Posts by Doctor Syntax

Android PDF app with just 100m downloads caught sneaking malware into mobes

Re: "The Register has reached out to CamScanner's developer"

There are, of course, purists who insist that "contact" is only a noun and el Reg should have said "attempted to make contact with".

JR-M probably has it on his banned list because his 2nd deputy nanny told him not to use that because her primary school teacher told her not to because her English teacher told her not to because Dr Johnson didn't define it as a noun. (Actually my old Pocket Oxford doesn't either but I'd guess a newer edition would.)

Re: "The Register has reached out to CamScanner's developer"

"It always reminds me of the phrase reach around"

This sort of around?---->

Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

Re: Where is Windows 9?

You'd probably find problems with all the applications that would think they were running on 95 or 98 because they don't do the right thing to suss out the version number.

Re: Good. Another year for people to move away from Windows

"You mean your business didn't see this coming years ago and start migrating to web-based tools?"

That's the trouble with posting anon. You can't use the joke alert icon.

Re: Good. Another year for people to move away from Windows

"My only gripe with Debian Linux being that infuriating Libre Office software that won't let me install Apache Open Office."

1. I've never come across that one. Really? I've had LO & OO on the same box in the past with no problems.

2. You do know you can remove S/W you don't want, don't you? Although I run LO myself it's the version from the LO site, not the distro version which I removed.

3. OO is still a thing?

Re: "things have moved on, like it or not"

I haven't tried anything with a 2.0 kernel lately but what I have found is that I could install new versions of Linux on very ancient H/W. Subsequently used than ancient H/W & Linux combo talk to and set up a brand new printer that the user's W10 infested laptop kept trying to set onto a sub-net that the laptop itself wasn't on. So new gadget worked better with Linux & old S/W rather better than with new W10.

Yes, TfL asked people to write down their Oyster passwords – but don't worry, they didn't inhale

Re: Mad

"We recognise that where possible this process could be improved and work is under way to identify options."

The proper way of doing things is to get all the technical underpinning in place before launching the service. Could marketing have been involved in this?

Re: Smells like a work-around

"I assume their admin interface and/or access control is broken"

You also presume it exists.

Biz forked out $115k to tout 'Time AI' crypto at Black Hat. Now it sues organizers because hackers heckled it

Re: Why would you take that talk to BlackHat?

"hat would have probably done well at a middle manager or PHB conference"

Maybe they thought that that's what Black Hat was. Didn't do their research on it? Their problem.

Re: Look into my eyes

"They are obviously aimed at anyone EXCEPT the very people they really need to persuade"

Not really. They're aimed at management who'll have made their minds up before anyonewho'd go WTF! gets anywhere near it.

I couldn't possibly tell you the computer's ID over the phone, I've been on A Course™

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

"The long weight one is actually common enough to be both an urban legend AND true."

In my part of the world it has to be a long stand. Different accent.

Re: This is this bank

Most banks don't seem to care that any time their users use this thing they're in breach of the contract with their bank (the "do not give your details to anyone ever not even the police" bit).

This is something the "nothing to hide" crowd fail to grasp. There are perfectly legitimate things which you're obliged to hide.

Re: This is this bank

"At a bank? Surely you jest!"

I did think it the less likely alternative.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

"IT is a service"

Quite right. It's a service within a business and it's the business that's the unit. Working in IT I always found it was most useful to the business if I got to know something about how my users worked. It didn't even do any harm if some of the users got to know something about IT. And the most effective way for that was face-to-face communication so not only did I not take offence at them coming and talking to me, I went to talk to them. In fact, at times, the seating arrangements were a little ad hoc and I found myself seated next to them.

Apart from anything else the "keep users at arm's length" approach is an invitation for users to keep IT at arm's length. Perhaps an arm long enough to reach to India.

Re: Can't say white / black

"Before that, I lived in the Peoples Republic of Islington,"

A very long time ago, when David Blunkett was in his pomp, I went to a couple of talks by a pathologist from Sheffield. His standard opening (maybe not the best term in relation to a pathologist) was "Greetings from the People's Republic of South Yorkshire".

Re: This is this bank

"I think my bank may have me on a list about this."

Either that or your bank may have had an outbreak of sanity.

Re: Can't say white / black

when my wife referred to the doll as "African-American" the woman became rather upset about the politically-correct terminology. "It's black, honey!"

To be fair the correct PC terminology could have just been changed to "black" and she'd missed it. It's harder to find umbrage to take if you can't keep wrong-footing the public.

Re: Demotivation

Did you get out in good time?

Re: This is this bank

My standard reply was that I'd already made clear to my bank that I wasn't doing that so the one thing I knew for certain was that they weren't my bank and I wasn't even prepared to confirm they'd guessed write. It was inevitably followed up a few days later by a plaintive letter from HSBC to the effect that I wouldn't give them a chance to try to sell me services I didn't want.

Once I closed the company my personal account was closed as well. I did offer to meet them to discuss it but only in my preferred branch, the one they'd just closed.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

That was my reaction.

American ISPs fined $75,000 for fuzzing airport's weather radar by stealing spectrum

Re: Sensible suggestion

My preference is for requiring the telcos to automate the process but at much lower fees, say a couple of quid or a fiver for a TPS registered number. Get a call, dial a code when you put the phone down, the fee gets credited to your account and the caller charged with the fee plus the telco's fee. The call came from a different telco? No problem, the charge gets passed to them, they add their own fee and pass it on to the caller. Multiple telcos? It goes on accumulating more handling fees. A telco doesn't know where the call comes from? Tough, they pay the bill and realise they need to keep better records.

Downsides?

There'd be a need to prevent fraud - someone trying to collect a fee on every call whoever it came from so there'd need to be some statistical work to verify problem callers and maybe charge the would-be fraudsters for their trouble.

There'd also be an upfront cost for the telcos putting the mechanism together. In theory their fee covers it, in practice as it would close down the problem PDQ and they'd lose out on their investment. You know what would happen? They'd suddenly find ways to cut down on the problem rather that do that. Not being faced with a mandatory investment they couldn't recover is also good for the bottom line.

Pokemon Go becomes Pokemon No as games biz Niantic agrees to curb trespassing addicts

Don't rely on class action. Just bring your own action under small claims or equivalent rules.

Oracle OKs Oracle investors to sue Oracle: Put NetSuite suit before a judge – board panel

As far as I can make out the action is aimed to getting Oracle to sue Ellison & Katz on shareholders' behalf. Why the shareholders don't sue them directly is less clear. After all, if they get a payout from Oracle its their own money - shareholders' funds - that the payout would be taken from.

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

" in fact, I wonder if a thief's instinctive response to the siren would be to not simply drop the laptop, but to fling it away as hard as possible."

That's the point of making it conspicuous and publicising what it is. The object is deterrence.

Re: Coffee shops?

After yesterday afternoon I should have added a few hours hanging about in hospital waiting rooms while SWMBO was at the eye clinic.

Re: The "Cowards" comment

Those of us who haven't yet reached either know.

Re: That's horrible.

I take it you're not from these parts.

Re: Coffee shops?

In general I wouldn't make a practice of it, although some people obviously do.

However there are situations where there's time to do work and neither office nor home are close at hand. In my case it's been occasions when I've taken the grand-kids to their tennis lesson & have to hang about waiting to take them home again. If I have something to write I'll take a laptop and sit the club's coffee bar although it's likely that it will be the little MSI job and not something more substantial. For others it might be waiting for a train, a gap between appointments or lectures etc.

Re: That's horrible.

"And I also do the legover thing to try to prevent quick snatches."

Would you care to rephrase that.

Re: So you lost all your research on .....

"Just where was Steve Jobs when all this went down"

Lying low.

Re: That is why...

"Notebook for Android from the Soho corporation is good enough to write an article you can later export somewhere else."

At a fraction f the speed/accuracy of typing on a real keyboard. And then there's being able to consult all the reference material you might need. Yes, you can do that on the phone as well but again it's going to be a lot slower than having a document open beside the one you're typing into. It's horses for courses.

OTOH I used to have one of those Nokia Communicator bricks. Absolutely ideal for dialling into modems to do remote support of clients' Unix boxes. That also was the appropriate tool for the job.

My future son-in-law had his car nicked in Manchester. When it was recovered he spent a few days hoping to hear the insurance would write it off - which they did - as he wanted to buy and MGB. As he said, most girls' fathers wouldn't take kindly to boy-friends with MGs but he knew I'd had one myself.

I thought of that one. In fact a lot of USB keys have some sort of loop which would allow them to be attached to a cord. But the likelihood is that the thief wouldn't have heard of such an idea, wouldn't have encountered such a set-up before and never would encounter one again so the only difference in outcome would be a dropped and smashed laptop vs a stolen one. That's where the second part comes in. It needs to be a very visible and different-looking device whose vendor has gone to some trouble to publicise as an alarm so the value is in deterrence before the event rather than not much protection after.

There are a couple of additional twists. You need to think about how it's attached to the table or the owner. If it's a simple clip the thief might take the extra second to unclip it. So it needs to be made physically tricky to unclip (as someone else suggested in relation to a locking device) or the gadget needs to be able to make the laptop aware that it's been unclipped so that unclipping requires telling the S/W first. It needs a similar defence against the cable being cut.

Re: The "Cowards" comment

I'm tempted to say some take longer than others but IME it's only the sudden deaths that end up there. The rest just go direct to the undertakers.

Re: "nobody moved to stop a thief"

From an Anthony Price story partly set in Georgia: "It's right there in the Constitution, the Right to Get Shot except they call it the Right to Bear Arms".

Re: "nobody moved to stop a thief"

"However, the truth is that for practical purposes, handguns cannot legally be carried by anyone other than the SFPD"

And nobody intent on stealing laptops would dream of doing anything illegal.

Re: Indeed

"Not sure exactly what they had nicked, but I had enough time to see him running down the corridor, with a couple of guys obviously in pursuit"

How did you know it wasn't two bad guys with murderous intent chasing a victim?

The story so far: How's that Autonomy High Court battle with HPE looking at half-time?

"HPE's detailed claims run to 894 pages in their written opening alone."

Remind me again how many pages of due diligence report they went through in detail before deciding to buy.

Dion? He off: HP Inc CEO Weisler quits over 'family health matter', Lores will be High-res

Re: But...

Wouldn't it have been handy to have some other line of business to take up the slack when another has problems? A well regarded lab instrument business for instance.

What is it with hosting firms being stonewalled by Microsoft? Now it's Ionos on naughty step

Their customers may also look on incoming mail as customer traffic.

The email system is dependent on co-operation. WHat a pity Microsoft haven't worked out what that means. A rational response would be for MSPs to organise a back channel for sorting out problems. If MS have a problem with another MSP then use that channel to raise it and let that MSP sort it out. Blocking the entire SP should only be the last resort. Of course it may well be that such an arrangement is in place and has failed to resolve the matter so an additional action should be to announce that this mechanism in use. In that way innocent users of both services (yes, Microsoft, it's your customers who are rendered unable to receive mail) at least know what's happening and can take avoiding action.

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

He's not wrong about the containment problems however.

Don't trust Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency, boffins warn: Zuck & Co know that hash is king

Re: Its also a great way

Cash in hand wouldn't be affected. If anything it would just be a reminder of why you'd want cash in hand.

"Govts will love this because (as long as it is accurate)"

As accurate as facial recognition will be good enough.

"should be scrutinized ... by national entities concerned with law, public safety and defense."

I'm sure they're already crawling all over it but not with the objectives Khan and Goodell want.

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Do you know who contributes most to Linux? It's the big companies who get something back - largely Intel because so many devices use their processors.

What they get back is a widely used OS that costs them less to develop co-operatively than if they went all-out to each develop their own private OS. H/W vendors used to roll their own. Then they saw how a 3rd party OS such as CP/M allowed a whole lot of start-ups to start making their own products. The MS followed up with MSDOS. The day of the OS developed from scratch was largely over. Common sense, really.

"What we need is a law that makes a certain amount of time from purchase date (not manufacture) to be the minimum."

Like the current consumer protection legislation?

Cali court backs ex-Apple engineer who says he invented Find My iPhone and Passbook

Re: Could invalidate the patent?

The defence of "prior art" mentioned in the article also seems to be a route to invalidating the patent.

Here's a top tip: Don't trust the new person – block web domains less than a month old. They are bound to be dodgy

Re: Hmmmm

"I realise this will inconvenience some people/organisations (advertising and marketing?) but I’m not seeing a lot of downside that a little patience can’t address."

I can't see any downside at all to inconveniencing spammers advertising and marketing.

Overseas investors eat the UK tech sector for Brexit: More cash flung about in 7 months than the whole of last year

Re: In reality...

The USA seems to think Greenland is up for sale. At least its POTUS did a few days ago. He probably thinks something else is now. Maybe the next bright idea will be to make Huawei the 51st state.