Posts by Doctor Syntax

Microsoft's 2018, part 2: Azure data centres heat up and Windows 10? It burns! It burns!

"It also means the USA can effectively switch off any Azure services as and when they please"

And even when they don't please. I'm reminded of the song of the Siamese cats.

Re: All that elderly code is one reason for the current woes of the OS (?)

"Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year Bob!"

But a curse upon thy caps lock. May it get a crumb from thy mince pie or other seasonal offering lodged immovably beneath it.

Re: ... and people ask me why I use Linux exclusively

"Back to PC-World yesterday and got their money back despite protestations."

Why not just put a proper OS on it?

Staff sacked after security sees 'suspect surfer' script of shame

Re: Perhaps they should apply the same rules on PCs on the Parliamentary Estate

Which rules would those be? Rules that allow MPs' communications to be monitored? Good idea - until you want to write to your MP about something confidential. What was that? You don't think you should be monitored when you communicate with your MP?

Re: Access Denied

"wasn't there an issue when SuBo had her latest CD release ?

all invited to see at www.susanalbumparty"

Obligatory DIlbert: https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-19

Re: Access Denied

It looks as if we're getting back to the bad old days when residents of Scunthorpe and Penistone had trouble signing up to stuff: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/12/20/1753257/debians-anti-harassment-team-is-removing-a-package-over-its-name In fact residents of Titchfield might have the same problem.

Microsoft's 2018, part 1: Open source, wobbly Windows and everyone's going to the cloud

Re: Anus horribilis, indeed.

"Nope, I think you have it correct!"

Forget the downvote. I think you have it correct that the OP has it correct.

GDPR: Four letters that put fear into firms' hearts in 2018

Re: The Result of Arrogance

"The GDPR and other rumblings are the result of arrogance by Suckerberg, et. al."

Not really. In Europe the antecedents are the DPAs of the 1980s. It may have taken the US a few decades to realise that there's a problem but unless I missed one somewhere this is now the 3rd such Act in the UK. The current version reacts to the need to bring the penalties up to date with inflation and to make them scale with the size of the offender and to penalise the usual weaselling actions of offenders.

Re: Oh No It Isn't...

And also: "We take users privacy and sercurity very seriously" after a major breach of either.

I'd like to see journos point blank refusing to print such a statement without an answer to a question as to how the company squares this with what's just happened.

Re: Oh No It Isn't...

Well done!

'Year-long' delay to UK 5G if we spike Huawei deals, say telcos

This is worrying

My FTTC connection is one of the old ones with separate modem and router and the modem's Huawei. Maybe it's reporting all my eBay bids back to China so they can outbid me. Bastards!

Re: Marconi

"BT already bankrupted Marconi"

I thought the bankers did that by inveigling them into spending their cash mountain on inappropriate diversification.

London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

Re: Unlikely

"If youre tech savvy enough to rig up something like this youre smart enough to know to switch off all mobile devices before you get anywhere near your destination."

You'd be surprised at what mistakes people make when committing offences, particularly if they panic.

Re: "there's really one use for guns"

"But not many."

OTOH they're pretty big.

"The difference is that there's really one use for guns (especially in the UK which is really too densely populated for hunting with guns, except shotguns*, to be a thing), which is killing people."

There's competition shooting for a start. Post-Dunblane the ban lead to the shooting contingent of the UK Olympic team having to train abroad. And yet smarmer-in-chief Blair had his photo-opportunity with the team. I was surprised that those affected didn't boycott him.

The trouble with urgent legislation in response to something like this is that it's not well thought out and liable to err on the side of being too all-embracing or nigh on impossible to enforce. The pit-bull legislation is an example of the latter.

*I believe deer stalking uses rifles. There are large portions of the UK less densely populated than those you're familiar with.

There have been no reports of anyone seeing drones taking off or landing, or at least none have been made public. This restricts the locations to isolated buildings or open locations well away from visibility of roads and groups of houses whilst still near enough to Gatwick. I'd expect that right now there are searches through mobile tower records looking for mobiles that can be triangulated to those areas at those times. I wouldn't rule out someone getting a knock on the door from the plod between now and the New Year.

"Why is it that politicians (and pilots on PPrune) don't seem to understand that regulation only stops people who are prepared to abide by the rules?"

It also provides sanctions against those who don't abide by them. It increases the scope of "those who are prepared" from just "those who are willing" to "those who don't want to face the sanctions". That's not insignificant.

It's a lot of work, being popular: Apple, Tim Cook and the gilets jaunes

Re: Where history repeats itself

"what happened when BillG took pity on the floundering Apple."

I thought it more about taking pity on poor Microsoft that was in danger of being bullied by the big bad regulators on account of its being a monopoly.

It's a Christmas miracle: Logitech backs down from Harmony home hub API armageddon

"Hopefully Logitech's New Year resolution will be to forge a closer relationship with its passionate fans and learn that it can make a better product with their help, rather than cut them out."

An even better resolution would be to start thinking intelligently so it doesn't get into this sort of situation again. They knew what the immediate consequences would have been (stuff would stop working) but didn't think beyond those (customers whose stuff stops working are not happy customers) and further still (unhappy customers are apt to (a) sue and (b) become somebody else's customers instead).

Slap for Slack chat app after US, Canada chaps zapped in Iranian IP address map whack

Re: Ironic then that Israel and Iran are antagonistic to each other.

"Can you remember when Iran used to be liberal?"

Yes. I'm not sure whether you can. Things had changed by Reagan's time.

Re: Whack a mole?

"What is to stop them creating a new account?"

Or using IRC.

Error pop-up? Don't worry, let's just get this migration done... BTW it's my day off tomorrow

Re: been there - done that

"Internet not working - didn't pay the bill for 6 months"

I had an ISP for my home internet who didn't get paid for a few months because my card had expired. I eventually got a final and only warning. Was it too difficult for them to have emailed a warning the first time payment failed? Sometimes these companies can't look after their own interests as well as they might.

At one time we used SunAccount. They put a warning on every screen at login about a month before the licence was due for renewal. It played havoc with our screen-scraping program we used to keep account details in sync with the ordering system.

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

"I am intrigued how police are searching?"

I'd start with a bit of map work. Unless we're not being told nobody's reported their neighbours operating them or reporting having seen them from a passing car. So you start looking for some isolated locations not too far away. Then get airborne to check them out.

Re: I wonder if...

The “someone” might not have enough people

...or drones.

2018 ain't done yet... Amazon sent Alexa recordings of man and girlfriend to stranger

"something that Amazon claimed, wrongly, that it had discovered."

To be fair they did discover it. They just forgot to say how they discovered it. Somebody told them about it.

Facebook Like, social sharing buttons on your website may land you in GDPR hot water if data goes a-wanderin'

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

There's another aspect of that. The EU folks are smart enough to realise that far from harming the EU economy there are competitive advantages in establishing data sovereignty.

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

"f it was one of the Mirror(Reach) group then there is a button - I was wrong about measurement it is called information and storage."

And it does absolutely nothing to the huge list of pre-ticked opt-in boxes. At least it doesn't in my browser. Possibly it might if I opened up to the huge list of sites that want to run scripts on that page but that defeats the object. And in any case it doesn't affect the basic offence against GDPR. By being pre-ticked they're opt-out not opt-in.

Re: This was the case...

"Until the social media giants exercise their rights and prevent third parties publishing colourless images of their trademarks."

In that case the site owners would have to weigh up their options and not having the media buttons seems increasingly likely for someone who has taken this precaution in the first place.

"It is a great way to take your visitor's privacy seriously but still have the option of some of them choosing to 'Like' your site."

And as Facebook's public reputation sinks, it'll cause more people to dislike your site for having it there.

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

"corporate lobbyists will start a whisper campaign that the GDPR will hamstring the EU economy and some holes will be carved in it before long."

They'll find FB et al have irretrievably fouled the nest.

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

"I did look for any method of disabling them all, there wasn't one. I've landed on a few other sites that did have such an option. This one was just plain hostile."

Let me guess. What used to be Trinity Mirror Group? I think it's now called Reach.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

Re: Cut off the GPS so it lands

"Lack of GPS will not ground airliners"

Especially the ones already on the ground that can't take off because of the drones.

Re: Other options...

"Whats the range on a good super soaker?"

Maybe there really is a use for Boris's water cannon.

Re: three methods

"if they actually have any which haven't crashed"

I think you've just identified the problem with using this approach in SE England.

"Triangulation , Triangulation, Triangulation."

Clearly you're thinking of Location, Location, Location. The operator (assuming there's only one) has a good means of dealing with that: Move, Move, Move.

Re: Flak

"so the shrapnel is smaller and lighter..."

...and there's more of it.

Re: They just need to make the penalty so outsized

"Even if you only catch 1 out of 50, why would anyone take that chance?"

Because they're idiots. Never underestimate stupid. Or should that be "overestimate"?

"What's the terminal velocity of such a spent rifle bullet as it finally hits the ground?"

Not entirely comparable to a falling round but IIRC someone in S Belfast was hit by what was believed to have been a stray round fired from N Belfast. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the details. But the danger zone can be quite large.

ICO has pumped almost £2.5m and 36 staff into its political data probe – but only 2 are techies

It's reasonable to hire in extra help for something that's perceived as more than BAU. It's also a good basis for going to HMG and pointing out that larger workloads will becomce BAU and more permanent staff are needed.

France next up behind Britain, Netherlands to pummel Uber with €400k fine over 2016 breach

Re: Thing are going well for Uber

"In France they get a fine that given the amount of capital they recently raised is comparable to a slap on the wrist."

How many times do we have to point this out? 2016 was 2016; since this May things are very different.

Re: Stolen ?

"In some places, it's illegal to leave your keys in the car"

It was - and for all I know still is - an offence in NI to leave your car unlocked on account of the fact that it could be taken and used as a car bomb. It didn't make TDA any less of an offence.

Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is: 1. More ad revenue, and 2. Good PR. Lots of love – Mark, aged 34½

Re: Dear Mark

there's plenty of companies that would pay him handsomely simply to be associated with his name and his "talent".

As his name becomes increasingly toxic I'm not sure about that.

Serverless is awesome (if you overlook inflated costs, dislike distributed computing, love vendor lock-in), say boffins

"that use case requires traditional understanding and experience of building out server and database infrastructure"

That's legacy computing. It's just not cool. All it's good for is running a business.

"got out of the mindset of relying on code running on a particular server quite some time ago."

I'm genuinely curious about this sort of thing.

Is your data purely ephemeral?

If not, how do you manage connections between the not-a-particular-server and the server holding the persistent data? Each time you invoke service you'll need to set up a connection between wherever it's running and the data server and that would include authentication - hopefully two way because the application server would need to know it's connected to the real data just as much as the data server would need to know the connection comes from a genuine application. This takes time and resources. In fact if I understood the account of the TSB debacle correctly it was this sort of issue that was the underlying problem.

Another aspect is that if you don't have control over where the application runs you can't be sure of the speed of the link to where the data sits.

I'd expect issues like this to be serious hit on performance when it gets into production.

"Serverless computing, which does actually involve servers"

That's called "Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title". YM 101

"it's an expensive disappointment for all but a few simple applications."

That ignores its true basis. It's a lucrative business for vendors.

German cybersecurity chief: Anyone have any evidence of Huawei naughtiness?

"there were rumors of stolen Cisco code over a decade ago."

So maybe there is something in suspecions of back doors after all: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/compromised_cisco_routers/

Re: Evidence? You want evidence?

"Of course, cell phones and communications equipment from Chinese-branded companies are not the only threat."

Of course they aren't. There's equipment from the US (NSA) and the UK (GCHQ) to name but two others.

Evidence-based policy; there's a novelty!

IBM: Co-Op Insurance talking direct to coding subcontractor helped collapse of £55m IT revamp project

"Back in the day, we had developers and we had users."

Yup. I was there. I had a strong preference for development tools which would let you lash up a working demo/prototype on the fly whilst talking to the user. It did depend on having good users. I had a colleague who'd put together a demo and then find the users rejected the whole proposed system because they didn't like something about it and couldn't get their heads round the idea that it was intended to refine what it was they wanted.

"Then, slowly, all the hangers-on moved in - the business analysts"

It depends on the business analysts. If you get a good one it's great to be ablel to bounce ideas off each other. I've had that a couple of times.

AIUI Agile involves users talking directly to developers. Presumably in IBM terms it just means removing a couple of links in a much longer chain.