Posts by alain williams 2835 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
Oh, they must be in the room next door to the plonkers who changed the date of next year's May day bank holiday at 11 months notice and then either show stupid they are (or just lie) by saying that they had "considered the practical implications of moving this bank holiday".
They have no idea how the real world works or, perhaps, do not care.
Tossers.
For instance, not long bought a new Sony TV. It had reviewed well had features I wanted and advertised that it would have Dolby Vision added via an update. Tried to update in last few days and I can't because I rejected the "privacy" policy which told me they wanted to access every program/file watched, details of every device connected, how long it was used for, when it was switched off etc. As a sensible person I said no. I don't want a "smart" TV. Because of this I cannot use the TV as advertised. No mention of this in reviews, advertising etc, only after it is unboxed and used.
Well: return it to where you bought it saying that ''it is not as advertised''. The only way of changing the behaviour of the likes of Sony is to hit them in the pocket -- which is all that they care about.
And things like fitness trackers, central heating control systems, ... have them talk to a server that you trust - preferably your own.
Unfortunately: the above is not possible for most people: they don't understand how to read program code or run a server; also most would not bother to even if they could.
Even if the vendor is well meaning the poor coding & lack up security updates makes these things a security nightmare.
So what is the solution ? Heavy government regulation just would not work: they would always be playing catch-up or impose blanket rules that would be hard/expensive to work with.
The USA has been blathering overblown bollocks about Huawei while ignoring this much larger security issue.
That is the only place where theoretical/computer-simulated ''tests'' would be valid - where the use model was built using the same assumptions as the design model. In the real world things do not always behave in the same way as the theoretical/design model -- this is why tests are needed to ensure that we have got the physics right.
So will they blame some lowly programmer or a physicist when these planes crash ?
Maybe there ought to be age verification on the other following activities:
* watching broadcast TV after the watershed (many kids have TVs in their bedrooms)
* visiting the local fat laden fast food joint
* visiting religious organisations' web sites (that tell you how evil are those: of other religions; gay; don't pray enough; ...)
* facebook has a minimum age requirement of 13. I know kids under 13 with a facebook account
Please add your own suggestions ...
Exposing wrongdoing by the USA. Wrongdoing that none of the perpetrators have served time for.
They want to lock him up forever in the hope that it will scare anyone else from exposing further wrongdoing.
That Assange is a bit of an ass has got nothing to do with it.
it would be great if CERN developed a good open-source MS Outlook alternative
Even better if the developed something open source that did the full MAPI protocol and was able to use that to talk collaborative PIM/scheduler to an Exchange server exactly as does an outlook client. That would, for many corporates, break the MS strangle hold on desktops as others could fully participate in corporate scheduling, etc.
Once that is done & open source doing an Exchange replacement would be much easier.
Libre Office is compatible enough with MS Office.
You don't have compatibility between programs, it is programs' ability to correctly handle document formats. The pain is that the MS .doc/.docx formats are not properly defined. So use .odf which is fully defined. LibreOffice works well with ODF - although MSOffice does have some problems - which might be deliberate.
Besides that, if I have to send documents, I send them in PDF anyway.
Sigh, many people do not understand the difference between an editable document (use .odf or .docx) if you want someone to easily change it; and a non editable (or print) document (for which PDF is great).
Only yesterday I received an invoice in a .docx, such a thing should not be changeable, it should have been a PDF. I have given up trying to tell most people.
Akamai has placed 250,000 servers in 4,000 locations across 140 countries, making this the largest distributed computing platform in the world.
Google has more than that.
Assume that everyone is spying on everyone else, end-to-end encrypt if you feel you need to
This is the most sensible comment that I have seen about this today.
I would love to live in a nice world where everyone was honourable and behaved themselves. Unfortunately that is not true, a proportion will lie & cheat to get what they want regardless of legality or how it hurts others. Politicians understand this as they are some of the worst at this - while pretending that butter does not melt in their mouths.
I have been writing programs for 40 years, I remember reading something early on about the importance of design: a unit of time spent here would be repaid by 10 less units in coding. Similarly a unit spent testing would be rewarded by 10 fewer units of support once the software reached the users.
Much blame lies with managers who want the kudos of a project quickly delivered but then blame their staff once problems emerge.
is that pollution, carbon emissions, etc, do not stay within the national borders of the country that created them. If they did then those living in the USA would reap the rewards of what they create. As it is: the USA's noxious emissions are dispersed around the world, ie we carry the can for the USA's acts of vandalism on the environment.
Their liar in chief pronounces anthropogenic climate change as fake news: but that is because he does not have the balls to deal with it and so selfishly exports it to the rest of us.
Having said that we, in Europe, still generate more than our fair share of pollutants, but we are trying to do something about it.
Maybe we could arrange for Greta Thunberg to meet Trump when he is here in July.
If USA resident global standards bodies can no longer longer do their jobs then create a new body that can/will talk to every organisation in a way free from political interference. Take the current standards as the starting point and develop then in an inclusive manner.
Because the rest of the world is larger than the USA (in spite of what Mr orange thinks) the non USA standards body should prevail. If the USA then does not follow international standards they will have problems selling their kit internationally.
OK: not as simple as I suggest, but something along these lines has to be the way forwards.
While we are at it also grab to non-USA control the functions of IANA and similar.
CIA disappearing Assange: this is what I first thought, but part of the reason that they want him is to make a highly visible example of him in the hope that the fear of a long time eating porridge in the USA will frighten anyone else who is thinking of exposing some truths about the USA government.
fight from being extradited to the USA. The UK (or maybe Swedish) judges who approve/deny the extradition request might decide that he will not get a fair trial in the USA and so not make him go there. That is if the judges have not been told what their decision should be.
If he evades going to the USA - what can he do, where does he live ? He can't go back to Australia to see his kids as the Oz government would ship him straight to the USA.
Hitting Russian (or where-ever) targets as revenge or deterrence against future attacks is something that will be done after damage has been done in the UK.
Far better would be to improve security at home: teach UK citizens to be aware of issues and be careful; penalise vendors that are sloppy and do not bother to look for security holes in what they sell, or quickly fix when vulnerabilities are found. This will mean admitting that 'government only encryption back doors' is a fantasy and will make it harder for UK spooks to snoop on us.
Hitting back does not work if foreign ne'er-do-wells are not detected; improving UK security helps a lot here.
It is not easy: most in the UK can't be bothered and think that they don't have to worry - if they screw up it might hurt their employer (so, what ? The still get paid at the end of the month), or if their bank account is hit they will winge until the bank refunds them.
I am far more worried about bad security in Internet of Things (eg baby-cam remote hackable) than I am Huawei exfiltrating packets to China (packets that should be encrypted anyway).
Many will, that is why they buy their 'phones.
A facebook/whatever app is just something that talks to facebook using a their protocols. It would not be hard for Huawei to write some apps that use the protocols, I doubt that facebook would make them hard to reverse engineer - if they don't publish them; after all: better to have someone on facebook using an unofficial API than not have the user at all.
If some find the Huawei written facebook app is not good enough for them then they could always install the official one.
Will the gov't of the USA stop anyone using a Huawei 'phone from connecting to servers owned by USA companies ? I don't think so, but with Trump in charge I don't know.
It means you will have to take Google up on its offer to host photos and videos on its cloud service. And you'll want to stream music – but then aren't you already?
No. My 'phone is a 'phone. I don't do things like that with it, I switch things like Wifi/Internet off most of the time; maybe that is why I get several days out of one batter charge.
The reviewer hack praised it for not having top end features that you don't need (good) but then shows that he uses a 'phone for things that many of us don't use a 'phone for.
BTW: did it come with apps that cannot be un-installed ? How much slurping of my data by google cannot be turned off ?
his ravings are becoming ever more the stuff of fantasies. Maybe he is smoking something really good, or perhaps spending too much time close to Trump has gotten him infected with some nasty brain worm.
He talks about Chinese law ... I hope that someone reminded him of USA law, in particular the Patriot Act.
The UK is a sovereign state, we make decisions according to our own interests. We do not want to be bullied by another country: especially one that is wrapping up their commercial interests as a security issue.
I believe that Pompeo is trotting out this fake news on behalf of Trump - someone who shows no restraint on lying to get what he wants.
Please fix the proven spying in kit made in the USA before you complain about unproven spying in kit from elsewhere.
As I see it this is the Linux kernel running under a MS hypervisor. This means that the MS kernel sees everything that goes in & out of the Linux kernel and is so available to be slurped up and exfiltrated via telemetry. MS can then inspect/sell as it wants. Your Linux system is now not secure.
You might think that this would be hard to do; but one of the most sensitive devices is the keyboard (think typed passwords). Snooping of this would be easy and the bandwidth needed to take and forward to the NSA would not be large.
So: do not use one of these machines to ssh to something precious.
please remind me if they have been after those who Assange exposed for doing wrong; eg the helicopter crew who laughed while shooting innocent people ?
This is a case of 'shoot the messenger' - there is a clear message to other who might expose USA wrong doing.
Isn't that what things like WireShark are for?
You won't see what is being sent as the telemetry is encrypted.
Microsoft is right to encrypt it as it may contain personal information. This is why a tool needs to be provided that the user can run on their PC.
Microsoft said it would split data gathered into "required" and "optional."
So: people cannot switch off telemetry. But will Microsoft publish a program that lets the PC owner see what data has been sent to Microsoft/NSA ? That program must be open source so that we can verify that it is telling the truth.
This is all rather ironic considering the fuss about Huawei.
If they blab this probable bollocks about Huawei how much trust should we give to anything else that they say ?
What have we had: hacking from North Korea, Putin meddling in USA elections, Kaspersky Labs spying for Russia, ... ? I offer no opinion on any of these, but I down rate what the USA claims.
Of course, they say nothing about: Cisco routers tampered by the NSA and don't ask questions about what Microsoft telemetry is really about.
Google is doing the right thing here; the bandits are the likes of Intuit. They have an agreement with the USA tax people and then try to run around that agreement. They should be hit with a corporation changing fine - but this won't happen as they have paid too many politicians from their slush fund.
What operating systems, version; what PDF readers, etc ? Some details as to where holes have been found in the last year or few.
Eg: is MS Windows 10 any better than 8 ? What versions of MacOS ? What Linux distros ? Or do they assume that everyone runs MS Windows 10 ?
OK: can't predict the future, but knowing what has been vulnerable in the past can suggest what to avoid.
They might even do so, in an unusual fit of honesty; but what they will not do is to delete the social graph/connections that they have learned as a result - this is what I would like to see deleted.
Maybe punishment should be that Zuckerberg's address book should be made public, see how he likes that. Although that would be unfair on those who are exposed as talking to him.
My main desktop is a 7 y/old AMD Bulldozer, 32 GB RAM. I have had to replace some fans, the PSU & a disk but that is about it; oh - I upgraded the screen a while back. I run Linux so upgrade problems are not an issue. It is still plenty fast enough. I expect to continue to run this for a few more years.
Laptop: a small HP Stream. Not a heavy CPU which means the battery lasts. Cheap: so that when I drop it under a bus I won't cry (much).
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