casting in decision to oust CEO, chair

Re: Breech of UK Company Law?

"Sounds as if Rory Kelly doesn't understand the legal obligations of the Company Secretary"

It's looking more and more like DOMAINZ/ISOCNZ all over again

Next stop for Russell Haworth - ICANN chair?

China's top chip company speaks of massive silicon shortage felt around the globe

Re: Good news

lithium? The item which if the price doubles can be economically extracted from Sea water?

Someone's been smoking polyurethane

Re: Please show your evidence

It's the same evidence that China scaling bac soybean purchases was "trade warfare", despite the factor that the chinese pig flock was facing a swine flu zoonitic that resulted in ~30% of the entire chinese pig population being culled and millions of chinese farmers going out of business

You don't buy animal feed for animals which no longer exist, but the USA was trying to force China to buy its soybeans anyway

Re: "shortage of petrochemicals"

> At least in the US, a lot of wells were "shut in" when the pandemic hit, because the oil price fell so far

This is _really_ hard to do in the USA thanks to the Koch Brothers. if your well's producing you are legally prohibited from temporarily capping it to wait for better pricing - even if it's producing at a loss

The only way to achieve it under normal circumstances is to declare the well "closed" and then you need to put it up for sale..

It'd be interesting to know how producers managed to achieve temporrary closures (and I suspect it involves not having anyone willling to buy the product)

Re: "shortage of petrochemicals"

"That caused DRAM shortages for well over a year "

That wasn't the worst of it. It IMMEDIATELY caused vulture speculator traders to enter the ram markets and start treating it like pork belly futures.

Up until that point the major market manuplators had stayed out and manufacturers were simply turning out as much as they could to keep up with exponentially increasing demands. After that point, money market manipulators increasingly controlled semiconductor production as a way of extracting maximum "rent-seeking" profits.

The ram market was arguably set back a decade by the appearance of "Ram commodity trading"

"Then later in the 2000s flooding in Thailand disrupted HDD production"

And the same thing happened with hard drives.

it wasn't just "a couple of years" - it took EIGHT FUCKING YEARS for hard drive pricing to return to pre-2011 levels and reliability stats went out the window (5 year warranties became 12 months - and frequently impossible to actually get honoured, whilst most drives went from "rarely failing" to "unusual to see one last more than 2 years"

Crims with ties to Tesla and SpaceX 'fess up to computerized conspiracies

Who else?

"The Russian national stated in dealings with his target that he had pulled this stunt off multiple times in other companies. Those efforts started three-and-a-half years before his run at Tesla."

3.5 years is a long time and there are clearly other companies which have been compromised. I'd imagine his movements (border crossings) over the last few years will be undergoing close scrutiny as will his phone records (all that yummy metadata of who phoned whom and when)

Following on from that, the other companies involved are likely to face prosecution or shareholder action for not reporting being compromised

Swiss security provocateur who leaked Intel secrets indicted by US authorities

Re: Extradition treaty?

Other EU countries are less scrupulous - and care less about EU citizens(*) who aren't their own ones

If there's an interpol red notice issued then there is a high risk of any routine intra-EU border crossing check runing into arrest and a trip to the USA

(*) Yes, I know Switzerland isn't part of the EU but it's tightly integrated these days

Desperate Nominet chairman claims member vote to fire him would spark British government intervention

If you shred it, then you have lots of air in the pile and it burns easily

"Assuming they don't do an Enron and work the shredders overtime."

Given past history (ISOCNZ/DOMAINZ) you can assume that may have already happened

Re: I'm pondering how bad "government control" would really be

That would be the year that a scottish king took over the english throne then

OVH says burned data centre’s UPS, batteries, fuses in the hands of insurers and police

Re: UPS in the data centre?

"providing you take the proper precautions. "

Like very strong separations between the UPS and the resr of the building

I've been (too) closely involved in the failure of a UPS which took out a building when it burned up. There are good reasons for putting high power ones well away from everything else

" The way domestic electricity is done in France is that you pay for a level of consumption"

if you're billed a "level" then you tend to use that level regardess (all you can eat conundrum). That's why most places meter your kWh and bill based on that (or if you're a larger site, your peak power and power factors in a complex formula. It can be cheaper to fire up 50c/kWh diesels for a short period than allow your mains peak to exceeed limits as it clicks you onto higher tariff levels.

The electricity market is byzantine and deliberately hard to decode

Re: 100A is current current.

Eu standard is 230V +15-10%

The +15% is so that older 240V UK systems didn't need to be reset immediately

Some parts of Australia used 250V as the standard (NT and most BHP sites) with 240V still used in WA/QL

Just bear in mind if youi have incandescent lamps: +10% over rated voltage is - 50% on lifespan

(I had a house in a 230V country (NZ) which usually ran 252-256V at the outlets - Lights didn't get anywhere near the "1000 hours" mandated by the light bulb cartel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel - so I was an early adoptr of CFLs just on not having to change lamps onnce a month)

Re: “Some customers do not understand what they bought”

Better part load than the other way around

Believe me. BTDT, 2MW supplies

California bans website 'dark patterns', confusing language when opting out of having your personal info sold

Re: Also kill off the effort disparity between opt-in and opt-out

"Whoever runs these outfits should be convicted to"

Have all their personal data published and kept in the public eye

Re: OPt-in vs/ opt-out

On the YT front there are a number of YT adblockers you can install

Re: adding unnecessary steps purely for the sake of legal compliance

> "I'm so fed up with the "Yes, do the thing that I really don't want" or "Ask me again next time, and every time after that" type choices. I want a "No, and don't ask me again" option."

EU/UK authorities are _supposed_ to prohibit this behaviour (it's also illegal in Australia and NZ)

Californian privacy legislation should do so too.

Other countries may vary but complaints to your privacy regulators are the squeaky wheel

Re: adding unnecessary steps purely for the sake of legal compliance

What annoys me is the inclusion of 3rd [arty javascript fomr companies we KNOW are not exactly GDPR friendly

Example: on THIS forum page I can see privacy/personal informatoin slurping javascript from Google Analytcs, Twitter. Facebook and Admedo

As soon as you're pulling in JS from offsite, you're stepping well outside the boundaries of "informed consent"

ICYMI: A mom is accused of harassing daughter's cheerleader rivals with humiliating deepfake vids

Re: Might a charge of child pornography be brought against the woman?

CARTOON stuff like this counts in most lawbooks, so "probably"

I believe there have already been some prosecutions about superimposed images (deepfakes)