Posts by Alan Brown

Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network

Someone patended swinging sideways on a childs' swing around 2003 to illustrate this point

newscientist.com/article/dn2178-boy-takes-swing-at-us-patents (it was invalidated a year later due to prior art - a patent filed in the 1990s)

Re: Patent the bloody obvious!

"Cheque scanners have been around since the 1960s."

My flatmate in 1990 was writing OCR and settlement processing software for them in New Zealand, so there's a prior art example (he died 5 years ago, so can't be a witness)

(All that's needed to invalidate the patent is any form of prior art elsewhere in the world more than 12 months prior to filing date and ther really should be plenty of that)

UK watchdog fines two firms £270k for cold-calling 531,000 people who had opted out

Re: Out of interest

Yes, section 127 of the telecommunications act, causing distress to the hearer (a siren is also a bad idea, apart from the issue of most call centres having companders on the line if you actually hurt someone you can be charged with assault)

Besides they'll usually just hang up on you.

It's more fun to string them along for 20 minutes and let THEM realise they just blew their daily bonus whilst milking as much information as possible to positively identify the company for ICO and Actionfraud

Re: valuable geography lessons

AC, don't forget that just like the Grauniad, a big chiunk of ElReg readers these days are outside the UK

Just don't don't tell them the correct way to pronounce "Majoribanks" or their heads will explode

> It's very easy to spoof numbers (but best not post the "how to" info on a public forum).

Actually it's a bloody good idea if you do.

Having it VERY publicly displayed will force action to be taken whereas "Shhhh, it's a secret" will ensure it continues to happen.

If you are afraid to do it under your name, send it to me and I'll post it widely

TPS are a branch fo the DMA.

Don't complain to the, talk directly to the ICO and if you can identify the offenmding company ensure you mention PECR breaches along with the company ID

It's even more fun if the companies house registration is bogus

"what we got was the TPS, an opt-out system with no real teeth."

Even worse, the PAPER junkmail optout system has to be opted out of every 2 years (not MPS, the royal mail system for fliers)

I'm surprised the legality of that hasn't been challenged sinve GDPR laws changed

https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/293/~/how-do-i-opt-out-of-receiving-any-leaflets-or-unaddressed-promotional-material%3F

In the USA you have Form 1500 and Rowan vs USPS, which HAS teeth.

Re: Reporting calls

"Or at least the threat of legislation,"

Take away the income, telcos will curb the activity at lightning speed

Re: Reporting calls

Fine collection can/should be levied against the terminating telco as they've already collected income from the lawbreakers and it woudl give them a strong incentive to shut the operations down

Remember: Telcos get paid for incoming calls. If you want to stop them supporting this behaviour, take away their revenue.

you can guarantee that a telco whos lost their income will embark on recovery procedures that the ICO and Ofcom cannot.

Re: Reporting calls

"Solution is a simple '1471' type number to report nuisances."

It won't happen until terminating telcos get FINED for facilitating the business

Remember: Telcos make ~1/3 of their money from TERMINATION revenue.

it's not in their financial interest to prevent this stuff getting through (unless they're not being paid, which is what the outright fraudster outfits are doing with VOIP origin spoofing)

It's not stopping them

I received 3 calls today - a number on TPS, asking for a name that's never existed on the number, selling "discount club card" membership

I've gotten into the habit of drawing them out enough to identify the companies in order to make the ICO complaints stick

Faced with the sack, Nominet CEO half-apologizes for taking the 'wrong tone,' asks angry members to hear him out

The problem with nominet and the other ccTLDs is that TECHNICALLY they operate "on behalf of" the government which owns the two-letter code

in practice virtually every one has been turned into a cash-cow fiefdom and governments are clueless to step in

CMA should be supervisaing, not Ofcom

Re: Another letter

"Just received. The board's view:"

Whenever you see something like this, you know they're panicking. This is not the kindd of thing a safe and stable board would send out

Re: Patterns repeating themselves ?

"In fact from 40K members in the 1990's it is now down to around 6K following a deliberate no recruitment policy. "

A lot like the conservative party then (down from 4 million in 1948 to less than 60k now)

Re: "complex landscape"

This is the ptroblem, and those around him will follow (sometimes to head ICANN)

Echoes of Domainz

For those with long memories

Openreach engineers vote to strike amid changes to job grading structure

Re: management grade

"Management get all sorts of restrictions such as no paid overtime etc. but with a much higher salary to compensate."

s/much/slightly/

Universities have been pulling this stunt for decades

and given what's also happening (LEO sat broadband providers), a "British Leyland"/"British Shipbuilding" feel - internal strife whilst ignoring that the barbarians have parked several sets of cannon on the front lawn

Meantime.... on the customer side of the equation

Starlink are now taking signups in the UK for service starting in mid-late 2021

_THOUSANDS_ (~40%) of Openreach's DSLAM cabinets are hot garbage ECI units that are prone to dropping connections and also apparently prone to water damage because they're eaily not buttoned up correctly (and leak if this happens)

These are also the ones where FTTH (GPON) isn't available (this has been a showstopper in many areas)

BT is no longer "the only game in town" (or part of a comfy duopoly) and the speeds/latencies on offer more than favourably compare with what they're offering (increasingly frustrated) customers. If you're in a rural area then it's doubly attractive

It's going to be interesting to see how many people have been to starlink.com and put down their refundable £85 deposit for Dishy mcDishface

Myanmar orders blocks of Twitter and Instagram on top of Facebook ban

Re: SOP nothing new here.

I've spent time living in Myanmar.

The rich have satelilte ISP links via Thai ISPs.

Everyone else puts up with absolutely shitty connectivity via several levels of CGNAT that makes most websites barely usable. This won't make much overall difference as things are heavilly throttled/firewalled via Naypyiadaw before the rest of the country gets to see it - and unfortunately whilst those of us in the west were hoping for another Nelson Mandela, what Myanmar has got (even before the coup) is more like another Robert Mugabe.

There's a lot of stuff going on that is carefully hidden from western eyes and that all sides of government really DON'T like people outside the country findng out (particularly in Shan state, Karen tribal zones and in Rakine State) which the general populations finds "OK"

There's no Huawei on Earth we're a national security threat, Chinese giant tells US appeals court

Re: Track record

"On the other hand the Chinese government does have the legal authority to coerce Huawei as they please."

As does the USA with Cisco - and have been demonstrated to do so

There's also the issue that the USA government has repeatedly been fingered as directly involved in industrial espionage (frequently afgainst its "allies") and blatent protectionist behaviour whilst using the "Oh look! Squirrel!" tactic to divert criticism.

The recent stoush over australian coal and barley is a good example. The USA encouraged its poodle to keep annoying the chinese enough that they found a reason for blocking the products they might have otherwise let slide (unlawful subsidies), then walked in and scooped up the resulting sales gap, leaving its vassal state high and dry.

Re: China is not our friend, it would be naive to think otherwise

"Huawei'd research budget is $20billion per annum. That's three times as great as Cisco's"

The number of USA/EU and Chinese patents they're being awarded is also a lot higher than Cisco (especially in the 5G arena), most of which they have put up on FRAND basis to all comers, unlike certain players whose FRAND only applies to organisations they like

" so at the moment it still looks like a purely commercial decision."

Why is the FCC making commercial decisions?

Why is the FCC seeking to act as a regulator of commerce (Telcos) instead of leaving it to the FTC?

When did they start hiring antitrust supervisory lawyers?

Why is the FCC making blanket decisions about "bnational security"

When did they start taking on electronic security experts?

Messrs Dunning and Kruger would like a word (This also applies in the UK to OFCOM)

"A couple of heads might change but their fear of China remains, it's understandable."

The USA has a fear INDUSTRY - people are afraid of everything, including their own shadows and believe they need "protection" in various over the top ways

This is mostly driven by the people Eisenhower warned about in his farewall speech of January 17, 1961

Re: Huawei will this end?

"Who's going to scrutinize all future firmware updates from Huawei before deployment?"

GCHQ was doing a prtety good job of that up until the day the UK government decided to ban Huawei on security grounds and repatedly stated that they found no issues (other than crufty code).

That's what made the UK ban obviously political - the country's OWN security organisations were giving it a clean bill of health

In the case of the USA: The FCC is well and truely stepping out of its regulatory confines (it's been stomping all over FTC toes for decades and preventing repeats of the 1930s FTC telco antitrust actions) by pretending to be competent in matters of security - that's NOT its remit and never has been

The words you're looking for are "regulatory capture" - in the same way McBoing managed to gain control of the FAA, USA telco vendors have managed to gain control of the FCC.

This shouldn't be surprising in a country where organised wide scale bribery of politicians is not only tolerated, but has become encouraged, expected and necessary to get ANYTHING done, becoming a formalised industry in itself - "lobbying"

"It was argued by the FCC and the US government that the Chinese gear cannot be trusted as Beijing may have backdoored it. "

Vs, say Cisco, which we KNOW has been backdoored by US security agencies on a number of occasions

The laptop you bought in 2020 may stop you buying a car in 2021: Chips are going short

Re: Wouldn't car sales be expected to be lower?

"Less wear and tear on your car if you are working from home even part time, not driving your kids to school some/all the time, "

My car decided it didn't like the lack of use and started growing mushrooms in the passenger footwell

Written off - biohazard

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

"To be honest, I don't think there is any such thing as a 'bad car' these days, at least in Europe and Japanese builds/imports. "

Yup, I've said it manmy times - the most mediocre current car is more reliable and will last longer than even best Japan could put out in the 1970s - and a HUGE part of that is down to electronic replacing fiddly mechanical bits that needed constant adjustments

Who carries a point contact file or knows how to adjust a distributor vacuum advance these days?

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

" I'm sure people will attempt to hack their EVs if they haven't already, "

Once people realise that "ludicrous mode" destroys driveshaft splines, pelple stop playing with it. The repairs are expensive

Electric motors can trivially output 5 times their continuous rating for short periods, but not every part of the drivetrain is rated for that kind of torque wihtout bending

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

"only have 2 wheel drive despite living in the country. Chelsea tractors don't really need 4WD; and from the number of them bemused locals pass broken down in the weather at the moment they aren't suitable for driving in adverse weather conditions."

Before it rusted so much the doors fell off, my pug106 used to fairly regtularly chug up/down steep hills in snow (chains) cruising past many well and truely beached 4WDs(*). The number of dirty looks from Chelsea Tractor drivers was a thing of joy

(*) Occasionally I see one whose driver decided the roof or sides had better traction than the tires. More frequently they'd still be sittng there going nowhere whilst fruitlessly spinning all four wheels

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

"Don't mock the man just because he drives a Fiat!"

if anything we should admire that he has a 1995 one still running.

That takes some dedication and a lot of rust killer

Salesforce likes to play the diversity nice guy in public – Black ex-employee claims the reality is quite different

Re: Hmm

"Promoting based on merit and promoting based on diversity are orthogonal"

Not necessarily.

It means weighting so that if there are two equally qualified candidates then the minority candidate has a slightly higher chance of landing the role. It emphatically DOES NOT mean hiring an unqualified person over significantly better-qualified competitors, but it might mean slotting them into a role which they can grow into if only just missing the requirements

It also means ENCOURAGING minority/underepresented staff to further their training and ensuring they have support & opportunities to actually do so when "invisibles" at home may be holding them back

Re: Hmm

Lest anyone think that it's NOT needed in the UK: a reminder of the 1964 Smethwick election should be made

Alf Garnett was created as a way of calling out the behaviour/attitudes - but that didn't stop the character being taken to heart by National Front/BNP/Nigel Farage

Re: Lead Design Researcher

"whether the customers of ours that buy our kilowatt laser products would be interested in cat toys"

long distance feline bothering?

Re: The white working class in the UK is very much an oppressed majority.

"However, it is well known that economically disadvantaged children tend to have lower academic achievements than their more advantaged peers"

And my experience is that many such children take great delight in pulling those around them down to their level - to the point that a bright kid from such a background is extremely likely to be relentlessly bullied into "toeing the line" and "not standing out". The poorer the area, the worse the bullying

It's a cult of jealous medocrity, it''s inherited from parents and it's become self-perpetuating

Harmed by a decision made by a poorly trained AI? You should be able to sue for damages, says law prof

Re: He's right and MIT says so

It's because of the MIT reports that this is being talked about by lawyers

The average middle aged lawyer thinks that computers and the people who program them are "godlike". They really don't get that computers are "literal" or understand "garbage in, garbage out"

I'm quite serious. They're frequently the most common proponents of "Computer says" and the idea of statistics showing otherwise - or that human twist things by selectively tweaking statistics inputs is alien to them.

"Does an ML system get trained once and then continue operating on the basis of that one training set?"

Yes. Any "lessons learned" have to then be fed back into the training sets. They don't learn/improve "on the fly"

Re: Theory and Reality

"The GDPR has provisions both on profiling "

The problem for th emost part isn't "INDIVIDUAL" profiling.

AIs are trained on populations and once they learn that most people named "Fred" are thieves (based on a sample of 2 out of 3), it will proceed on that basis forevermore

It's not "artificial intelligence", it's artificial STUPIDITY and that's far more dangerous

Anyone who's had to sit down and walk users through documentation will know that they will come up with the most insane interpretations of what's written down that you can't even think of - and believe they're being entirely reasonable in doing so (and that's before you get into the basicly naive "literal" interpretations of what's written down that children might come up with)

Re: @ThatOne - Theory and Reality

"AI will get dispensation because it is sold as flawless and this offers a golden opportunity to deflect responsability"

THIS IS NOT THEORY

It is already happening. The whole "Computer says...." mentality is based on it and that's been going on for 40+ years

Re: Theory and Reality

" in my experience, you often see organisations forming a "cultural identity" which is essentially a shared-belief-system."

Yup, and the problem here is not "One bad apple, oh dear how sad"

The REAL problem is that that "one bad apple" will rot the ENTIRE FUCKING BARREL if not nuked on sight, all infected apples removed immediately and the rest then checked for contamination

Re: Theory and Reality

What absolutely shouldn't happen is

* You complain to the council

* They say "sod off, talk to Palantir"

* You complain to Palantir

* They say "sod off, talk to the council"

Funnily enough, this is EXACTLY what is currently happening between Surrey County Council/Surrey Police/district councils in the UK, resulting in a bunch of flagrant issues being unenforced (including major environmental crimes until they get too big to ignore thanks to nationmal newspaper coverage)

Then again, what do you expect from the country which made British Leyland such a worldbeating technological and customer service sucess story?

Re: Theory and Reality

The company which made the loud TV?

Re: Theory and Reality

"The developer might not even be aware of the purpose to which it was put, nor would they necessarily endorse it for that purpose if they were."

A developer actually saying that in court would be a huge blow against the marketers trying to push things

"I had no idea my work was being used for this, nor do I feel it is fit for that purpose" is a rather damning indictement not of the developer but of those who misuse the work

Re: Theory and Reality

"The biggest problem is that "poor training" is a very vague and subjective notion"

"insufficiently diverse data set" and "data selection bias" come to mind

It'snot just healthcare. Bear in mind that AIs were disproportionately selecting/punishing black lawbreakers because history showed greater conviction rates and stiffer punishments - but looking under the covers showed that selecive enforcement(white offenders more likely to simply be let off with a warning rather than arrested) and selective punishments (judges more likely to give white offenders probation rather than prison) had a lot to do with the stats

in otther words, AIs were formalising insittionalised racial biases and then people were using "Computer says" as a reason for bllindly going along with it

No joy for Julian Assange as Uncle Sam confirms it will keep pushing for WikiLeaker's extradition to America

Not just Assange

Things are ramping up under the Kim Dotcom front too

Both of these were initiated by Biden as VP under Obama

CD Projekt Red 'EPICALLY pwned': Cyberpunk 2077 dev publishes ransom note after company systems encrypted

or SCUMM-like engines enabling the games to be run in various environments

At some point

The response is going to be the kind stated by Liam Nielson in Taken

Except the warning may not be issued first

These gangs are playing with fire and risking more than just being roasted

Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer, says sheriff

Checking Gruntles

Who recalls the story posted on thier very website of a recently-fired employee who managed to use his remote access to direct raw sewage into the water supply?

Western Australia about a decade ago if I recall correctly...

(But.... "Terrorists" and "foregn hackers" makes for better headlines when Muricans do it)

The unanswered question at CentOS community Q&A: How can we trust you now?

the dead hand of IBM has been obvious for a while

Re: No it can’t, not when 3rd party vendors won’t certify their products on it.

" after all SUSE is the #2 enterprise Linux vendor after RH "

Suse have proven themselves quite willing to toss non-german speaking customers under a bus and run away (not even responding to quesries on the issue from Novell head office)

We're talking serious and permanent breaches of trust. They're on my "Never do business with this company again" list