Posts by alain williams

First they came for Notepad. Now they're coming for Task Manager

Re: Ms just does not know when to stop fiddling

If it ain't bust don't fix it.

A good design philosophy -- but as a developer I do understand the temptation to fiddle.

Autonomy's Mike Lynch gets yet another judgment date as US extradition wrangling continues

This all seems horribly cruel

This has been going on for 7 years - a large chunk of anyone's life. 7 years where he has been living in uncertainty & fear.

This does seem to be the way with court.

Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

Re: Governments

most songs ended up around 3 minutes long 'cos that's what the station was prepared to play

I though that 3 minutes was/is the play time of the vinyl 45 RPM 7" single.

Lawmakers propose TLDR Act because no one reads Terms of Service agreements

Model contracts should be mandated

There should be a set of model contracts that are clearly written and fair to both customer and retailer/business. These would come with a logo like the BSI Kitemark.

Different contracts as there are different sorts of business.

The contracts would come with a schedule where the business could put things like: delivery times & charges; URLs; geographic restrictions.

One thing forbidden would be any change without further customer agreement - except, maybe, stuff in the schedule.

Austrian watchdog rules German company's use of Google Analytics breached GDPR by sending data to US

Will this ruling apply in the UK ?

Following brexit ?

I hope so.

'IwlIj jachjaj! Incoming LibreOffice 7.3 to support Klingon and Interslavic

Pity that Klingon Unicode ...

did not make it. There is still a proposal which probably will not go far.

The James Webb Space Telescope has only gone and deployed its primary mirror

Re: Excessive - but a Space Camera Drone?

And the drone camera would be operating at around -300 deg F...

-185℃ would have been better or perhaps 88K

It takes more clicks to reject their cookies than accept them, so France fines Facebook and Google over €200m

Re: Reject all

You want "save cookies for this site, but scrap them when the tab is closed". Install cookie autodelete which does just that.

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of fraud: Blood-testing machines were vapourware after all

Now, if only ....

we could put politicians on trial when they lie!

John Edwards takes the reins at the UK's data protection watchdog

''more "pro-innovation" regime.''

That often seems to mean "getting rid of pesky red tape" while glossing over why the red tape was there in the first place.

Red tape is often brought in after something bad has happened to prevent reoccurrence ... then, decades later, it is denounced as slowing business. But all those who were alive when the original bad thing happened are dead, so the red tape is removed and a few years later history repeats itself when bad thing happens again.

Wifinity hands customers bills for Wi-Fi services they didn't want but used by accident after software 'glitch' let 'fixed term' subs continue

When a fixed term contract ends ...

then there is no agreement for providing a service or for charging the, now ex, customer.

The WIFI should have stopped working and the squaddie bought another fixed term contract if s/he wanted it.

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

I give to projects that I depend on

Not a lot(I am an individual), but I figure that several £20 by many will add up.

I encourage my customers to also give £20 to what they depend on - but I doubt that many do, in spite of spending a lot on the proprietary software that they use. They cannot see that giving little amounts will long term help what is vital to them - just expect others to pay. It is like climate change where everyone seems to expect everyone else to act to prevent a cataclysmic future.

I also release some of what I do as open source.

Academics horrified that administration of Turing student exchange scheme outsourced to Capita

Small businesses

I thought that we were told a few years ago that the government was going to give more contracts to small businesses. I see very little of this happening.

Maybe the problem is that many small businesses do not know were to obtain brown envelopes.

UK and USA seek new world order for cross-border data sharing and privacy

Re: Nice drafting

PETs and other fine sounding words that will have no real meaning. You can have all the tech that you want - but unless there are strong laws that prevent the abuse of personal data then companies & governments will do as they wish.

The sort of thing to start with: if a USA company goes bust then the personal data that it has will be sold to the highest bidder regardless of what the company promised when the data was acquired.

But I expect the UK government to not put in any real effort and will allow our privacy to be abused.

Shocking: UK electricity tariffs are among world's most expensive

Electric should be cheaper, gas more expensive

It is possible to generate electricity in a relatively carbon free way.

Gas: the carbon is in the product.

Electricity price per kWh is about 3 times that of gas -- it should be the other way round to encourage people to change.

I know that many will downvote me for saying this, but we must move away from gas as part of our climate change efforts.

MySQL a 'pretty poor database' says departing Oracle engineer

Re: Moved to MariaDB

It might be primitive but for many people it is good enough - that is important.

It is also simple enough to get started quickly.

Once people have got used to it why move from something that you have learned ?

China's Yutu rover spots 'mysterious hut' on far side of the Moon

The man in the moon ...

has got to live somewhere!

What will life in orbit look like after the ISS? NASA hands out new space station contracts

Re: The best technology of the '70's. Again.

You do not need to build the whole wheel. Much cheaper would be something like a double headed hammer - the living modules at each end of the rotating handle. Over time add extra spokes, maybe ending up with the whole wheel.

New UK product security law won't be undercut by rogue traders upping and vanishing, government boasts

Trading standards

Trading Standards appear to be overwhelmed.

Trading standards has seemingly had most of its funding pulled, so there is little that they can afford to do.

When the shell company implodes ...

what then ? End users have kit that is vulnerable. OK: the importers are liable, what can they do ? The source code for these things will prolly not be in escrow so they cannot be patched, even if it was and if (big if) it is possible to patch & build a working image from the code - how do they get it on to end users' kit ? These things are often set up to get patches from the makers' machines - which are not longer there.

Should the importers be made to buy the kit back ? Even if this happens many end users will not want to due to the hassle involved.

This needs much more thought.

ESA's Solar Orbiter will swing past Earth this week – sure hope nobody created a big cloud of space junk up there

If they do hit some space junk

can they sue whoever was irresponsible enough to leave it there ?

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

All governments lie

but I trust some less than others.

China is near the bottom of trustability IMHO. Look at what is happening to that lady tennis player, I suspect that she has been told that her friends/relations will get harmed if she does not say that she is not under pressure. Her social media accounts are still dead, what we hear from her seems stage managed.

Munich mk2? Germany's Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

"most work would be done within the browser"

This is sensible as it then does not matter what is on the desktop as long as the web browser is reasonably modern. Most business applications are, essentially, form filling - interactivity can be done with Javascript.

Harder applications are graphical ones as they can need a lot of bandwidth and low latency. Word processors are common graphical applications, so the use of Libreoffice, being run locally, is sensible.

They will prob not reach 100% as a few programs will only be available on Windows or macOS - but a few do not matter.

Web trust dies in darkness: Hidden Certificate Authorities undermine public crypto infrastructure

openssl ca tutorial

If you can understand it in 5 minutes then you are a genius.

OK: you might be able to follow the instructions and generate a certificate, but understand it ?

This is part of the problem: it is hard to really understand.

CIOs across Europe add their VOICE to chorus of calls to regulate cloud gatekeepers

Name & shame

this would help others from choosing cloud giants who thus screw their customers. Although I expect to then quickly see new T&Cs that prevent customers from telling others how they have been screwed over.

40 million meeting rooms are yet to get video gadgets

You need meeting rooms

if you work in an office that has many people - the meeting room stops you disturbing the others in the office.

As a result of lock-down many work from home: one person offices, so meeting rooms are not as useful.

As for cameras: almost all of the people in my jitsi meetings switch them off soon after joining the meeting.

Another brick in the (kitchen) wall: Users report frozen 1st generation Google Home Hubs

Re: Items that fail to work...

Just what I was about to say.

The big problem will be getting it to stick. Google will just ignore informal claims that people make. Taking it to the small claims court might work but Google know that most people will just give up as it is a lot of bother for not a lot of money.

The best thing that people can do is to talk loudly on facebook/... about the problems.

Belgium watchdog reckons online advertisers should be data controllers under GDPR

I am surprised ...

that this is not already the case.

Linux PC shop System76 is building a new desktop environment in Rust

Let us hope ...

that it does not follow the dumbed down stupidity that is Gnome 3 but provides some decent flexibility. I moved to Mate to avoid Gnome 3 which is, IMHO, not usable.

AI algorithms can help erase bright streaks of internet satellites – but they cannot save astronomy

Painting them black ...

is not something that can be done as it just makes them absorb more sunlight and so over-heat.

What about using the same flat panels, etc, as used on stealth aircraft to reduce reflections and so visibility ?

JEDI mind tricks: Google said Pentagon contract didn't align with company values. Now it's chasing another defence gig

Demonstration of a Negotiable morality

Many of us are prone to that eg: there are things that we all can do to help with climate change we might say that some are good, but how many do we really do ? I am not better than most.

Having said that: Google is evil.

Microsoft: Many workers are stuck on old computers and should probably upgrade

"the same kit they had at the start of the pandemic."

That was only 18 months ago ... OK: the kit was probably not new then.

If the employee is doing the same job then why should their PC/laptop need to be replaced with something more powerful ?

My PC is 9 years old and my laptop 5 years old, both still run well. One runs Debian the other Linux Mint.

140,000-plus drivers sent $60m in compensation checks after Amazon 'stole their tips'

Does that include interest ?

How many of the drivers will have had to borrow as they did not earn as much ?

The interest rate should be, at least, a borrowing rate not a deposit rate.

Why not use the UK statutory rate of interest which is 8% plus the Bank of England Base Rate.

Data-breached Guntrader website calls in liquidators, is reborn as Guntrader 2 Ltd

Re: How does this work?

I have not looked but it was probably a pre-pack sale. This is a sale of the company assets done before anyone except the managers know what is going on. Liabilities are left - ie unsecured creditors get little/nothing - which can include employee pension payments, etc.

Assange psychiatrist misled judge over parentage of his kids, US tells High Court

How about ...

the USA put a fraction of the energy that they are putting in to extradite Assange into prosecuting those soldiers who shot & killed civilians from that helicopter.

They will not do it - which is gross hypocrisy.

'We will not rest until the periodic table is exhausted' says Intel CEO on quest to keep Moore's Law alive

He sounds like a politician

making promises about how s/he will reduce climate changing emissions by 2030. I will believe it when I see it.

Product release cycles are killing the environment, techies tell British Computer Society

Conflict of interests

A company can boost its profits by selling more stuff if it makes life-cycles short. The environment is not its problem. Profits are for today, environmental problems are in the future. Even if a company does the right thing it will probably find that its competitors will not.

Much like what will happen at COP26. Politicians want benefits in the current electoral cycle, climate problems are in the future. Even if a country does the right thing it will probably find that other countries will not.

DDoSers take weekend off only to resume campaign against UK's Voipfone on Monday

Re: DDos is par for the course, unfortunately

Congrats to them for not buckleing and paying the crooks.

UK schools slap a hold on facial scanning of children amid fierce criticism

David Swanston should have spoken to the ICO

before his company started selling this to schools. If CRB Cunninghams racks up a huge loss because this is not put into schools then the blame should be put to him.

It would be interesting to see the letter that "97 per cent of parents, carers and children had consented to the use of facial scanning". My experience with schools is that such letters are often phrased as edicts, done deals, that you must agree to else your kid will not, in this case, get lunch. Often: having to agree with whatever nonsense the school comes up with is part of the parental agreement that got your kid into school in the first place.

Intel hopes to burn newly open-sourced AI debug tech into chips

There must be another security problem ...

unintentionally hidden in this somewhere - along the lines of Meltdown & Spectre.

Lots of good intention - but why not make this part of an emulator, eg Valgrind, rather than bake it into silicon - where it will just use more energy ?

IPSE: More than a third of freelancers have quit contracting since IR35 reforms

This was always the aim

then the large consultancies could push their lesser skilled people at twice the price of freelancers.

Facebook fined £50m in UK for 'conscious' refusal to report info and 'deliberate failure to comply' during Giphy acquisition probe

Re: Concious decision / deliberate failure

Give FB a month to comply, then double the fine. Wait another month, double again, ...

Eventually it will cease to be loose change down the back of the FB corporate sofa.

NHS Digital exposes hundreds of email addresses after BCC blunder copies in entire invite list to 'Let's talk cyber' event

Lessons will be learned!

And then promptly forgotten.

UK competition watchdog unveils principles to make a kinder antivirus business

Model contracts

Too many of these contracts are, deliberately, unreadable or obscure. The result is that people agree to things that they do not understand.

We need a set of model contracts that companies can elect to use. These can be kite-marked or similar. We will then ask why they do not use a model contract.

They need to be different ? It will only need a few model contracts to cover pizza delivery to anti-virus; each will have a short schedule that details: prices, delivery prices/times, & similar.

Missouri governor demands prosecution of reporter for 'decoding HTML source code' and reporting a data breach

Dare I admit to the govenor ...

that I am in possession of some awesome cracking tools: wget and curl just to name two of them.

I wonder if he will try to extradite me ?

Acer expands its antimicrobial PC offerings – with caveat they may not offer any protection

Windows - 11

This will not help reduce bugs brought in to the PC by that vector.

Is that a meteor crashing to Earth? No, it's Chromebook makers coming back to reality

Re: Wot no Wi-Fi?

Good point. The device update end of life should, by law, be printed on the box of every device sold.

I'm diabetic. I'd rather risk my shared health data being stolen than a double amputation

What is the cost & to whom ?

To this guy the cost of his data being abused is a small one compared to the potential benefit of a treatment being found that saves his life.

To someone who illegally re-identifies his data which is then sold there is money to be made but there is little cost if this act is found; maybe at worse a fine for his corporation. If there were large personal fines then someone who re-identifies data might not do this. Part of the problem is that most re-identification is hidden behind corporate doors.

Opt-out is the right approach for sharing your medical records with researchers

"assumed consent is still informed consent"

No: even if this is explained on the front pages of all newspapers most people will not understand what it is about. Their eyes will glaze over after a few words and they will look for the latest story about $celebrity.

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

Jaron Lanier's book

If you've not read it, "Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" by Jaron Lanier is worth a read.

Here is a summary of what he says.