Posts by Phil O'Sophical

BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?

Re: Weight lifting

What is the weight lifting capacity of blockchain

African or European?

A feed ahead of the weekend: your slice of networking morsels

Contrail Enterprise Multicloud

Aren't contrails those precisely-defined white lines across a blue sky that make you wonder what exotic and exciting places the passengers are going to, but which rapidly dissipate in the breeze leaving a forgotten scruffy blur that soon vanishes completely? Around the time the passengers actually land at Luton?

Windrush immigration papers scandal is a big fat GDPR fail for UK.gov

or are we saying that an entire generation of immigrants

They weren't technically immigrants, they were Britons with citizenship who moved from one part of the empire to another. Would you expect a Scot to make special arrangements when moving to England?

Re: There is no data justification

If the original papers had served their purpose, and a trustworthy document generated, why keep the originals? The existence of the new document is proof that those originals were accurate. If you're really paranoid you could have kept copies yourself.

they did not like the fact that I applied for his passport instead of his mother. I ended up having to threaten them with both a discrimination lawsuit and asking my MP to officially question them on discriminatory policies in the commons.

I'm not so sure that's discriminatory. In the days before DNA testing was commonplace it was generally considered much more reliable to indentify a child's mother than his/her father, so the mother often had priority in such situations.

Blighty stuffs itself in Galileo airlock and dares Europe to pull the lever

Re: EU friends apparantly @ ArrZarr

What is the problem you are trying to solve by throwing money at it?

GPS being American is the problem. It's an affront to the EU that the Americans have something they don't, and they'll happily throw our tax money at it just to show they are as good as the US. "Keeping up with the Joneses" on a grand scale.

Brexit has shafted the UK's space sector, lord warns science minister

Re: if the UK team turned up with a clear mandate on what they're allowed to negotiate on.

If you approach the EU with "We want to leave. What deal will you give us" should you really be surprised if you hear the voice of Katt Williams saying "B**ch, I ain't giving you s**t*"

Which is why you should approach with "We've are going to leave, will you discuss some terms which can work out best for us both?" and hope for some willingness to do so. You don't ever ask someone to "give" you a deal as if it is a gift, that just leaves you under their control. Deals are negotiated.

Unfortunately it is in the EU's best interest to see Brexit fail, because that might prevent anyone else having the same idea. This is why it is willing to play "ain't giving you s**t" hardball even if that means hurting itself, it's a survival issue. Ultimately the UK needs to be willing to walk away with no deal, and come back to discussions later if EU members become more flexible. If they don't, then so be it. The EU is only 27 countries out of almost 200. The UK is one of the G7 nations, 3 of the others are in the EU and 3 are not. The EU is far from the only game in town.

Re: As expected

I wish the people in power had the presence of mind to say "ok people, the EU sucks, but leaving it sucks even worse, so let's be logical and overturn this idiotic decision."

And I'm glad that arrogant people like you aren't in charge. Who the hell are you to tell people that they are idiots just because they took a choice that you disagree with?

Let's assume that in the next election Corbyn wins, would you be happy for the Tories to say "let's be logical and overturn this idiotic decision."? We all know where that kind of politics ends up.

Re: Why would the ESA want this?

Isn't it just a strawman suggesting that the reason there are problems is because we don't have the right leader? Or do you mean only "true believers" should be involved?

"true believers" tend to be very poor negotiators, I can't imagine anyone wanting Farage as negotiator, for example. As in poker, a good negotiator doesn't have to believe, they just have to convince their opponent that they believe. Theresa May could never convince anyone of that, she's too transparent, and although I think she was always a closet leaver she only "came out" when it was politically convenient.

the referendum should never be interpreted as policy and if so, it could only fail because the terms of leaving the EU were never the subject.

They couldn't be the subject, because it's a negotiation and the terms necessarily come later. All the referendum could do, and did, was ask "do you want us to negotiate our departure", and people said Yes.

those who want to travel but never arrive.

I'd say that for Brexit it's more the reverse, there are too many people who want to arrive without the pain of the journey, which is never going to happen. The next few years will be difficult, possibly painful, but I still hope they'll be worth it, if we work to make it so.

Constantly rehashing the "if only" argment is counter-productive. Brexit will only succeed if everyone, remainers and leavers, works to make it so. I sincerely hope that remainers won't intentionally work to wreck it just to show they were right, it will be hard enough coping with that from the EU leadership.

Re: Why would the ESA want this?

it would help if the UK team turned up with a clear mandate on what they're allowed to negotiate on.

Can't argue there. They should never have let May anywhere the negotiations.

Why would the ESA want this?

As the ESA web site says, "not all member countries of the European Union are members of ESA and not all ESA Member States are members of the EU. ESA is an entirely independent organisation although it maintains close ties with the EU through an ESA/EC Framework Agreement".

The UK is the 4th biggest contributor to it, ESA gets 8.4% of it's budget from us, some 334 million (sorry, MEELLION) euros each year. Are they really going to wave goodbye to that in a fit of pique?

Sysadmin unplugged wrong server, ran away, hoped nobody noticed

Re: anything from 1A to 13A

In the developed world on the west side of the pond, we use radial circuits, with wire designed to take more current than the breaker's trip point. Cables/plugs from machine to wall (and outlets, for that matter) are also designed for full current, so they don't need a fuse - and are therefore interchangeable.

We used to do that sort of point-to-point "star" config, way back in the 1950s. Then it was realised that increasing use of appliances meant that modern homes needed more than one socket per room, and putting 6 or 8 16A sockets in each room, with 3 or 4 20A cables back to a 20A breaker, was overkill. It also required a lot of cable and a large distribution board. No-one would (or could) ever draw the full 16A from each without blowing the main house fuse, and most would only be used for low loads like lighting or radios. Today, of course, that is even more true.

The logical solution is a "bus" architecture: a single 30A distribution circuit per 1000 sq. ft (approx one per floor in a normal home) which covers the total load needs for that floor. You can have as many outlets on the bus as you need within that area. To avoid the need to put a heavy 16A-20A cable on light duty equipment like radios or lamps, each can instead be fitted with appropriate 3A or 5A cable, fused in the plug to protect it from fire. The appliance could, if necessary, have its own protection (TVs & computers do, table lamps usually not).

Overall it's a much simpler solution, which requires fewer resources.

'Your computer has a virus' cold call con artists on the rise – Microsoft

Lilly Tomlin as "your operator"

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company!"

The solution to the problem is use the ANI and not CLIP for caller ID.

True, but CLIP is defined as the presentation-level service because there are times when it is legitimate to display a different number to the real one. A company may want to display an 800-number for return calls, for example.

What we need is a way to store the ANI value so that a customer can flag a call as bogus, and have the ANI registered. Even so, spoofing ANI isn't impossible, especially for calls from a different network.

Even with the actual number, though, the problem is then how to get the phone companies to block calls from agreed callers using ANI details.

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

Re: Oh well

Are they using 50v now

That nominally 2v lead-acid cell actually has an open-circuit voltage of 2.1v, so 48v nominal but a measured 50.4. Both get used.

Re: @anthonyhegedus

when if the base stations DON'T, that then renders them useless, regardless of whether the display/keypad/RF etc works eh???!!!

Well, you'd be able to look up the phone number that you need to dial on the old wired phone...

Re: Mobile as the emergency option?

Or a signal but not on your network.

You can still make emergency calls in that case, it's required by law. 112/999 will work.

Re: Oh well

I highly encourage people to read "Living without electricity – one city’s experience coping with the loss of power (PDF) from Lancaster University, reporting on the 4-day power outage in December 2015, especially the "Communications" section, excerpted here:

"The wired telephone system, powered from batteries in the exchange, continued to operate over most of Lancaster. ... Many people who had replaced wired handsets with wireless discovered that these do not work without a mains supply.

Mobile phone systems did not hold up. ... Some have a battery back-up that continues to provide a service for an hour or two but few, if any, cope with the 30-hour loss

Most domestic internet connections were also lost.

The loss of communication services was one of the most significant problems reported by many people.

I have VoIP service, but I also still have POTS, and I still have one old wired handset plugged into a socket, just in case.

Battery backup. At least that is how my BT phone line over FTTP works.

For how long, 30 minutes to tide you through a thunderstorm, or 4-5 days to carry you through a major problem like in Lancaster a couple of years ago?

Re: Oh well

Openreach will roll this out to every line, completely removing all the copper network.

And will they pay for the cost of installing the copper required to carry AC mains to those remote devices which don't currently have mains power nearby?

Bloke fruit flies enjoy ejaculating, turn to booze when starved of sexy times

Re: I thought...

Fruit flies like a banana...

But time flies like an arrow.

Millions of scraped public social net profiles left in open AWS S3 box

This won't stop until the CEOs of the companies concerned start getting serious penalties, in the $m/jailtime range. They need to be taught that personal data is something they have to look after. Just securing it after they've been caught isn't enough.

Build a serverless framework at home: Go on, bit of open sourcey hijinx won't hurt

Re: Serverless platform

What do I install it on?

A Virtual Machine, of course...

France wants you to put lights and beacons on your drone

Re: And They'll Enforce It

But it'll be ignored, like all other laws in France.

The true victims of Brexit are poor RuneScape players

Re: "Jagex did not say exactly how Brexit will up its costs"

Unfortunately it's rather more complicated than that.

No, it really isn't. The decision has been taken, it is incumbent on us all to make sure we get the best outcome from it, whether we like it or not. It's really just like after an election, you have to work to make the best of the result, because nothing else is constructive. What an old manager of mine used to call "disagree and commit".

The brexit referendum: was only advisory

So do you think people would have been happy if Cameron had said "Oh, you want to leave? Well, we're not going to, forget I asked". You don't hold referendums if you're going to ignore a result you don't like. If you just want advice, hire a polling company, their results you can ignore.

omitted a large number of otherwise normal UK voters

"otherwise normal"? What does that mean, and how were such people omitted? Everyone on the electoral register was entitled to vote.

and was a straight yes/no question where the issues were rather more complicated.

No, the issue was a simple yes/no, stay or leave. All the complicated issues are part of the negotiations and you can't hold a referendum on them because they have to be negotiated. It was, of course, up to the people who voted to look at the potential issues and decide how to vote based on them. Some did, some probably didn't, much like in an election.

Penis pothole protester: Cambridge's 'Wanksy' art shows feted

Re: Hills Road

Sue the council. If everyone does that they'll learn that fixing the holes is cheaper.

Airbus plans beds in passenger plane cargo holds

Re: Glossing a commercial turd

Planes that are only popular in one direction aren't good for airlines.

The Earth is round, just always fly east...

Re: The problem with this idea

Stack them up on pallets 3 high and load/unload them up on a forklift.

Hell, if that gives me an unterrupted night's sleep on a US-Europe flight I'm in!

Re: Glossing a commercial turd

Perth to London non stop is already a reality on a Quantas 787-9

It will be very interesting to see if this works. Judging by the Qantas mail spam I'm getting they aren't finding it easy to fill, which doesn't surprise me. Maybe a business traveller who just needs to get there quickly for a short trip, and can afford to be up front, would like this, but in economy? Even if they paid me I wouldn't spend 17 hours in any airplane in one go, in any class. The opportunity for a weekend stopover in somewhere like Singapore or Hong Kong is surely one of the plus points of that sort of long distance travel.

Re: Glossing a commercial turd

I can't see this being commercially viable. Bunks as shown in the photo would require a lot more "housekeeping" between flights if they are to remain pleasant to use, no quick dash round with a binbag & vacuum cleaner there, so turnaround costs go up. They can't be as economical to operate, or as pleasant to use, as a business-class seat even if squashed into the cargo hold.

As for the A380 itself, sure it's a nice quiet plane, but you still have the problems of arriving at imigration among 500 other passengers. As an example, BA operate an A380 LHR to SFO, and a 787 for LHR to San Jose (SJC). Unless I were actually going into SF city I'd always take the SJC option. Smaller plane, less hassle, shorter queues at arrival & less traffic on leaving the airport. All that far outweighs the minimal advantages of a slightly quieter aircraft. There's little other onboard advantage, the cattle-class seats are equally uncomfortable in both.

Apple store besieged by protesters in Paris 'die-in' over tax avoidance

Re: Over 50% here must be one of those billionaire one percenters

Judging by the large amount of negative reactions toward the French people who want to end this massive scam, many readers of El-Reg must be those billionaires profiting from the tax laws

I think the negative reaction is more about the pointless approach taken here. Amazon pays all the tax it legally has to, if a government wants to change that it can, governments make the laws, after all. Staging demos in Apple stores isn't going to change anything, they'd be better staging the demos outside Matignon or the Elysee Palace, that''s where the change has to come from. Of course, if a really significant number of people in France actually cared about this then no-one would buy Apple products. I don't see that happening.

Then again, the French have a long history of electing governments which promise reform, and immediately taking to the streets in protest as soon as that reform is attempted. Makes it difficult to change anything.

Re: re: This is a dispute as to whether the democratically elected government of a country...

the protesters want sales in France to be subject to France's tax laws.

And what is stopping the French government from passing a law which says precisely that?

They're back! 'Feds only' encryption backdoors prepped in US by Dems

Re: There is no God given right to digital security

Authorities are requesting a means to expedite the process which can be very important when dealing with crime and terrorism.

At the risk of re-stating the bleeding obvious, you are completely missing the point, which is:

• History shows that any backdoor which is supposedly only available to the authorities will rapidly become available to criminals, so all your routine encrypted transactions, like your online banking, will become insecure & open to theft/fraud.
• It is trivially easy to bypass this by using private non-backdoored encryption on your message before submitting it to the backdoored-systems, so the authorities still won't be able to decrypt your message even with a backdoor.

The consequence, as always, is that it will have zero effect on criminals or terrorists, but will make ordinary citizens less safe.

Lib Dems, UKIP's websites go TITSUP* on UK local election launch day

Re: NationBuilder, eh?

I don't know why there is such unbridled optimism that the GDPR will magically fix all IT security issues. In my view it is more likely to be an unmitigated disaster, just like all the other government led security initiatives.

Not a disaster, just ineffective. People get all excited about the "€10m" and "2% of turnover" fines, but the current ICO limit is £500K and few companies get hit with even a quarter of that. I think TalkTalk's £400k was the biggest so far. I wouldn't be at all surprised if most GDPR punishments were the usual £20k - £50k smack on the wrist.

As usual it will probably just make lawyers & popcorn suppliers richer as people argue over how it shoudl be implemented.

Virgin spaceplane makes maiden rocket-powered flight

Re: high quality microgravity?

Virgin microgravity

No-one's had it before?

*Thunk* No worries, the UPS should spin up. Oh cool, it's in bypass mode

Re: Priorities

Senior Manager: "Maybe Workflow should be first priority then"

I call BS, no real Senior Manager would admit he was wrong that quickly!

Facebook can’t count, says Cambridge Analytica

Refuted?

Cambridge Analytica has refuted Facebook’s claim

No, they have denied it. To refute it would require producing proof that it was wrong.

How machine-learning code turns a mirror on its sexist, racist masters

WHITEHERstory, surely?

What's silent but violent and costs $250m? Yes, it's Lockheed Martin's super-quiet, supersonic X-plane for NASA

Never heard Concorde supersonic

The initial test flights ran up & down the Irish sea, I remember going outside to listen for the double boom. It was very distinctive, but didn't seem loud enough to be a problem. There were a few complains about cracked greenhouses, though.

when a Concorde was climbing out to the West, and passed over at ~2k ft,

It was even better on the perimeter road at the end of the runway, when the reheat was still active. Made the world shake.

Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

Indeed they could, they could also revoke allowing British driving licences and other similar carry ons.

That would be difficult since international recognition of driving licenses is governed by the Vienna conventions, which are nothing to do with the EU, and predate even the EEC.

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

I'm two parts convinced that Theresa May is trying her damnedest to stop Brexit, the only way that has any chance of working: by taking the country right to the brink, then getting an overwhelming majority to cry off.

I don't think she's smart enough, or cunning enough, to do that. She got selected as PM because she was the apparently "harmless" candidate after the post-referendum backstabbing campaign. Like most safe options she's completely out of her depth. She has no real belief or drive about where the country should go, and so is reduced to paying advisers to tell her what she should do. That, more than anything, was the cause of the election fiasco.

She should have quit, or been thrown out, immediately afterwards while it was still "May's fault" but, by leaving her there, the party made it their collective fault.

People dislike Boris because he plays the buffoon, and some people have a chip on their shoulder about anyone educated at Eton (it's still a good school, despite educating some high-profile plonkers), but at least Boris & Davis have a genuine committment to Brexit, and some understanding of the world. Either would probably have been a better choice than May to get us through it, even if they had gotten the chop afterwards.

There's a lot of arguing over hard vs soft Brexit, I can't help but feel that starting with a hard one and then later renegotiating a softening would be easier than signing up for a soft one and then trying to harden it. The EU would be more amenable to the former, I think, but May seems wedded to the idea of a soft, inoffensive one.

I don't know how else to explain that farcical election campaign.

I'd blame Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, and May's willingness to give them free rein without having the common sense to work out who their "policies" would offend. She was a turkey who signed up for an early Christmas.

Re: @Phil

Yes the EU as an institition has issues. I’d wished the UK had stayed to help improve it.

I think we tried, but after 25 years it was clear that our views & theirs just diverge too much. My hope for the future is that a successful Brexit will encourage others to follow, that might finally bring the message home that the EU needs to change.

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

Please tell us, are you going to stay living outside the UK in this broken EU or are you going to come back to face this huge challenge that those who think like you dumped on us?

I'm considering it, but it's not a decision I can arbitrarily take on my own, I have other people to think about. For the moment I'm just looking into UK investments. I certainly expect to return to the UK sometime in the next 5 years or so.

Re: I'd prefer that to my usual hypothesis that it's a bunch of thick racists

My hypothesis is that it was a perfect storm.

So looking at your categories you're basically assuming that the only possible reasons for voting leave were racism, stupidity, or greed? Have you considerd that that may be more a reflection of your blinkered mindset than of reality?

I could argue that many of those who voted to remain are lazy, scared to leave their comfort zone, happy to settle for mediocrity in the interests of a quiet life, or simply have no clue what the EU actually does. I wouldn't suggest that everyone felt that way, though. I can accept that some people genuinely believe the future will be better in the EU, for economic or political reasons. I think they are wrong, but I'm not going claim they are stupid or gullible for believing it.

I would have voted leave, if I could have done, because I think it is in the UK's best economic and political interests not to be beholden to an economically stagnant,closed, polity. That's my analysis based on my personal experiences of it.

Re: Thanks to the British voters?

"those who don't vote when a vote is offered are assumed to be happy with the status quo"

That doesn't work when the vote is a binary choice: change the status quo, or not. Not voting in that case is explicity not choosing the status quo, it is saying "Meh, I don't mind".

Re: Iceland and Norway have EEA membership (EFTA)

Switzerland is NOT a member of the EEA.

You're right, my apologies. It's the EFTA member that isn't in the EEA.

The UK has over 4 times as many citizens as the entire EFTA, so it is unlikely they would be particularly keen on us joining,

They aren't, especially Norway that doesn't want to lose its "big fish in small pond" status to an incoming shark!

it would make more sense to have a .com because it would not be limited to the EU/EEA

I wonder how many international businesses with .eu domains don't also have a .com?

No they wont. Its still the defacto language of business, diplomacy and navigation.

Of course it is, not to mention being an official language of Ireland and Malta, but that didn't stop polish MEP Danuta Hübner (chairwoman of the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, no less) from proposing it, nor French MEP Jean-Luc Mélenchon supporting it.

Re: Iceland and Norway have EEA membership

Which would be open to the UK if they wanted it.

I think you're confusing EFTA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) with the EEA (EU + EFTA). The UK is already member of the EEA because it's an EU member, and no-one's quite sure what happens when it leaves the EU. Being in the EEA or the EU is required to initially apply for EEA membership, but there's nothing in EEA membershp rules that say what happens to an existing member which leaves one of the other two bodies, they are still discussing that.

The UK apparently doesn't want to join EFTA (and Norway isn't keen on allowing it to anyway) but EEA membership is different.

Happy 100th birthday to the Royal Air Force

Re: Britain had an empire before the RAF.

Are you trying to start a Navy/Airforce flame war?

The Register Opera Company presents: The Pirates of Penzance, Sysadmin edition

And then there's the Backup Song, the tune should be obvious:

http://altlasten.lutz.donnerhacke.de/mitarb/lutz/usenet/yesterday.html