Posts by Phil O'Sophical

UK minister promises science budget won't be messed with after Brexit

I frankly don't care what the Leave voters think or want because their marginal win was based on a complete pack of lies, the most egregious of which was that all EU funds would now go to the NHS.

Are you really that arrogant, and that daft? You don't care what the majority voted for, so you're happy to see it ignored? You're name isn't Putin is it? Or Trump?

Leave got a substantially higher percentage of the vote (on any grounds) than any party has managed in a general election in at least 50 years.

As to the bollocks about immigration and the NHS, that's just FUD from remoaners to justify their inability to understand the economic and political reasons why the EU is an unworkable disaster. Sure, a few people probably voted for Brexit on immigration grounds, but I certainly don't believe it was the main reason.

That said, a softer exit with EEA status would indeed be beneficial, but it seems unlikely that the EU will permit it, since it risks bringing their worst nightmare to life: that a country can leave the EU and be better off outside it. They will do everything in their power, underhand or illegal, to try and prevent that.

As the UK will have to pay to get access to the EU market after "Brexit",

If you reread my post you'll see I was discussing what would happen if MP voted to renege on Brexit and we therefore stayed in. We would lose all opt-outs & rebates in that situation.

MPs are fully entitled to reject leaving the EU if it would be massively damaging to the economy and people of this country

If they did, it would be massively damaging to the MPs, given that close on 70% of English regions voted to leave. MPs who vote to ignore that will discover what it's like to get a middle-english toe up their collective arses. UKIP would be laughing themselves silly all the way to Westminster. Not a good outcome.

Besides, changing our mind now would be the most catastrophic outcome of all. It would send a message to the EU that we weren't serious about our concerns, and could be relied upon to drop our pants and bend over when pushed. It would be the end of the rebates, the opt-outs, and any pretence of control over anything.

Re: You have no idea

We're going to get screwed by the EU, because they can and need to in order to stop it falling apart and there's bugger all we can do about it.

It's going to fall apart anyway, the best we can do is get out now while we can, to avoid being sucked into the crash. Brexit may be painful for a few years, especially if the Remoaners make it unnecessarily hard just to prove that they were right, but it's nothing to the pain that Greece, Spain, Italy and France are gong to suffer a few years from now when the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

I do not think UK politicians and civil servants can be trusted with anything more than a box full of paperclips.

Sadly the eurocrats intent on building their European empire are even less trustworthy than that, unless they're delaing with gold-plated paperclips in their retirement funds.

LASER RAT FENCE wins €1.7m European Commission funds

Re: Could still happen after Brexit

It makes no sense to suggest that the criteria for this sort of collaboration are exclusively political or ideological.

If only we could get the politicians to understand that.

Iceland's Pirate Party tops polls ahead of national elections

Interesting times

Pirates in Iceland, a minority anti-emigration party topping the polls in Lithuania, one of the TrumpTon pair as US president, Brexit versus the EU, and the FN riding high in France. Looks like 2017 is going to be an "interesting" year. Seems that voters have finally realised that no-one should take the current crop of politicians as anything more than incompetent self-serving wankers. Pass the popcorn.

Judge nailed for trying to bribe Fed with fizzy water (aka Bud Light)

Re: Bud Light is beer?

American "Lite Beer" is low in calories, not necessarily in alcohol, it can still be 4% ABV. Still tasteless piss, of course.

Lessons from the Mini: Before revamping or rebooting anything, please read this

Re: Uppercase and mixed case names

Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino.

Not "Fix It Again, 'Tonio" then?

Re: Impressive..

the beautiful Luton airport,

Interesting, I didn't know there were two. Where is the beautiful one?

Meet the slimeballs who are openly sabotaging Virgin Media

Re: Wot, no garlic?

What about red wine and herbs instead?

Why spoil it with snails?

Just what Europe needs – another bungled exit: Mars lander goes AWOL

Re: They don't want us

Brits at least would have had an excuse. It was their empire at some point.

Despite it being rather pinkish, I'm pretty sure Mars was never part of the British Empire. Not for want of trying, I'm sure.

Hard-up Brits 'should get subsidy for 10Mbps'

s/them/us/

Governments have no money, they can only spend the money they take of us in tax, directly or indirectly. Subsidize one group == increase taxes for another.

stop them forcing me to pay fifteen quid a month for a landline I never use just for the priviledge of having an internet connection.

Why not cut that landline with some pliers, and see how much you "never use it". Maybe you think the internet comes through the ether???

JUST BLOW A FUCKING FIBRE OUT TO EVERY ADDRESS.

A fucking fibre? What, you want subsidised kinky porn now, as well?

European Telecoms Standards Institute to World+Dog: please start caring about 5G

5G? How many people even care about 4G, even if they can get it? It's a solution to a largely non-existent problem, and 5G even more so.

You work so hard on coding improvements... and it's all undone by a buggy component

Re: Another closed source shill?

I hadn't seen that one, thanks for the heads-up.

Re: Another closed source shill?

If it's closed source, How the hell do you KNOW that??

Trust the vendor? Yeah, right.

Vendors who need their software to be trustworthy will have it tested and certified (at the source code level) by compliance labs. At considerable expense

Of course, you can ask "can you trust those labs" but you have to accept trust somewhere. Even open source code is only as trustworthy as the compiler you use. You can analyze the source, but can you trust the compiler you build it with? OK, so 'gcc' is open source, but are you then going to analyze it, and build it from source to be sure? What do you build it with?

If you're sceptical, you may want to look up Ken Thompson's 1984 Turing award paper "Reflections on Trusting Trust" in which he describes how to modify a compiler so that it intentionally miscompiles certain code, including itself.

"The problem is that too many people take the easy option."

I wasn't aware that there was one. Easier, maybe.

The easy option is not to check at all. It's almost as foolish as assuming that closed source code from a vendor whose business relies on its reputation is automatically worse than open source code written by a self-taught hacker with a sunny disposition.

Re: Another closed source shill?

This isn't an open/closed issue, it's one of sensible validation versus laziness.

Open Source software can be checked, if the developer takes the time (and has the ability) to do so, or it can be stuffed in without validation because it's easy. Closed source software can be bought from a trustworthy source, with independent certification and penalties in a contract, or it can be bought from a startup with no visibility.

The problem is that too many people take the easy option.

Re: Levels of blame...

Imagine if, when OpenSSL was flawed, or MD5 was cracked, we could just mark it as obsolete, mark an upgrade path, and EVERY piece of software that dealt with them worlwide was updated to use a replacement library or object class as soon as it was next executed?

But that flaw in OpenSSL wasn't put there intentionally, it was inadvertent, and those new versions could have other as-yet-unknown problems. If I've spent months validating my system, checking that all the bits work together, securely, the very last thing I'd want is some smart-alec loader deciding "hey, there's a new improved version, I'll install it and its 27 gazillion dependencies". My security and reliability would go out the window. Does automatic Windows Update sound familiar?

Sure, dependency hell is no fun, but doing that packaging and testing is part of the job of building a system, you can't delegate it to an untrusted source.

Probe boffins: Two balls deep in Uranus's ring

Re: That headline

it's very cold

Well, the sun probably doesn't shine there...

Microsoft keeps schtum as more battery woes hit Surface sufferers

Re: Not experienced this

I bought loads of SP3 tablets ... we still don't really know what they are good for.

Umm, why did you buy them, then? (and can I have your IT budget?)

Freeze on refrigerants heats up search for replacements

Re: Ongoing maintenance

e.g. the air con in my cars

Just make sure you use it regularly, even in winter. It's not only useful (stops the car misting up) but will prevent leaks. A big cause of loss of refrigerant in a car is that people don't use the air con in winter, and the seals dry out & leak.

Open Sorcerers: Can you rid us of Emperor Zuck?

I don't think it's even as deliberate as that. Somone has a bright idea, and either doesn't know about (or doesn't look for), the standard. They just think they can do it best by starting from a blank sheet of paper, often because they are using the latest technology. The argument goes something like "my iPhone didn't exist when XMPP was invented, so XMPP can't be the best way to do it on an iPhone.".

Other folks buy into it, perhaps because it's picked up as "new", Faceborg buys it because it's hot, and the developer pockets a fortune. Ten years later it's gone, and the boring old apps that did use the standard are still there, unloved but working just fine in the background for those few that stuck with them.

Wi-Fi baby heart monitor may have the worst IoT security of 2016

Re: ``Data Team'' competence

The internet of stable doors, swinging in the breeze...

Casino cops are coming if we can't move all this cash in a hurry

Sound like it's time to invest in a vault.

Might be too late. New Year's day 2017 is a Sunday...

Queen Lizzie awarded good behaviour medal

Re: Commander in chief

No, I am suggesting, among other things, that she has never undertaken this constitutional rile that she was trained from childhood to fulfil.

No UK leader has given the order to launch a nuclear strike either, does that mean they've all failed and should be removed?

The important thing about having great executive power is to organize things so that it never needs to be used. That is why she meets regularly with her prime minister, and why all new parliamentary sessions start with her speech. She hasn't done anything which triggers a crisis, because she hasn't had to. That's how it should be.

Re: Commander in chief

I would force her to step down immediately, dismiss all her mates in the house of hereditary lard, while we are at it and organize a presidential and general election for both houses ... you know, to achieve some form of democratic government, with an elected head of state.

Ah, you mean like in the USA at the moment?

Would you really have wanted a President Blair? Or some equivalent to Trump or Clinton?

There's a lot to be said for having a second house that isn't elected, and so doesn't have to consider every decision in terms of "will I get re-elected if I do the right thing?", as a review body.

Re: Commander in chief

And in nonmilitary terms why hasn't she ever stood up for her subjects and refused to sign any bill that stripped our historic rights?

Those bills only get to her after passing through Parliament, and since we (for good or bad) elect the members of the House of Commons, there is a presumption that we have presented those bills. The House of Lords is there to push things they feel are unconstitiutional to the Commons for review. At the end of the day if HRH did refuse the Royal Assent it would effectively mean she was refusing the advice of the people we elected, and would prompt a constitutional crisis. The last time that happened we eventually ended up at war with the American colonies...

A robot kitchen? Whatever. Are you stupid enough to fall for this?

Re: Mark Oleynik is a Ph.D. mathematician

How do they deal with this little problem?

Never mind that, what about the recipes that say "add salt & pepper to taste" ?

Re: £100 a week for a year with Tesco's delivery service comes in at about £26,000 cheaper

as a country we don't produce any eggs and have to import them from Europe.

Really?

https://www.egginfo.co.uk/british-lion-eggs/about/british-lion-code-practice

Oracle DB admins urged to swap their gas guzzler for an electric car

electric cars when built properly are seriously quick vehicles.

For a while, but they can't stay the course 24/7. Put a Tesla in the Le Mans 24 hours and see where it finishes. Very nice car, but it has its limitations.

Much the same is true of the small DB vendors, OK for some light & nippy apps, but not to run a huge company.

Re: And...

Oracle's answer will either be "NO" or if you're a big enough customer, "Yes".

That's true for every large company I've dealt with, not just Oracle.

Nuke plant has been hacked, says Atomic Energy Agency director

Re: "Try finding a virus that would both be capable of infecting a PDP-11"

My PDP11 has an RD52. All of 31MB, IIRC.

PDP-11 is a hardware family, like "x86" or "SPARC", not an OS, so talking about a virus for a PDP-11 is meaningless. You'd also have to know which of the many PDP-11 OSes these plants are running, and in at least some cases you'd have to rebuild the OS from source to include your virus and then rewrite the boot disk.

Majority of underage sexting suspects turn out to be underage too

Re: 16 and want to share images?

Hmm, so kids playing "you show me yours, and I'll show you mine" is legal face-to-face, but not via a video link? Another daft situation, indeed.

Stickers emerge as EU's weapon against dud IoT security

Re: "By the time the EC gets its stickers sorted.."

"This product contains some security. By continuing to use it you agree to accept the use of security."

Leap second scheduled for New Year's Eve 2016

Re: "the International Earth Rotation Service"

How do they ever test it?

There's an old programming dictum about not testing for errors you can't handle, it probably applies here...

Re: WTF

still doesn't have a general solution in any software package dependent on time.

Well, the Unix standards are quite clear on it, as an example from the strftime manpage:

"Second as a decimal number [00,60]; the range of values is [00,60] rather than [00,59] to allow for the occasional leap second.".

If implementers choose not to follow the standard that's hardly the fault of the leap second model. Much the same applies to day-of-year calculations, which must allow for 1-366, not 1-365.

'My REPLACEMENT Samsung Galaxy Note 7 blew up on plane'

Re: Possibiities

My money is on #2, perhaps without the "accidentally".

Snoop! stooge! Yahoo! handed! all! your! email! to! Uncle! Sam! – and! any! passing! hacker!

Re: FBI contacted me one time

after some discussion he revealed he was with the FBI

Well, that's what he said, anyway...

US govt pleads: What's it gonna take to get you people using IPv6?

Re: Article needs puppy dog face

perhaps if people started voting with their routers (see above) then more ISPs would need to take it seriously.

Perhaps most people neither know nor care what IP version they are using, and are perfectly happy behind the NAT box that they don't even know they have? The Internet of Tat does not require individually-addressable devices.

Google rushes in where Akamai fears to tread, shields Krebs after world's-worst DDoS

I don't see what the problem is here.

That would seem to be obvious.

Where precisely would you suggest running this algorithm on such a distributed, self-healing, network as the Internet, so that it could detect the small number of packets coming from millions of devices across the world, and recognise that they are all targeting one site? Where would the "shut off" happen? Your "solution" is like the ones that politicians offer for porn sites, insisting that "someone" should "block porn", and it shows an equal lack of understanding about how the internet works. There is no central management framework or off switch.

Want a Dell printer? Unlucky – they've just stopped selling them

The real plan...

Is that they now plan to buy HP.

United States Air Force grounds F-35As after cooling kit cracks up

Re: But sir, it gets 5 star Amazon reviews

So it has to be good, right?

https://xkcd.com/937/

EU ends anonymity and rules open Wi-Fi hotspots need passwords

Re: Meh

specialises in running public hotpots

A Lancashire version of Plusnet, perhaps?

Re: Must be fun...

But it's the machine that is making the connection. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have no built-in wifi hardware.

US Congress blew the whistle on tax-dodging Apple, claims Europe

Re: So much bleating about "avoiding" taxes...

If you earn £30k you pay say 15%, £40k @ 20%, £50k @ 25% and so forth... By the time you are earning £100k you're paying the top rate.

And why is that fair? If the tax rate is a flat 20%, someone earning 100K is already paying twice the tax that someone only earning 50K pays. Why screw the 100K earner twice just because they are successful?

You should install smart meters even if they're dumb, says flack

it's the 3KW immersion heater, as the switch is in a cupboard. Kids turn it on for a bath, then forget.

So fit a 30-minute push button timer. Cheaper than a smart meter and much more effective since it saves you the trouble of even having to look at it and react.

A plumber with a blowtorch is the enemy of the data centre

Re: Building Codes

Here in the UK, most of the internet to homes and businesses is by cable and twisted pairs. These pairs and cables go from one building to another!

Twisted pair is OK since it's isolated from ground, but running co-ax between buildings on different mains supplies has problems, especially if they don't have a common earth/neutral wire. The difference in earth potential might only be 2-3 volts, but a few hundred metres of co-ax might have 0.01ohm or so of resistance via the sheath. 2v across 0.01 ohms leaves 200A flowing in the cable sheath, which will melt most co-ax.