Posts by alain williams 2469 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
This is important to me; I form my opinions from several places, including the comments pages here. It would be easy to place "desirable" opinions here to influence individuals known to read The Register.
I doubt that I will have featured as important, but my views could be polluted through association with those worthy of being targeted.
and I got to an article in Dutch at the bottom of which it claims that the orange one's password is YOUREFIRED. We can only hope that that will become true in a few months time.
who don't we make a dozen and send them into the asteroid belt and just let them wander around ? Who knows what they will come across.
Yep: good chances that they will bump into something but hopefully will have shown us something interesting before then.
If NASA can find a bit more loose change then something similar to the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, not just in the solar plane, might be good -- although they would need a heck of an initial push to get them there in a time that has political payback.
Yes: got them.
The problem is the web sites that insist on using 3rd party javascript. I will, generally, allow javascript from a site but do not from other sites. If a site does not work without 3rd party stuff - I go elsewhere.
The trouble is that the web masters don't get to know about them losing me, sometimes they don't care. Yesterday a web site would not work without 3rd party javascript, so I emailed the company to ask them to 'phone me for an order. They refused and said that no one else had complained about the javascript - I emailed back saying that I had bought whatever elsewhere.
Unless companies know that they are losing business they will not do anything. So: please, everyone, tell the companies that you walk away from.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm reasonably sure that the GPL prohibits doing that.
They might not bring the fixed kernel code back, but they will be able to see where & why fixes were made and then fix the same bugs in their own code.
Often the hardest problem in fixing bugs is finding that they exist in the first place and where they are in the code. Once you know that then, often, the fix is not hard.
So: maybe they are using the Linux kernel as a free test system.
* gets to charge a business to be 'verified'.
* learns who is calling who and why, so learns more about the business and the person being called. Google says that it won't "share sensitive information about users with its business partners" - is not the same as Google not learning something.
Can 'phone users opt out of this completely - ie no calls will be shown 'verified' ?
As all government ministers know: us IT people are magic, so a small amount of programmer pixie dust sprinkled on a vague agreement on 31 Dec will result in a well polished & documented system that can be tested against on 1st October. It might need a bit of help from the driver of that blue box in the BBC documentary.
So it seems that someone from the DWP 'phoned and did not say enough to show that s/he really was from DWP. This is how 'phone calls that end up in identity theft, or something, start out - social engineering. So DWP is clueless that they are making things worse.
Actually: I am not surprised. I get unexpected calls from banks, etc, where they ask ME to prove who I am before they will talk. I always insist that it is the wrong way round.
Sigh
Apple should be required to pay current and past workers for time spent being searched. How much will be interesting since I doubt that records were kept, but the judgement contains "typically ranges from five to twenty minutes ... up to forty-five minutes" (page 7) - so, perhaps, 15 minutes for every day worked.
All UK councils must have roughly similar needs; all are splunking huge sums to solutions providers.
I can't see why they don't club together and produce something that does what they need, then all use it. Sure it would cost an arm & leg and take several years, but after that they will save bucket loads. Yes: there is maintenance (need change, etc). Maybe it could be open sourced and let councils/... in other countries use it, add modules, submit patches, etc.
When all councils are using the same s/ware: exchange of information would be so much easier.
Anyone want to join a sweep stake on how long before some of this stored audio is leaked onto the Internet ? a) 6 months, b) 1 year, c) 18 months, d) 2years. I see no point in going beyond (d).
I wonder before someone watching a cookery program on the in-room TV unexpectedly finds room service knocking on the door having brought supper ?
Not sure if I should up or down vote.
Answer: No, I don't use Google news.
I listen to the radio & visit some news media web sites (not getting there via a search engine). Works well for me.
What I would like is objective & impartial news media. I am increasingly fed up with the spin being put on news stories and media setting agenda rather than clearly telling the stories.
A radio play, an advert about butter, football commentary, ... all ostensibly non political can contain subtle comments that form opinions about what a political party is saying. It will be cheaper as well: no buying of air-time or bill boards; all that you need is a friendly author, copywriter, ...
All very hard for the Electoral Commission to prove wrong doing.
The only way of stopping this madness is to ban all uses of the same word to mean more than one thing. If everything is described by a different word then nobody will get into trouble for accidentally making someone feel uncomfortable.
I wish that it were only this simple.
It will be interesting to see if rules are introduced that restrict how face masks are made:
* how big they are, how much of the face they cover
* what patterns can be printed on them. Patterns can confuse recognition systems
Also which countries make the restrictions.
It might be sub-standard but it has powered the PC revolution and even the wider IT revolution. Could something better have done that?
It was a product of its time - if MS DOS/Windows had not appeared then something else would have.
I remember SCO ODT was quite nice & better than what MS had some 30 years ago; the unfortunate thing was that it cost far too much for widespread adoption -- because they had licensed many components from elsewhere. Pity.
This article was all about business users, what about home/personal users ? I suspect that Microsoft sold their personal information as well ?
Me: happy to use Libreoffice on my Linux boxes but unhappy to realise that I have likely had my private information harvested from anything that my O-365 using friends have recorded about me.
The GDPR talks about clarity in agreements - but I doubt that most O-365 users are aware. Time for a huge fine from the data protection people.
Unfortunately it appears not to and only does 2G. Pity as otherwise it would sound perfect.
Beware: Nokia released a 5310 in 2007 - this is not the same thing, but looks similar.
From the point of view of today's technical assessment this is the wrong decision. This assumes a benign China - us techies don't like to think that people are nasty (with a few exceptions).
From a much longer political decision of international geopolitics you might get a different answer: depending on how you value human liberties and your view of Chinese political ambitions.
If our UK politicians have taken a long view I am very pleased at this rare event - irrespective of them being right or wrong. If they are just bending over for Trump - I am not pleased.
by Google, Facebook & pals is increasingly looking like: China or The Rest of the World. If China pushes too hard they might find themselves cut adrift.
Good from the point of view of preserving freedoms, but this would also increase the isolation of those who live in the totalitarian state that we call China.
I do not know what the answer is.
Remember: it is not just China, other oppressive states also exist.
The email includes:
The African slave trade was a brutal system of human misery deployed at global scale.
So: do slaves (past or present) from other places not matter ?
OK: I understand why Dan wrote that - he is reacting to the current brouhaha - but it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when under pressure from on group.
The Chinese ambassador has been saying that we must not interfere with internal Chinese affairs, but how can we ignore human abuses in other countries ? Should we let Primark ignore working conditions in Bangladesh from where it buys its clothes or slave labour in Chinese prisons ? No: public opinion is making them change.
Likewise: we must not ignore what China is doing to fellow humans.
I have met Uighur Muslims, I know people from Hong Kong - but even if I did not how could I ignore oppression of people even if they are 10,000 miles away ?
We must send a message to Xi Jinping that we do not like the bully that he has become. He is emboldened by their burgeoning economy - so we can express our disapproval by buying less of their goods and services.
Other nations should do likewise: a school ground bully will just dominate/terrorrise one child who stands up to him but if many do he will be defeated.
I recognize that some of the UK's history is not good, but that does not mean that we should turn a blind eye.
China is not the only rogue nation but is, I believe, the most dangerous.
Can Akamai pass the IP addresses from which they got the attack to the various ISP's, so that the ISP's can contact the associated end user and suggest they give their machines a thorough cleaning?
What they need to do is to speak to a few of the ISPs and get traffic logs for some of these PCs. Try to work out the command & control addresses - these are the real ones to chase - not the hapless users running a compromised Microsoft machine. Maybe examine a few of these machine to see what malware they have.
It will be interesting to see who the botnet controllers are: criminals or governments (mind you sometimes they are the same thing).
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