Posts by Doctor Syntax 33139 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"They will need someone to program a password into each device"
There is an option to force the user to secure the device with its own password before it will become operational.
"I don't need Big Brother telling me what I need to do to improve the security of my devices."
Frankly I don't give a toss whether you take any steps to secure your devices at all. What I do care about is you exposing an insecure device on the network where it can be weaponised to attack me or anyone else. If it takes legislation to force you to do that, then so be it.
"the person who manufactures, or contracts with another person to manufacture on the person’s behalf"
It still doesn't apply to devices on sale from non-Californian manufacturers even where manufacturer is defined as above. Selling or offering for sale would be a better target. The killer blow would be forbidding the connection of an insecure device to the internet with liability on both the owner and the ISP. If a customer is found with an insecure device facing the net the ISP would be obligated to disconnect them until the device is removed. That kills the market for such devices.
"And May is a poor negotiator letting them get away with it."
Did you not understand what Mooseman wrote? That it was the UK - us - who insisted that non-EU countries should not have access to the encrypted data. Or do you not understand that Brexit means that the UK becomes a nonEU country?
Please enlighten us as to how you would negotiate us out of that one?
"NZ doesn't have a number of crop pests."
What it does have is a particularly nasty flatworm that eats earthworms and it's exported them here. That's not only GB but also N Ireland - I don't know if they've got south yet but I had the bastards in my garden in Lisburn. It's a great pity they didn't pay as much attention to not letting stuff out as they do to not letting stuff in.
ISTM that's what's needed here is something akin to a Chromebook in that it contains no data but where, in place of a conventional login, you VPN to a server of your choice which could be a Google account as per Chromebook but could equally well be a Nextcloud server or anything else. No default, previous login etc would be kept on the device. The user could then present an innocuous server account for customs and log into a confidential server for work.
"I remember thinking that in Belfast in 1991"
I assume that that was in reply to "the terrorists have won". A lot of us thought that a good deal earlier. Given that the largest parties in Stormont are essentially the political wings of the main terrorist movements you could be right.
"Providing entertainment without a monetary price tag."
Without a monetary price tag maybe. But I refer you back to your previous comment about not being stolen from. How about users having their privacy stolen. And even if the users accept this, how about those who are non-account holders having their privacy stolen by way of shadow profiles?
"See also the proposed death by cycling laws."
Your comment ignores the fact that there are already laws dealing with death caused by motorised vehicles but when a cyclist caused a death the only legislation that could be found to apply was that drawn up to deal with management of horses. Are you arguing that because cyclists cause few deaths there shouldn't be a means to prosecute those few?
In my view as soon as I leave my gate* I become part of the traffic irrespective of whether I'm on foot (human or horse!) or on wheels (and irrespective of the number of wheels or te power source). As such I have equal responsibility with all other road users to ensure my safety and that of the rest of the traffic. Is that unreasonable?
*Like a good many rural lanes there is no separate footway; it's all road surface. I use the word surface in its most general sense.
Don't just plan it: do it. GDPR/current DPA (and, I think , the previous DPA) already has this facility so if the prosecution could be brought under DPA rather than any other act this should be done.
Another power which would be useful would be to freeze a company bank account and company registration as soon as the company is first contacted.
"If lost in a forest go always down. You will reach a stream or gully and leave the forest along it. Going up will inevitably end on a hilltop."
It depends on the local terrain. In some places if you follow a stream you'll end up stuck in some form of mire. If it's not mountainous stick to the ridge and follow that down*. A lot of pre-historic tracks were ridgeways for good reason.
*Unless the ridge ends in a sharp drop.
"Taylor's, the Yorkshire Tea people, have a blend especially for hard water."
The local supermarkets sell it. Fair enough - we're in Yorkshire. But the water's so soft it defurred a kettle in a few weeks after we moved up from High Wycombe. Clearly too many people don't know the difference.
....The end of the page also states: "Comments, Webshells and shellcode are welcome."
Despite the issue being widely pointed out on social media, her team is either unaware or unable to fix the problem.
Why would they? They probably think it makes them look really knowledgeable. Sort of like hashtags.
"Keep in mind IBM back then was one of the largest international companies"
If IBM were that infallible how do you explain the special cable that had to be made to join the header to the 9-pin D connector on an AT serial port? Somebody in this mighty international company didn't even know that the numbering convention of a header is different to that of a D connector and nobody reviewed the design to fix it.
"The Z8000 was late and a disaster compared to 68000."
It worked OK. My first Unix box was a Z8000 Onyx although what was sold was a bit tightly configured. We had to by another half meg of memory and a 40 meg disk for the database. Moved on from there to a trio of Zilog boxes.
"DOS pretty much was a clone of CP/M86, which was barely more than a translation of CP/M 80."
I thought QDOS which became MSDSOE was written because Digital Research were dragging their feet over CP/M-86.
"Or maybe IBM already had by then a large international customers base, and knew more about different keyboard layouts than a bunch of engineers in some US uni who believed the whole world began and ended there."
Very likely but what's that got to do with the price of fish? I think AT&T, the guys who gave the world the word "octothorpe", would have known a bit about keyboard layouts, especially for their system which was signed off internally on the basis that it was going to be word-processing documentation.
"Move/mv protects you from your errors."
Not entirely. I had a similar experience with mv. I was left with a running shell so could cd through the remains of the file system end list files with echo * but not repair it..
Although we had the CDs (SCO) to reboot the system required a specific driver which wasn't included on the CDs and hadn't been provided by the vendor. It took most of a day before they emailed the correct driver to put on a floppy before I could reboot. After that it only took a few minutes to put everything back in place.
A plasma beam requires both energy and material. The energy can be replenished from solar panels but the material will be exhausted. An alternative would be a laser pointed at the junk which then provides the material itself by evaporation. Of course the manoeuvring fuel will get exhausted anyway.
"So, to keep slowing it down your plasma throwing satellite will have to follow it for a short while"
The article suggests the impulse being applied for less than half a minute. Given that the device uses a balancing plasma beam suggests that the designers don't see a need to follow the target over this period of time.
"Well, GDPR has certainly put the cat among the infosec pigeons now! This gigantic, eye-watering fine will devastate the £12 Bn[1] annual turnover firm and cause a revolution in security throughout the country."
Go back and read the article. Notice the bit that says "June last year". Compare that with the date GDPR became operative. Note that it's earlier so the old rules apply under which the maximum fine was £500,000. At 2% of annual turnover the maximum fine would have been nearly 500 times larger form a £12bn under GDPR.
Go back to the article again and notice the bit that says that they turned themselves in. That automatically exempts them from a maximum fine - if it didn't work that way there'd be no incentive for anyone to do that.
"On second thoughts, it's easier to change banks."
I was with you up to this point - sort of. But the real problem is that they've dead-heated in the race to the bottom so none of them are worth changing to. But the reason I was only partly with you is the increasing difficulty of getting cash. There are no banks or building societies in my preferred location since YBS closed their branch. Elsewhere they're getting thinner on the ground.
Hence my post at the top of the list: the Treasury Committee need to force the bar stewards to provide a service. Imagine of one of them was put on a rolling 3 months notice to pull their socks up or lose their license.
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