* Posts by Ole Juul

2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

Microsoft adds new 'Enterprise Products' section to privacy policy

Ole Juul

Microsoft's Schadenfreude

the company may harvest “performance data to learn whether you experience any difficulties

Since they know about all these difficulties, I can only assume they're created on purpose.

Forget security training, it's never going to solve Layer 8 (aka people)

Ole Juul

"particularly where Facebook is involved"

That's the test right there. Pass or fail on job applications based on that alone. Sorted.

Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet

Ole Juul

this needs to be escalated

Other countries seriously need to intervene on this or at least have some input.

I'm not sure I'd like China and Turkey, or whomever, to take much control, but in this case it might be good if they weighted in on this one so as to put a bit of fire under the US govt to get some action here. This situation has been going on for a long time and it's as if the behaviour is acceptable. It is not.

US state sues Comcast for $100m in row over 'worthless' repair plans

Ole Juul

Re: Weasel words

How about they just have their licence revoked?

Australia to spend a billion bucks and seven years on SAP project

Ole Juul

Hey .... where'd that money go?

Which sounds like there's lots of potential for overlaps and finger-pointing.

And plausible deniability.

What's ordered in Vegas, doesn't stay in Vegas? $6.7m of printer ink 'stolen by office worker'

Ole Juul

Re: accounting 101 anyone

Did anyone bother to audit the books? Ever?

The auditor probably thought it looked reasonable.

Give .gay to the gays, roars exiting ombudsman

Ole Juul

just curious

Is there a more sleazy organisation than ICANN?

Cyberpunks might not be crooks but they're really very rude

Ole Juul

Re: Very rude, huh?

please do not fart in my general direction

Someone (cough, cough VeriSign) just gave ICANN $135m for the rights to .web

Ole Juul

Idiots.

DOT idiots, to be exact.

Verizon tipped to buy Yahoo! for US$5bn

Ole Juul

I'll be looking forward to

Tomorrow's! El! Reg! headline!

By 2040, computers will need more electricity than the world can generate

Ole Juul

They forgot VR

As we move further into the virtual world we will no longer be needing power for physical things like steel, industry, heat, travel, and food production. It will all balance out - ultimately culminating in one big computer and no people at all.

US standards lab says SMS is no good for authentication

Ole Juul

Good riddance

No cell coverage here so just get pissed off when asked for SMS authentication.

WikiLeaks fights The Man by, er, publishing ordinary people's personal information

Ole Juul

too weird

I'm not endorsing the leak, but what on earth would a political party be doing with credit information, let alone passport info? I guess I don't know what a political party really is.

IT boss 'set up fake companies to charge his employers $2.4m'

Ole Juul

All in the family

Chang, who worked at One Technologies, a Dallas-based firm that develops credit-monitoring apps

I take it his credit was good.

IETF boffins design a DNS for crypto-currencies

Ole Juul

ideas?

So what other communications could this protocol be used for?

Tor veteran Lucky Green exits, torpedos critical 'Tonga' node and relays

Ole Juul

Re: "no reasonable choice left within the bounds of ethics"

Ethics are normally talked about when important. My take is that this is ragequit.

Tor board swept under carpet after Appelbaum 'sex misconduct' claims

Ole Juul

Re: If you hold an office in a company...

I think this thing kind of snuck up on them like the quarter degree boiled frog. Having followed this from the beginning I was wondering how they planned to deal with the situation. I think what they did here is excellent.

In these troubling times, senators unite to end America's big divide – rural v urban broadband

Ole Juul

I live in a rural area

and none of that makes any sense to me. Telcos don't want to invest in low profit adventures and they don't want government to do it for them. Sure, I wouldn't mind better service. But it's not going to happen until the Government stands up to the Telcos. I'm obviously not holding my breath.

VPN provider claims Russia seized its servers

Ole Juul

Re: Options

"but you would still be covered by the same laws that took these out."

As an individual, effectively no. There are lots of laws in Russia, just like anywhere else, but nobody bothers. For example, I have several Russian domain names, and the registration criteria of those appears very strict and complicated. The reality is that nobody cares and as an individual nobody will ever bother you. Anyway, it is dubious that an individual can be forced to keep records of their own activity on their own computers - virtual or not. Also, from my interaction with a few server folk there, Russia is nowhere near what the Western press would portray in regard to government imposing on individuals.

Ole Juul

Re: Options

"Recommendations for VPS provider?"

I currently have one in StPetersburg from VirtWire for about 4 bucks a year. Very small and NAT, but the price is right. :) Vstoike.ru is probably 10 times that, but comes highly recommended. There are others if you look around. Perhaps here: http://lowendstock.com/

Ole Juul

Options

This is not good news, but you can still get a small VPS in Russia and run your own VPN. I know, it's hard to make that equally anonymous, but it's a cheap alternative for most purposes.

Nasty session stealing hole filled in WordPress All in One SEO plugin

Ole Juul

SEO

lures the gullible

Facebook deleted my post and made me confirm pics of my kids weren't sexually explicit

Ole Juul

Topic

Facebook sucks.

Facebook ‘glitch’ that deleted the Philando Castile shooting vid: It was the police – sources

Ole Juul

Not that laws matter in the USA

"They took my phone. They took over my Facebook."

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted by Congress in 1986 and has recently been applied to similar cases. Typically having knowingly accessed a computer without authorisation or exceeding authorised access. Being federal it carries some pretty serious jail time for even the most trivial offence.

Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

Ole Juul

404

We checked with Leadsom's office . . . So far, it has failed to respond.

'Digital influencers' must disclose paid-for content, says new guidance

Ole Juul

change the world?

businesses that "do not engage in misleading practices" could lose trade to companies that do.

That's the state of advertising. As long as people insist on being gullible it's not going to change. How about Nigerian Princes put a disclaimer on their emails?

Israel's security minister suckers Zucker for Facebook'ed killings

Ole Juul

Re: I have no love for Facebook...

Nothing is fair, but Security Services asking Facebook to do their work is a bit like getting mom to do your homework.

ICANN pushes back against brand lobby

Ole Juul

The content lobby turns my stomach because of their behaviour. I'm glad ICANN is sticking to their guns on this one.

Verisign keeps its dot-com cash cow until 2024

Ole Juul

Re: Greed

"Sorry no, if I see a .ru the alarm bells start going off."

You do know that the tld does not indicate the location nor nationality of the site, right? I'm nowhere near Russia and I use .ru for some sites. I also use .nl because they have a good price and a trustworthy registry. Since I'm in Canada I do use .ca for some local sites. Unfortunately those are relatively expensive. The good thing about the Canadian registry is they use their profits to provide significant grants to those who would promote the internet in Canada.

Ole Juul

Greed

So the wholesale price of dot-com is $7.85. The problem I have with that is they're just raking in money by decree. I can get a retail dot-ru for $1.40 US. Both names get you there just fine.

Internet takes another step away from US govt and into ICANN's hands

Ole Juul

no more tlds plz

I hope the new generation ICANN doesn't lead us into another crazy tl;dr tld fundraiser.

China cybersec legislation inches towards law

Ole Juul

Government "supervision"

I'm not entirely sure that the Chinese above board approach is worse that the Western underhanded approach. I'd rather not have either.

No means no: Windows 10 nagware's red X will stop update – Microsoft

Ole Juul
Linux

Just say NO

(my personal opinion, of course)

US Senator Wyden: Why I had to halt FBI's latest internet spying push

Ole Juul

Fed up

I applaud Wyden's efforts, but in the end the FBI will never give up attacking the public. The only way to deal with this is to cut their budget or develop better security for the people. Hopefully both.

Facebook's new stalker tool

Ole Juul

Freedom of association?

More like random association. So now you can automatically be associated with someone you don't know. In fact you could be associated with someone who could be up to no good. This could be a good tool for Federal investigators looking for people to question. Perhaps you.

Judge rules FBI can hack any time, any, place, anywhere

Ole Juul

Re: So the FBI has the right to hack the world

I don't think that this judge, nor the FBI, is clear on what actually constitutes "the world". Actually, come to think of it, they probably are clear but think it is us that have it wrong.

Astroboffins discover rapid 'electric winds' blowing on Venus

Ole Juul

Re: So is Venus

"Another article by the same author today used the term 'scientist' everywhere but failed the 'boffin test'."

So we should put boffin on our checklist of Reg authenticity.

Tor torpedoed! Tesco Bank app won't run with privacy tool installed

Ole Juul

Tesco is making a strong statement

When you connect to a bank you are completely identified by them and there is no privacy issue there. The problem is security. You don't want anybody else to be able to snoop on your transaction, and what your are doing is not anybody else's business.That is the reason for using Tor for this sort of thing. It is probably the best piece of software available right now for keeping other people from snooping, and by blocking it the Tesco Bank is making a strong statement that they do not endorse strong security when you are dealing with them.

Finnish court slaps Peter Sunde with €350k fine

Ole Juul

Irresponsible

So the courts take up valuable time with this shit when they could have been dealing with more important issues.

US plans intervention in EU vs Facebook case caused by NSA snooping

Ole Juul

Re: so?

I think it is hard for Europeans to fathom just how much the US legal system and all that talk about democracy and freedom is just a front for how things really work there.

Let's Encrypt lets 7,600 users... see each other's email addresses

Ole Juul

Useless list anyway

There was a lot less than that in my email from them. I'd guess under a hundred. I frequently get better lists than that in my CC field.

FBI tries again to get warrantless access to your browser history

Ole Juul

Re: Access to your browser history

"How exactly are the ISPs already monitoring and storing our web usage."

DNS lookups are logged as a matter of course. In may countries by law.

Calgary uni pays ransomware criminals $20k for its files back

Ole Juul

police investigation

"Dalgetty said the police had been called in and were investigating the attack. Under the circumstances, she said, it would not be appropriate to comment further on the details of the infection."

I doubt the police can do much, but reporting it to them certainly offers a handy excuse for not being questioned further on negligence.

EU bureaucrats claim credit for making 'illegal online hate speech' even more illegal

Ole Juul

or denies or trivialises crimes against humanity.

That puts mainstream press in a difficult spot when they're publishing the typical denials from governments such as the US. Fact is these laws are not intended to apply to everybody.

Bitcoin to be hammered – in an auction, that is

Ole Juul

Re: What's the point?

Somebody has to buy it. That's how you "change it for money". lol

FCC swivels to online privacy, gets bitten in the ass by net neutrality

Ole Juul

A telephone number is a name. It has permanence (you keep it over time and can move it to other carriers). It is the input to a lookup process -- the carrier switching system that reaches you has an address (location routing number) and that is looked up in a database before the call is delivered. This is transparent to end users but very visible inside the network.

It used to be connected to a physical address in the days of copper. This is no longer the case. The number will map to the owner, which will be either an ILEC or CLEC - not an individual user. What their records look like will vary. You can get a phone number without an address and can often give whatever credentials you like and the best trace will be via payment method - just like with an IP. It is also trivial to forward phone numbers so there is a very long way to go to the end user. By the way, you may have noticed the difficulty of tracing phone solicitors.

Ole Juul

"No explanation WHY equating IPs to telephone numbers is bad."

I was wondering too. From what I know about both, they seem quite similar. We have IANA as an authority for address space. They give out blocks of numbers which then get registered to individual ISPs. And in the phone space we have NANP, the North American Numbering Plan which gives out blocks of telephone numbers for use by CLECs and ILECs. Both the end user and the owner in both cases can route these around as they see fit. Yes, there are some differences, but when you start to look at the politics of control, the two systems seem awfully similar.

IETF spikes government metadata collection with DNS request crypto plan

Ole Juul

Who's directory?

At least you didn't mention "Telephone Directory", as nobody knows what one of those is nowadays...

You're probably right. However, the telephone directory comparison is actually particularly accurate. Telephone companies make up their own directories and don't include listings from non-incumbents. This is currently the situation with DNS which typically only recognises ICANN listings - despite this being a somewhat political choice, rather than technical.

Republicans threaten to derail internet transition

Ole Juul

ICANN behaviour

Anywhere else on the net would be called trolling.

What's holding up Canada's internet?

Ole Juul

so who's going to take up this fight?

Canada is seeking to transition from a resource-based economy towards one that is more knowledge-based.

Not in BC it isn't. Our government is firm in its commitment to a resource based economy. I liked the article though.

Canadians just don't seem to want to stand up to the CRTC, or even know that they possibly could. That spirit is completely bred out of us. I doubt we'll see a big improvement of our internet in my lifetime. I'm getting old and (almost) done with that fight. It's up to the younger generation to fight for a better internet, but they're not even turning out to vote let alone showing any fire. Do we even have a "net generation" here? I'm not sure any more. I'd like to see our Pirate Party getting a little more attention.