Posts by Kevin Johnston

How $20 and a lapsed domain allowed security pros to undermine internet integrity

All too common approach to projects here

I would bet a round of drinks that every El Reg reader has been involved in a project where if you can show the new 'current state' matches the desired end state then this has been treated as the project being complete. Never mind all those old bit of hardware/software, they will all fall away soon enough once people go through a hardware refresh because who would not update their pointers to the super new ones?

I would also suspect that a number of you have spent months trying to close out old domains etc where the person who 'owned' them within the company left multiple years ago and nobody since has had the courage to kill them off since 'someone may still be using them'. I know that all the change management processes I have suffered require positive approval from an owner and rarely can cope if said owner is no longer available.

Of course the Internet Archive’s digital lending broke the law, appeals court says

Perhaps a middle ground of x years/death of the author, whichever is the longer?

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

Re: Hamster wheels?

The whole point of a data search is that you need to be able to rely on the accuracy of the result. If AI cannot give you a >98% reliability it is worthless (OK, yes I did pick the number at random and it probably should be higher). This was an argument I had repeatedly with people that believed data quality was an optional extra as you could fix any errors in the final results, carefully ignoring the fact that you had no idea if the final result bore any relevance to the real world.

I was considered very 'old skool' because I would do random checks on the input data and then run searches a couple of different ways and then do random checks on 'hits' to ensure they should be hits. Took me longer but I could repeat my results

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

Re: "NHS England declined to comment"

Obviously. NHS knows that, when the inevitable lawsuit comes, it will lose.

There is, of course, the inevitable settle-out-of-court option "with tax-payer money", so all is well . . .

FTFY

Admins wonder if the cloud was such a good idea after all

Re: Short lived memories, maybe?

I would follow this with comments from being in the industry since almost before it became an industry

In the early days there were limitation on every aspect from CPU (I have worked on systems where the CPU did not come on a simple chip...more like 2-3 boards) to RAM to persistent storage. People learned to optimise there work within these limits and often very creative solutions were found

Once each limit was eased so did the requirement for tightly managed code and so the practise of coding changed to include processes which made things simpler although less structured. A simple program which previously ran in 16k of RAM now had 640K to play in so why did it matter if it meandered a bit and loops/searches were not as efficient..it still ran and that was what counted. To this were added helpful compilers and suchlike to make coding less like a black art and more like copy/paste from useful libraries of coding examples so that anyone could now write code.

We finally reached the point where the OS was using over 100GB of your PCs hard disc and even simple documents/spreadsheets are measured in MB and the lean/mean suite of programs required for a modern office can either be another 100GB on your PC or some unknown value in the cloud. Add to this the move of snapshots and backups to cloud systems and I would be surprised if most IT departments actually knew how much data they really had and how much of it is meaningless junk.

The C Suite people have never really cared about details just so long as they are promised improved perfection for a reduced cost and the days of having control over software, data and costs are a distant memory to most IT people with the fragmentation of responsibilities which are part and parcel of the cloud where costs are based on data volumes either at rest or moving and CPU usage. all measured by tools kindly provided by the cloud owner who is busy preparing the bill.

While it would be great to think that moving back to on-prem is still an option, none of the main software providers want that to happen since they are too busy pushing the new licensing models which require them to exert maximum control over what you can do with your data.

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

Re: Of course tea makes things work better

Ah, so that is where my tapes went

:)

Top companies ground Microsoft Copilot over data governance concerns

Re: "Yeah, it's a real mess"

If they have identified errors in file level permissions then the correct approach is to switch off CoPilot etc while the work is done to fix them. You would only switch it back on once you are confident all is now good. By pointing out that even they have this issue it highlights how complex a task it is for companies that may have less awareness in this field

BOFH: The true gravity of the Boss and the 3-coffee problem

Re: caffeine intolerance is a real thing

I fall into the category where caffeine seems to have almost no effect. I used to drink stupid amounts of diet Coke (multiple litres per day) but now just drink coffee. I have a bean to cup system and have at least 10 cups per day at max strength per shot and I go through at least a kilo of beans per month. I drink it for the taste now and going without for a few days causes no withdrawal type issues hence my opening to the comment

BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe

Re: do not read BofH when eating ffs :o)

My local hostelry frequently has a very nice Belgian Cherry beer which goes surprisingly well with red meat, white meat, fish, ice cream, more cherry beer...

Moving to cloud?

Even the most obscure clouds can be mined for their silver lining - with careful planning :)

Facebook prank sent techie straight to Excel hell

The ones not chained to their desks covered in blood sweat and tears are hiding in a filing cabinet in a basement with signs on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: Speeding often not the issue

I am frequently shouted down because I dispute the 'Speed Kills' propaganda. My opinion is that it is inappropriate speed that kills which could be 30mph in a 30mph limit if it is raining heavily and schools are kicking out round the corner and you are passing the junction which connects between the school and a local housing area.

All the time we permit manual control of vehicles there will be a portion of drivers who ignore/bypass any limits or safety measures so once again your are impacting the basically obedient ones significantly from a cost perspective (travel time, repair of extra complex systems etc etc) while having no impact on the portion who need slapping down

Re: What's the speed limit?

Re the A75, not sure about that but definitely in place on the A9 in Scotland. 'Trial' of 50mph for HGVs in certain sections suggesting that all other vehicles can travel at 60mph but my wife's car picks up the 50 sign and complains when she continues at 60

Europol says mobile roaming tech is making its job too hard

Re: "while not impeding secure communications disproportionately"

Oddly enough it can range from very difficult all the way up to impossible to get details from the authorities using those 'Freedom of Information' request processes as they manage to find any number of reasons why this bit or that bit is 'national security' or whatever today's buzzword is. As you suggest, who would hide things if they were doing nothing wrong?

VMware license changes mean bare metal can make a comeback through 'devirtualization', says Gartner

Re: mmm

The big problem is that Gartner provides lots of pretty pictures/charts which always count for more at Board Level than simply being a subject matter expert (aka the poor bugger that gets stuck with throwing away all the resilience plans to fit things into THE NEW WAY)

It never ceases to amaze me that companies can find millions and more to move everything to new untested platforms but never find enough to pay someone to fix the broken bits that people have been screaming about for years. But I suppose the replatform will automagically fix it like it says on Figure 4b

You're wrong, I'm right, and you're hiding the data that proves it

Wow...are you TRYING to start a flame war????

BOFH: An 'AI PC' for an Acutely Ignorant user

Re: Virtual coloured penclis?

BS Detector light?

While my Dad was still working in the Westland Aerospace wind tunnel (mid 70's ?) they had a presentation to some major industry group and at one point the manager took over the presentation to show his knowledge of all this techie stuff. Cue a question from the audience as to what the various meters/dials/gauges on the control panel were for. The follow up question was why one needle was creeping upwards while he was talking but nothing else seemed to be happening....Manager checks the dial and it is marked %BS

This stuff all goes around in cycles

Disenchanted Windows user? Pop open a fresh can of Linux Lite

Re: Lite Fantastic

I like the thinking here.

From far too many years of experience I can say that most people could get away with little more that Notepad, Calc and a browser. Next step up would be the secretary/clerk types who need a basic word processor and spreadsheet (no, definitely NOT the macro stuff) and beyond that you get people with specific needs. Tailoring your offered Linux to that is a very sensible move and Linux Lite does seem to fit the role when you just need to make Notes and do big sums. OK I know I am denigrating it there but it really fits well as a starter kit and once they have been shown how life can be without Windows they are in a better position to decide if they need anything more complex.

High-flying drones on a leash could blow traditional wind turbines away

Re: Things are getting a little Swiftian here.

Was that the one which featured in a Bond movie?

Cisco's emergency caller can send first responders to the wrong location

Calling by mobile will always be different as it will reference the active cell tower. What @bemusedHorseman is talking about is fixed addresses where Cisco may be in the loop and to borrow from the article there may be a sub-office for some national agency next door to him but Cisco only provide the Head Office details in the centre of Manhattan.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

1 in a million scenario

With suitable bows to Sir Pterry, being asked to solve a problem with no data or diagnostics options should be a 1:1,000,000 incident but almost everyone reading El Reg will have a story of when they hit this brick wall...hell, it even happened in those dim and distant days of the Pharoahs when people had to interpret forgotten dreams. Come to think of it, that reminds me of all too many managers I have worked for

BOFH: Come on down to the dunge– erm … basement

A bit modern but...

Just checked the box beside my desk and I still have the IBM PC-AT Guide to Operations in it's cover/boxfile with both of the 5 1/4 floppies, I have the BASIC manual in another box somewhere along with a couple of Six Pack Plus cards and a Sound Blaster Pro

CIO who dropped VMware 18 months ago now feeling thoroughly chuffed

Re: "dedicated to encouraging the optimistic to part with their cash."

"infantile management afflicted with insane amounts of unfounded optimism"

Made worse by their goldfish grade memory causing them to forget the reason the last supplier was a disaster is that they simply took everything the salesmen said as TRUTH since they were trying to urgently replace a system which the salemen had assured them would...etc etc etc

Dublin debauchery derails Portal to NYC in six days flat

Re: 6 whole DAYS? For shame, Dublin.

Now there is an idea...setup a Television/Laptop/Tablet in front of it showing some subscription channel or other and wait for the screams

GhostStripe attack haunts self-driving cars by making them ignore road signs

Re: There are other ways...

Ah, like the easy attack of converting a 3 to an 8 on speed limit signs

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Re: I've seen worse

Brighton has a steet with a very amusing yet also punny name...Bartholomews

I can fix this PC, boss, but I’ll need to play games for hours to do it

I think Windows 11 machines will do any number of odd things given half a chance

Ah, Bosses with heart

While I have had a few in my long working life one stands out. My role was a customer support engineer but I only earned the company money when on-site with a customer so one glorious sunny Friday lunchtime in early summer I was bimbling about in the office doing make-work and he wandered over and commented that a day like this was best spent wandering on the beach. Taking the hint I suggested I should check over my kit so I could be ready for a short-notice call and left. A month or so later I got a call from him on a Saturday morning asking me to fly out to a customer site for three weeks, the flight was the following day but I just said yes and got packed to go. He always treated us with respect and he got respect in return, amazing how that works

BOFH: Smells like Teams spirit

Re: <ping> <ping> <pi^&*^&*$%%$^&*^&*(^&*$%

I thought they were Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly Events, aka RUDE

Help! My mouse climbed a wall and now it doesn't work right

Re: Mouse balls

Or the endless humour of replacing the ball with one just a tiny bit smaller resulting the cleaning process is repeated endlessly in the hope of getting those rollers to roll

Unintended acceleration leads to recall of every Cybertruck produced so far

Remind me

So, it isn't 'bulletproof', it doesn't handle off-road very well (bits fall off), the internal rear-view mirror only works when the loadbed tray is rolled open and now the pedals get jammed on by bodywork

Other than looking like you have driven out of the Spectrum garage and could be Captain Scarlet...what are the good points?

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Surely the onus is on HP to demonstrate that the update did not block use of ink that had previously been usable in the printers. If they cannot prove that then they are guilty and need to open their wallets

US insurers use drone photos to deny home insurance policies

I seem to recall this has been discussed on El Reg before and you can fall foul of the 'discharging a firearm within a cubit of habitation' type laws. Far simpler (although probably just as illegal) would be a scanner looking for drone frequency signals which kicks in a jammer when it finds them.

Cyberattack hits Omni Hotels systems, taking out bookings, payments, door locks

It distresses me that I must agree with your gloomy predictions, there is not enough beer to drown those sorrows (and they are putting the breweries at risk too!!!)

Outlook.com trips over Google's spam blocking rules

We asked Microsoft when it expects the problem to be fully resolved. We will update this piece should the company provide an estimate

Please tell me you are not doing anything as dangerous as holding your breath while you wait?

BOFH: So you want more boardroom tech that no one knows how to use

Re: We tend to forget

The places I have worked where internal solutions were worth using all used the mandate that development teams got the lowest spec kit. If it would run on that it would run on anything whereas if you gave them good kit users would have no chance.

Fresh version of Windows user-friendly Zorin OS arrives to tempt the Linux-wary

Re: Coincidence...

Firmly agree with this especially about the 'it must be Windows' people, They will have spent so much effort on learning how each new version of Windows works and this could now need repeating several times a year as unrequested updates get deployed but learning to use Linux/Mac is 'too much work'

You mention Outlook and this is a perfect example in business where 'it came included so must be best' which had some traction when home use was also Outlook but these days it is more likely to be on a tablet rather than a PC so that argument has time expired. The MS lock-in is very much a poisoned chalice yet many businesses still sip from it as a result of MS Sales people who should be on 6 figure salaries for their ability to convince the C-Suite to sign yet another contract

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

I passed on the chance to buy a T Shirt supporting the right to keep and arm Bears. Would love to see the NRA types deal with that little conundrum

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

Correct, if it is broken that is for the good of humanity

Hmmm

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha

and productivity improved by 40% once the users tears cleared enough to see their screens

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Reasonable reward

Surely it is more reasonable for them to get the same reward as all the other shareholders...

Shafted

OpenAI sued, again, for scraping and replicating news stories

Re: Embrace the verbatim

Fully agree, not only does this avoid lawsuits from the source owners but it also builds confidence in the output of these systems unlike the recent examples where the advice or quotes turn out to be complete fiction

Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

RAM/PMEM

The final part of this took me back to a Z80 based home computer I had, a Memotech. If you bought the CP/M upgrade with the 3.5" floppy drive then at startup it would copy the disc down to RAM and run everything from there. This is only really different to the RAM/PMEM idea in terms of hardware, not concept...albeit that there was no practical way to copy back up without dragging out the shutdown process

Lenovo debuts AI PCs that have specs a lot like vanilla PCs with this year's accelerated CPUs

Re: "enabling the interaction with physical objects"

Don't forget though as with so many things in the marketing world (Colour options for new cars is a classic as is 'this seasons fashion colours/style')) they will proudly announce that 'over 90% of all purchasers chose the AI Capable option' while calmly ignoring the minor detail that all PCs had that badge slapped on them.

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Re: Ugh I hated SCSI cables

I kept a wirewrap tool for exactly that purpose. It was unusual to find a plug where I could not gently slide the tool between the surrounding pins and straighten any bent ones.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Re: Chatbot vs Human

It gets worse (yes, it really can). If you complete your tax affairs using the information provided by HMRC Tax Inspectors you can be found at fault when their advice was wrong and be taken to court if you challenge that

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

Re: Puzzled....Again!!

I would mostly agree with this but by extension anyone who is using private encryption becomes 'of interest' so in essence they are trashing the privacy of 99.999% of people so they can see who the targets actually are

Kind of like the idea of shooting everyone and letting $Deity sort out which are the good guys and which are the bad

BOFH: Hearken! The Shiny Button software speaks of Strategic Realignment

Resource re-alignment?

It always confuses me when managers are so keen to get onboard with this. They will not see a bonus from the savings as that is well above their paygrade but there may be questions about the need for their role once the staff numbers reduce as we are seeing from the WFH movement over the last 4 years. So many staff are happier and working more efficiently without the hourly interruptions from a manager that needs to be seen to be 'in the loop' that entire layers of management are now desperate for people to be back in the office before the axeman comes to encourage them to spend more time with their family.

Some companies appear to be looking at this is a good way and are downsizing their office space and making savings that way but there are a number of big enterprises out there who are too invested in their offices, especially since it is now a buyer's market for office space so selling a 'quantum experience in flexible ergonomic working spaces featuring ambient music and meditation pods' is not a quick process.

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Re: What fresh hell is this?

While I do not run the latest AAA*PrimeMegaMustBuy games (or whatever the latest label is for them) I have not had any games not run on Steam. I have played with the various compatibility modes, due to an odd CPU/Graphics set-up which came from re-using old kit, to find the sweet spot although most have simply run the most recent option.

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

Re: The problem with Notes

I presume you have forgotten that at that time every piece of software had it's own unique UI. Even MS products used different UIs from each other (this is the era when all the MS-Standards jokes started) and the whole point of Notes was you could write your own UI if you hated the 'out of the box' one so much

MS were working very hard to make their product incompatible with everyone else so companies had to make a choice. Each update for Lotus 1-2-3 to allow import/export of Excel files was followed by an Excel update to break it.