Posts by Matt Bryant

Google's macho memo man fired, say reports

Re: Kristian Walsh Re: No diversity of opinion from "progressive" conformity

".....the only difference is in the hirer's preconceptions." Er, no. Take for example a recent network team manager vacancy interview panel I sat on, where we had twenty-six applicants put forward by external (and almost uniformly female) national hiring agencies. Our HR department has a black, female director and her staff are predominantly female, and they approve all candidates before interview. By your reckoning on bias we should have received predominantly female candidates with a good number of blacks included. We actually got eighteen white male candidates, five Indian males, two Chinese males and a single white female. I did ask the agencies why we didn't have more women willing to apply, they just shrugged and said it wasn't a popular vacancy with many of their female candidates. At the same time we had another vacancy for a Web graphics designer - this had an almost equal number of male-to-female applicants, though the majority of the women were Indian. Not a single black applicant of either sex for either job, despite being in a city with over 50% black population. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the "hirer's preconceptions" and more to do with the actual candidates and the jobs they are seeking. For the record, we hired a white male network manager (he had more qualifications and experience) and an Indian female graphics designer (she tested the best).

Re: phuzz

".....don't force your coworkers to read it." Google created the internal forum expressly as a safe space for employees to raise what they saw as issues with Google processes and policies. No-one forced anyone to read it, and it was not Damore that posted it to the outside World.

Re: Barbara.hudson Re: Diversity is good

".....Today's banana is a sterile plant that cannot reproduce sexually, so the Cavendish bananas in the store all share pretty much all their genes......." Whilst a good biological example, it falls flat in the case of white employees as the genetic pool of Caucasians is actually quite broad and often includes genetic traits from other ethnic groups. Indeed, there is a 99.5% genetic commonality between all humans.

Monoculture, such as employing only white MIT grads, is arguably much more of a problem as it potentially limits their ability to reach conclusions or use processes not prevalent in their place of development (I have seen this when an MIT-trained manager refused to accept a report using CMMI because he didn't use Carnegie Mellon tools whilst at MIT). Google risks creating a less-diverse group of employees by making "unorthodox" thought perceived as unwelcome - for example, as a Google coder, would I now be less likely to recommend the benefits of a new programming language or technique if it's author has been branded "racist/sexist/un-PC"? Probably.

But ethnic monoculture is rarely an issue with coders as they are usually taught to code the same languages using the same techniques and are following a design doc. Pretending that some African-Amercan woman grad from North Carolina A&T is somehow going to write Java in a markedly different way than a white (or Asian) male MIT grad, simply because she is a black woman with a deprived upbringing in a ghetto (and please note the majority of NCA&T's black grads do not have "deprived" backgrounds) is simply preposterous. Whilst there may be many ways to skin a cat, 99% of Java coders will declare a variable the same way, especially if the design doc they are following already specifies the variable. She might write a cleverer complete piece of code, but my own experience is that has more to do with the individual ability of the coder rather than skin colour, upbringing or where they graduated from (one of the most consistently brilliant coders I have met was half-Indian and half-Portugese from Macau, and he actually had a BA degree in Literature!).

Re: el kabong

"....Do as I say don't do as I do." It appears that "do no evil" should have had a footnote explaining that Google reserved the right to define evil as they see fit.

Re: jmch

"....A lot of the arguments against affirmative action are built on the premise that hiring minorities will deny opportunities to better qualified candidates....." Unfortunately, that is what happens in the real World. Another factor is the unspoken belief that white people will only hire white people, something that is shown to be ridiculous by the number of non-whites in Silicon Valley long before affirmative action took root. I have been on interview panels with other white, male technical experts where we have been directed by the HR manager that we have to include at least one female candidate and one ethnic minority candidate in our list of final interviewees, regardless of performance. Personally, I find that insulting, the assumption that a white male cannot see the potential value in a candidate unless it is another white male. Would they be so quick to make that accusation against a woman or a non-white person?

Re: hnwombat

"....And no, firing an employee for sharing screeds detrimental to company performance and morale using company resources on company time is not "reducing diversity"...." But the company had supposedly provided the forum expressly for staff to put forward their thoughts on company policies and processes, it was others that took the memo and out it out on the Web. As far as I can see, he did not trash the company, he was suggesting what he saw as reasons why the policy was wrong. As such, it looks very much as though Google likes debate and ideas as long as they are Google's approved debate and ideas, i.e., it is censorship at best, and discrimination against the writer because he didn't swallow their approved "group-think".

Re: KeepCalm Re: Feel Good

".... without addressing any of the points he raised...." EACTLY THAT! If his ideas are so loopy and easy to debunk, why is the emphasis on attacking him and suppressing his statements rather than publically examining them?

Re: sabroni

"So, if you don't have any diversity, and you know it's good, how do you get some without positive discrimination?" Instead of dropping your standards to a select group, you could instead ask that group why they are not applying for the jobs. It might expose some facts about your company that would help you make it a more attractive place to work without you having to potentially reduce the effectiveness of your workforce. Of course, that takes actual work, when it is so much easier just to do a bit of virtue-signaling with some fluffy HR statements about equality, etc.

Where's the bloody flare gun? Cast adrift on a swirling gyre of storage

Hmmmm, Envy Me over Ethernet...?

Solarflare's idea of NVM over TCP looks interesting for distance applications (DR and BURA), but I think the drop in transfer rates over a WAN will be horrific, especially as TCP is not a storage-optimised protocol (which is why we ended up with iSCSI). And then there's the same problems with any storage-over-the-network technology, number one being aptly described by Brocade's Mark Detrick as "The storage guys don’t go to lunch with the network guys. You know what I mean, right? OK, think about it…"

Don't buy Microsoft Surface gear: 25% will break after 2 years, says Consumer Reports

Re: Updraft102 Re: Not really a "survey"

"....That CR setup affects the reliability reports for every model, not just those by Microsoft...." LOL, right! Just try getting an Apple user to say anything bad about their shiny lifestyle gadget. My bro-in-law has a house full of the latest Apple gadgets and insists they are way more reliable than MS-powered devices. He suffered the iPhone4 "grip of signal death" issue, had to replace his iPhone5 because of a bad battery after six months, and his iPhone6 twice because the case bent, and his iPhone7 after only a month because it hissed and got very hot under load, yet he still calmly insists Apple are the nadir of design and reliability. His faith in iPads is even more blinkered, including buying a new office wireless router simply because his iPad Air was the only device in the office that couldn't get a reliable connection. I suspect MS users are simply more willing to complain.

Can GCHQ order techies to work as govt snoops? Experts fear: 'Yes'

What a load of complete cobblers!

1. Did you miss the word "warrant"? As in court-issued and approved? The UK courts do not give out warrants compelling people to provide services for anyone, they issue warrants relating to specific equipment and data searches for specific suspected crimes which compel people to obey the request to give up said equipment or data. The idea that a court would issue a warrant to force someone to go spy for HMG is simply so farcically paranoid it beggars belief! I find it hard to believe anyone not on seriously mind-altering substances was arguing that.

2. If I wanted to spy on anyone the last thing I would want to do was include an unwilling and probably antagonistic person into my secret investigation. Seriously, the idea is just too stupid for words. Not only are they very likely to not work to the best of their skills, they are far more likely to deliberately hinder the investigation and ensure the target escapes, if only because they "hate The Man".

3. Please stop for a moment to consider that the GCHQ, NSA and other chums already have not only a more than capable set of well-trained staff with plenty of skills, they also have external parties that are already vetted and approved to help provide assistance when required. The idea they would need some self-trained haxor to assist them is simply comic and speaks more of self-preening egotism than a firm grasp on reality.

The only people bound to comply with this law are telco staff receiving court warrants demanding they recover something like a backup to show the texts between two telephone numbers of interest explicitly stated in the warrant. They are not going to be asked to hack anything. That El Reg would see fit to publish a click-bait article implying such nonsense is bordering on fake news.

Your top five dreadful people the Google manifesto has pulled out of the woodwork

Re: kieranmccarthy Re: RTFM

"....The memo is garbage....." True, it is not going to make the Booker List, but that does not mean the issues raised should be rejected out-of-hand, nor that raising them should be verboten, especially as Google created the internal-only forum supposedly as a safe space for employees to raise concerns about company policies. Sure, send him on some diversity training, educate him as to why his theories are wrong, but fire him out of hand? Had his work been unsatisfactory, or he had a history of reducing team performance by insulting women members, then there would have been an understandable and proper reason to fire him. But, it seems the only reason they fired him was because he dared to hold an "unacceptable" viewpoint.

And then your article doesn't really delve into the memo, it just picks five people whose politics you don't seem to agree with for a barrage of insults. Whilst I'm sure that went down well with the members of the socio-political bubble you surround yourself with, you obviously failed to understand how other people might be alarmed by Google's effective suppression of thought. Google is already in the press for editing search results to hide political pieces they don't like (see here and here), so it's worrying that this unregulated and unelected body that has so much power over the Internet is again being shown as ideologically rigid, unquestioning and unforgiving of "unfavourable" views. Maybe you should seek a more diverse set of opinions before your next article.

Re: diodesign Re: Average differences between groups

"....Let's say you were a fan of the Sopranos on HBO, or you like Brit metal band Cradle of Filth. And say there was a study that suggested Sopranos and Filth fans tend to be unstable in stressful situations. And you go into a job interview with the interviewers knowing from your Facebook that you're a fan of the Sopranos or the Filth. And immediately they're thinking: on average, this person isn't going to be a reliable candidate....." Already happens, and not in an unconscious bias but in a very professional process. HR drones have books that will tell them what they think they need to know about you by your choice of fave film, TV show, actor, pop group, song, book, politician or historical figure*. Even your taste in food is "a doorway to your thought processes", apparently. They won't just ask you in the interview, they will scan your social media for such info. For example, got on Facebook that The Smiths are your fave group? That's career suicide for the City or Wall Street. My advice is to think very carefully not only about what you put on your social media but also the people you link to and friend. I am certain some of the candidates I have interviewed in the last few years have edited their social media because it was too squeaky clean, but I personally saw that as a good thing as it meant they looked ahead and came prepared.

*The historical figure is a classic and over-used question, usually indicative of an unimaginative, process-following HR drone - "If you could go back through time to talk to any historical figure, who would that be?" Look at the company career pages, pick out the buzzwords like "team work", "innovative", "assertive", etc., then choose a figure you can build a response around those. Also look to see if they sponsor something like a scholarship set up in the memory of a famous person or industry innovator - this gives you the double bonus of looking like you know about the industry and looking like you have researched the company when you say something like; "And I was pleased to note your company sponsors Dr X's scholarship."

Re: kieranmccarthy Re: Diversity for Diversity's sake?

"....In the same way that many start-ups in Silicon Valley - especially apps - tend to cater for people exactly like themselves, so having mostly white male software engineers means that software will tend to cater for their needs because that's what and who they know....." And there you go with yet more failure, only this time you fail to understand the business roles and decision chains for products. Software engineering teams in large corporations do not decide which apps a company will produce, indeed it is my experience that they are the last people to be asked if something is a good idea. Waaaaaaaay ahead of them in the decision-making chain are Marketing (usually a female-dominated department) and Sales (usually an unscrupulous asshole-dominated department, whether they are male or female). Ever heard of market research? Here's a clue - not done by software engineers!

In reality, what happens is the software engineers usually build what they are told to build, the product requirement having been identified by someone else. In that respect, whether they are white, black, brown, yellow, male, female or non-identifying is irrelevant as long as they are good coders and have a program/project manager that can follow the requirements doc. Pretending that better code will be written just because 14% of the coders are black and/or 50% of them are female is simply nonsense. The best coders write the best code, and therefore you want to employ the best coders and not the ones that are not the best just because they make you feel socially warm'n'fuzzy.

Many years ago I stood up for hiring gay coders in security projects, something that was definitely not the approved line. Although there was some drivel about them being a security risk due to blackmail (an easily debunked point by answering that if they were openly gay then there was no point in trying to blackmail them), when the reality was there was a considerable body of (homophobic) opinion that gay men just could not do as good a job as straight men. My stance was that there was no proof that being gay made you any better or less able to code than a straight male, and I challenged anyone to prove otherwise. Did I do so because of some altruistic idealism about equal opportunities? Fuck no! I did it because I wanted my projects to have the best coders available. Whether they were straight, gay or fancied sheep, I saw that as none of my professional business. Did I want my projects to succeed because I loved my employers? FUCK NO! I did it because of the money - successful completion of projects meant I got paid. The Google management fired Damore because they wanted to keep their business revenues healthy because they wanted to keep getting paid.

A staggeringly obtuse fail!

".....Second, no one benefitted financially from him being fired. In fact, money has nothing to do with the entire saga....." Kieran, I managed to make it to page two of your article before I stopped reading at that naïve gem of blinkered idealism. Of course it is all about money! The only reason Google and other such companies advertise their wholesome policies, be they ethical behavior, greenness, diversity, charitable donations to "good causes", etc., etc., and why they stamp down on any dissenting views, is because they believe to do so will generate more business due to public approval. To not do so is to invite a business-threatening wave of hysterical and public criticism that could threaten income. If Flat-Eartherism and Demonism were the flavor of the week in PC Land then I'd wager Google would be frantically producing statements to say how much they earnestly embrace both.

Google diversity memo: Web giant repudiates staffer's screed for 'incorrect assumptions about gender'

Re: Powernumpty Re: Dare I say

".....People who develop greater abilities through study should find greater opportunities in work, regardless of their gender, race....." That used to be the position of the SJWs when they were convinced that "fighting the class war" was the Right Thing To Do, but when that didn't quite work how they liked they moved the goalposts again. When "diversity programs" also don't heal all the World's ills they'll have to think of something else (actually forbidding white men to apply for jobs, probably) rather than admit the silliness of their ideas.

Re: AC Re: The token conservative spoke out!

"..... It doesn't mean being forced to hire a "minority" to boost the numbers....." Yeah, that's how it's supposed to happen, but the problem is management-by-numbers - "How do we know if our diversity program is working if we don't set some number goals, just tell HR they be fired if they don't hire X% of minorities." And then you get employment-by-numbers - "We have sixty able, white, male candidates but no self-declared black lesbian paraplegics, we'll have to cancel the interviews!" Don't get me wrong, I have had endless fun with HR teams that hire by other moronic rules (my fave was "It's a certain level of tech job so all applicatns must have a CS degree", neatly excluding better applicants with years of relevant experience in favour of clueless but recent grads), but the problem starts (and needs to end) with senior managements' slavish tendency for feel-good, fad policies.

Re: Day Re: WHAT are you talking about?

"....1. "Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn’t necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what’s been done in education"...." I suspect he is complaining about the "participation medal" mentality in US education, which does not prepare those that fail for the consequences or lack of desired results for not performing as well as others. IMHO, encouraging kids by saying "Hey, you didn't win this time, but you made a good effort, lets see why you didn't make the grade so we can improve your performance next time" is good, but simply saying "Hey, you failed, but have a prize anyway" is not going to help kids realise the real World is not egalitarian, it is very much results-based (even with affirmative action).

I also suspect the writer's first language is not English, which would be extra amusing as it would mean one case of affirmative action moaning about another!

Re: Tom Paine Re: Dare I say

"....especially in the US where education still seems to be* startlingly segregated." I too was surprised to find the problem of segregation in US colleges is getting worse, not better, but the really surprising point was that it was self-segregation - blacks/PeopleOfColor/African-Amercians (delete as your sensitivities allow) insisting on having their own colleges, their own dorms, their own "safe spaces". The whole safe spaces problem wasn't created by the blacks/PeopleOfColor/African-Amercians, that was due to the ridiculous nature of modern colleges being desperate to avoid any form of confrontation, so people that might challenge/offend others' views are silenced rather than debated. Bigots in the blacks/PeopleOfColor/African-Amercians community seized on the safe spaces schpiel to create educational ghettos without realizing just how racist they are being.

I have had some good, some bad, and some hilariously shocking experiences with graduates of black-only US colleges, especially considering that college is supposed to prepare a student for the business world. I had one such grad who seemed to assume the colour of her skin somehow guaranteed her equal standing with white and Asian colleagues that had far more experience and skill, and it was a real shock to her to be told that she had to earn advancement rather than have it handed to her on a plate. Her immediate response was to reflexively accuse the company of racism, which was disheartening because she had the ability, as she subsequently demonstrated, but her college had given her a very blinkered perspective.

Marcus Hutchins free for now as infosec world rallies around suspected banking malware dev

Re: kmac499 Re: Legal Blasphemy.

"....The 'law' is an unchallengeable absolute, and the sin of transgression, whatever the alleged offence, is deemed so unpardonable that hostile popular opinion and the full powers of law enforcement are applied unthinkingly....." Actually the reality is completely the opposite. UK law is very prescriptive - "you cannot do X or you will be charged with offence Y which has punishment Z". That was why Assange's argument of "it wasn't really rape" was so quickly debunked as it was very easy for the CPS to show it fitted the UK's tight definition. The US legal system is a lot more ambiguous, which is why lawyers have become so rich in the States. There they can argue over definitions of a law with the jury (and the judge, who can direct the jury) then having to decide which legal argument has best merit.

OMG, the horror!!!

Milwaukee?!?! That's cruel and unusual, even for someone from Ilfracombe!

WannaCry-killer Marcus Hutchins denies Feds' malware claims

Re: Sir Runcible Spoon Re: werdsmith America is mad! - A truly shocking FAIL

".....In which report the US appears 23rd in the table...." I never said the US nor the report were perfect (for example, I have some Chinese friends that left Hong Kong, rated number 1 in the report, to live in the US, because they felt oppressed in HK). I did state I was using a Left-leaning source so as not to cause too much ideological shock to some of the posters. But the baaaaaahlief held so earnestly by said posters - that the US must be the World's worst offender when it comes to curbing freedoms - is shown up as false by even this report, as the US is not listed as coming 159th out of 159 countries. Indeed, it is a measure of the freedoms available in the US that you will find plenty of US-based and Left-leaning (and some ironically similar extreme Right) reports discussing the state of US freedoms, reports that would be suppressed in many other countries.

"....I'm pretty sure that the feeling of freedom (or lack of it) from the poster referring to the jaywalking was that in most places, crossing an empty road wouldn't have been prosecuted (unless it was a motorway, and even then a ticking off would suffice)....." It's simply an American traffic law, just as quirky and arguably outdated as European traffic laws not allowing a right turn on a red light (which is permitted in the majority of US states). Other developed countries have traffic laws you might find just as baffling - for example, in Australia, you can be committing an offence if you cross a road diagonally!

Sir Runcible Spoon Re: "Basically it is for show"

".... I didn't think even you could defend such an outrageously oppressive policy (unless you're trolling of course)." As I pointed out in my response, it is no different to the asset seizure laws enacted in the EU, so to try and imply they are an American-only "abuse" is to ignore their application in so-called "enlightened" countries. Are you saying you therefore disagree with the similar EU laws?

As it stands, the US laws have previously been used to confiscate the loot of drug dealers for decades, with billions of the seized assets and cash having been used to compensate victims of crime. Eric Holder ramped down the seizures but did not eliminate them. It has gained more attention recently because Jeff Sessions said he planned to ramp it back up, and anything related to Trumpet's administration is immediately and hysterically targeted by the Left as being "bad". Are you suggesting that the cartels, responsible for thousands of gang-related deaths in Mexico alone every year, shouldn't have their assets targeted?

Re: Domquark Re: Domquark Kaltern Proportionality? - FAIL! Fail again. Again

"....I think you need to pop out and clean your "Kill 'em all let God sort 'em out" and "God is a member of the NRA" bumper stickers........" Oh dear, I see that you have completely given up (not surprisingly) on countering the points raised, and have instead tryped (sic) some more bigoted remarks, this time assuming anyone pro-gun is a bible-thumper. Did you go to www.idiotsthatneedstereotypes.com for that one?

Seriously, if you can't defend your position, at least try accepting your defeat with some grace.

Re: Bernie Re: asking him to confirm or deny

"5th amendment doesn't apply as he's a foreign national and not a US citizen. He has about the same level of rights as a Guantanamo in-mate. ie, none." Actually, that is incorrect. Whilst he is on US soil and charged in public court he has exactly the same rights (rights to silence and not to incriminate himself, in this case) as an US citizen because the US Constitution mainly deals with setting limits to the power of the government rather than spelling out the rights of US citizens. The only rights Hutchins would not have that are granted by the Constitution are those which are specifically granted only to US citizens, such as the right to vote in elections (though Democrats don't seem to understand that one either). The difference with Gitmo is the detainees are not on US soil, therefore they are not covered by US law or the Constitution.

Re: Flocke Kroes Re: Flocke Kroes Guilty - FAIL!

"The reason they are taped is because the police kept misreporting the interviews...." No, it was because people accused the police of fabricating confessions. Taping interviews (and videoing them) removes the chance that a criminal could get off by saying the police fabricated his confession. Strange, you now seem to recall the taping of interviews, you just want to pretend it somehow didn't apply to Hutchins?

"....For more US police fun, see this report on a bodycam showing a policeman planting evidence...." <Yawn> Yes, try and divert attention from the fact you just had to admit your original post was stupidity of the highest order.

"....Also current in the US, they have a law that lets the police steal anything valuable from you, and its up to you to sew the police force to get it back...." More diversion, only this time regurgitation of more anti-Yank boilerplate. The law in question states that items can only be confiscated when there is a real and demonstrated case that the items or money were the result of criminal activity, and happens in the EU also. Joe Blogs walking down the street is not going to have his clothing confiscated on some policeman's whim, but Jose Blogski - who does not have a job or visible means of support to justify his carrying large amounts of cash - walking out of a known drug-dealer's house with 5K Euros in cash is just as likely to have the cash seized. You really should read your own links before trying to cast unfounded aspersions on the US authorities.

Re: werdsmith Re: America is mad! - A truly shocking FAIL

"....I'm reminded of the trouble I got into in Boston for crossing an empty road, where apparently I should not have crossed it....." Wow, so you think America is the most in-free country in the World because of the local jaywalking laws? So if an American claimed the same about your country because he got stopped for turning right on a red light, you'd support his viewpoint? I bet not! Seriously, you can't have travelled very far afield if that I the biggest inhibitor of freedom you have ever experienced was American jaywalking! Try <a href="https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index>reading some actual expert opinion</a> (I chose a left-leaning example so you don't go into shock). Massive and embarrassing fail of both bias and complete inexperience of the World.

Re: Domquark Re: Kaltern Proportionality? - FAIL! Fail again.

".....So a gun manufacturer could say "Hey, I mass produced millions of guns (a device designed to kill, maim or injure), sold them to millions of people, but never thought anyone use one to kill/maim/injure someone".*...." Actually the gun manufacturers expressly sell the weapons most commonly used in murders (handguns) in the hope they will be used to protect people. But of course, you don't know that because you never bothered to look at the gun companies, you simply took as gospel the line fed to you by the anti-gun crowd.

"....The problem is that sharing such code is standard practice....." True, but that is not the issue. He is accused of not just sharing the code, but of co-operating in or instigating the design and sale of malware using some of his previously shared code. Try reading the article.

".....Secondly, his admission of guilt...." Yeah, more like he was shown his own blog and realised he'd look pretty stupid trying to deny it was his. Duh!

"....Thirdly the timing of his detention....' He was on American soil for the first time since the Kronos issue arose, so the timing is not surprising, it's simply more convenient as the FBI didn't have to worry about trying to extradite him from the UK and then facing the same ridiculous shrieking as surrounded the Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon farces.

".....Fourthly, the lack of evidence presented at his indictment...." The authorities presented enough to keep Hutchins where they wanted him - in the US and awaiting trial. There was no need for them to go into greater depth because the judge agreed with their presentation. Again, READ THE ARTICLE!

".....Fifthly, the extremely low level of bail set by the Judge....." And how did you come to the conclusion it was an abnormally low amount for such a case? Did you look at other fraud or embezzlement cases of similar amounts? No, you just leapt to a pat conclusion.

"....I'm (and many others here) are not saying that he is innocent. But there is a lot about this case that smells fishy....." What you are saying is you desperately, desperately want to baaaaahlieve he is innocent simply because you harbour faddish anti-American baaaaaahliefs inherited from the socio-political bubble of like-minded baaaaaahlievers you choose to spend time with.

Re: Syn3rg Re: Gun range

"....how many opportunities would he have in the UK to visit a gun range?...." There are plenty of gun clubs still running ranges in the UK (indeed, the Houses of Parliament has its own!), but the continuous and clueless shrieking of the anti-gun crowd has made clubs very wary about advertising their existence. If you want to (and can afford to), you can even go to specialist ranges and fire large caliber rifles such as the Barrett .50 types, something that is illegal in California! What is impossible to do (without a specialist license) is shoot handguns as they are illegal in the UK, which is probably what Hutchins did when he went to the range in the US. Most people I know from the UK that have visited US ranges have wanted to shoot the Glock or Berettas pistols that are illegal for the general public to own and shoot in the UK.

Re: Kaltern Re: Proportionality? - FAIL!

"Unfortunately, those pulling the strings want things to be seen to be happening, and as per usual, they go after those who are the easy target, those who can be used as a scapegoat to avoid having to investigate (openly) those really involved with these attacks...." Wow, did you use a time-machine to go forward and carefully examine ALL the evidence, as will be presented in court, or did you just jump to that pat (and, frankly, paranoid) conclusion? I'm betting on the jumping like a frightened bunny option.

It could be that parts of the code used for Kronos was written by Hutchins, either as an innocent act of stupid techno-bragging, or with a real intent to demonstrate rooting code (though that's a bit like claiming "hey, I taught that guy how to rape, but I never actually thought he'd do it"). Or it could be he had a mate sell the code so he could make some money and claim he had nothing to do with Kronos. The prosecutor will have to show Hutchins profited directly from Kronos to win. Wait until the court case and see.

Re: Infernoz Re: A question....

Wow, IMHO, that was the most impressive troll snark EVER. The problem is it will float right over the Webkidz addled, paranoid heads, as it is a pretty exact parody of their tragi-comic "thought process". A shame they will never appreciate the true genius of your wit. Sir, I salute you.

"If someone else took his proof-of-concept code and used it to create malware...." True, but the operative word there is if. It could be the prosecution have evidence of complicity, such as Hutchins saying on some "secure" coms tool "Hey, Sergei, lets make some cash with that rootkit code I wrote...."

Re: The Elder Re: asking him....

"The law in the U.S. allows you to refuse to incriminate yourself. It is the Fifth Amendment." True, but most non-Americans have no clue as to US laws or the US Constituition, as demonstrated by many of the posters here on a regular basis. I suspect Hutchins would have no awareness of such a defence.

Re: Oh dear... maybe

The prosecution would have to show he profited from the Kronos sales to prove their case. It is not illegal to write such code, nor is it illegal to share it for "research purposes", but it is a crime to incite others to use your code from criminal purposes, and a crime to sell your code if you have a reasonable expectation of realizing that the person you sold it to intended to use it for a crime. If the prosecution can link Hutchins to the seller of the Kronos kit then Hutchins is screwed - if not then he'll walk.

Re: Flocke Kroes Re: Guilty - FAIL!

"....the officer can still fail to remember your exact words when he writes his interview report." Which is why interviews are taped. Please go lose the tinfoil.

Automotive Grade Linux shops for hypervisor to accelerate smart cars

Re: Simon Re: A hypervisor to do what?

"....the development of smart cars through allowing them to have one CPU rather than lots." Which in itself is a BAD IDEA as the manufacturers will use the excuse to run vital control apps on the same hypervisor as infotainment apps! The aircraft industry has it right - keep control apps/signals on their own separate CPUs/buses.

Briton admits to router hack that DDoSed Deutsche Telekom

Re: Bob Dole (TM) Re: No specialiat training...

Why is that bit important to say? I'd wager the majority of keyboard hammering eejits that think they are great programmers had little to no formal training...

FTFY

Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C

Re: 45RPM

"....Pascal...." ah, yes, that was a fun starter language, but most learning establishments seem to have just treated it as an intro to Modula 2 and/or C, and never as a viable language in its own right.

I like intro'ing kids to code with HTML, especially as they all use websites every day, and you show them structuring and files calls etc. with quick and easy results. From there it's easy to get them into a backend in C or whatever language you like.

Re: COBOL FTW

During the Y2K bonanza/hysteria, I was amazed at the amount of COBOL code that was expensively edited to get round the Y2K issue, rather than rewritten in a more modern language. Seeing as the majority of those COBOL coders from 2000 are dead from old age, any young whippersnapper with COBOL in their skill set will probably make serious dough when the next Y2K-like issue arrives and all that code needs to be edited again.

Re: Phil O'Sophical Re: I suspect there are quite a few Java devs out there

".... but they write C programs." Yeah, guilty! Nowadays I write code once in a blue moon, but it's usually C code morphed into whatever wrapper is required.

One strange practice I commonly run into is customers that have picked the coding language for a problem long before they have determined even what the problem is. I try to at least steer the project to a thorough pseudo-coding before going to language selection. Agilistas really hate that, they seem to think it insults their skills.

UK.gov embraces Oracle's cloud: Pragmatism or defeatism?

Re: AC Re: Cloud costs

"....Monitoring your kit on the cloud, for example, is a bloody doddle because it's all built in...." Well, yes and no. Because the Snoreacle Cloud is proprietary only, you get the monitoring that Snoreacle want to give you, and that may not actually be the best tool for the job. The other problem is you no longer control the monitoring tool, Snoreacle do, so you cannot change the monitoring configuration whenever you like, and you also lose some visibility of actual root causes (such as when Snoreacle don't want to admit that your applications have been dead for the last five days because they had to re-silver a ZFS partition).

Not that scary or that hard: Two decades of VLANS

Re: DHCP is you friend.

".....Assuming that the clients actually take the IP address and correctly use it, it works quite well...." Ah, yes, but one of the great selling myths the VLAN peddlers push is that VLANs are "more flexible" and you can "reconfigure on the fly". The reality is you usually set up your VLANs and then don't change anything for years.

Re: Sixtysix Re: VLANS save money...

".....I fin it surprising how many network admins still can't get their heads around VLANs....." The admins you have to watch out for are the ones that thinking converting a relatively simple network into a mess of VLANs will somehow protect their jobs....

Luxembourg passes first EU space mining law. One can possess the Spice

LMAO!

The real question is whether the EU will survive long enough to be around when space travel and space mining are regular occurrences.

Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

Doctor choice pretty irrelevant.

What will damn or not the new Doctor will be the quality of the scripts - too much PCness will kill the show quicker than a Doctor in a skirt.

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd scoops up $17.4m from 350,000 share sales

WTF?

"....five-bed, eight-bath condo...." Whaaaaaat?!? One for each day of the week and a second bath every Sunday? Does she have a serious water fetish?

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Re: Daniel Gould Re: The power of suggestion

"It's amazing and so close to the truth!" And very dangerous to demonstrate! A friend did something similar - a fake change warning - and ended up having to go to management to ask for overtime money for his help desk team. During that meeting he had to field questions from a senior manager over how to back out the non-existent change. It turned out senior management were just as prone to falling for the hoax as ordinary lusers, only they had the scary power to end your career if they ever found out!

Tech industry thumps Trump's rump over decision to leave Paris climate agreement

Re: John R. Macdonald Re: Trumpy the clown

".....Since 1978, satellites have monitored sea ice growth and retreat, and they have detected an overall decline in Arctic sea ice....." Yes, but that is stating a scientific fact to try and substantiate an unproven conclusion - there is zero proof that the warming causing the ice to melt is not simply the natural cycle of warming the planet has been undergoing for thousands of years, nor any concrete proof that man's activities have done anything to cause or even accellerate said global warming. Hint - go read up on causality. On the evidence presented to date, the "AGW-caused-by-us" schpiel is like saying a car moves therefore I must have telekinetic powers, because I really want to believe I have telekinetic powers, when in reality it is the car's engine and transmission doing the work and telekinesis is just a crackpot fantasy.

Re: strum Re: Stick to business

".....Everyday science is about consensus...." Yeah, but it doesn't always mean that consensus is correct. For example, it doesn't help the Global Warming alarmists that one of their most hyperventilating "experts", NASA's James Hansen, spent the early '70s insisting the World was "doomed" by an imminent new ice age. ROFL!

Re: strum Re: Stick to business

".....No-one building a plane/rocket/artillery shell sets out to re-test Newton or Einstein. Instead, he/she relies on consensus amongst those who have studied those theories....." Sorry, but that is a complete load of cobblers. There are many examples in recent history where the scientific consensus has said a development is "impossible", only for empirical testing to show the development is actually not just possible but overturns scientific convention. There are also plenty of cases where designs built to conventional rules have failed at the test stage because developments have out-stripped the old science. One example is the relative failure of early supersonic aircraft, such as the Convair F-102 interceptor, which would not fly at the Mach speeds predicted by their designers using conventional scientific rules. It took the (re)discovery of the "area rule" of aerodynamics - by Richard Whitcomb at NACA, through wind-tunnel experimentation - to provide the redesign guidance that finally allowed the F-102 to be successful. It is still true today that those developing new planes, rockets and shells do a LOT of testing as that is THE ONLY real way to show actual performance and reliability.