Posts by Doctor Syntax

Star wreck: There's a 1 in 20 chance a NASA telescope and US military satellite will smash into each other today

Maybe add the proviso that you have to grab hold of one of the bits of junk and bring that down at the same time.

Brave, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla gather together to talk web privacy... and why we all shouldn't get too much of it

Re: Besides

"The people who make money off them all claim that everybody does."

These, of course, are the people in the advertising industry, not their mugs, the advertisers.

Re: "Microsoft Loves the Web"

On the assumption that this is on the level and not ironic, let's look at a situation which is a little more clear cut, in the physical world.

The other day, along with the usual payload of bills the post included unaddressed leaflets for some junk or other I'll never want. Yesterday it included the Radio Times for SWMBO and out of that fell several leaflets for junk we'd never want.

There's only one way to describe this: litter.

And litter is a form of pollution.

What possible justification is there for an economic system that depends, or claims to depend on producing pollution? That's pollution as a deliberate product, not as a by-product of something else.

Re: "Microsoft Loves the Web"

I'm trying to decide if that was a whoosh and I can't. I really can't.

Remember when Europe’s entire Galileo satellite system fell over last summer? No you don’t. The official stats reveal it never happened

Re: Isn't it amazing

"how poorly (or perhaps with genius artifice) contractual KPIs can be set up by the uninformed"

Nothing uninformed about setting them up. Accepting them, however...

Re: WTF?

More likely you'd take t to wherever you bought it and demand your money back. Loudly enough for any other customers to hear.

Re: WTF?

"The people who wrote the SLAs have certainly set themselves an incredibly low bar."

This isn't a bar, it's a trip hazard.

IoT security? We've heard of it, says UK.gov waving new regs

Re: One big mistake

"Laws only provide a penalty phase, not actual prevention of someone doing something wrong. Putting product security into the realm of product liability for damages would be an incentive to improve."

Liability for damages would still be law, just civil rather than legal.

The legislation is only the means which enables the penalty which is the deterrent (or incentive to improve if you prefer).

I'm not sure that targeting a distant manufacturer is the best way to go about it. Make it an offence to offer the stuff for sale, that's more likely to make at least some vendors amenable. OTOH the only effect would be to make stuff available in the UK only through Trotters Independent Trading. There's no chance of manufacturers producing a new, improved line for the UK market. This is the sort of thing that could be done effectively via the EU where the market size would be more worth-while. How good of the MoF to underline why leaving is a mistake before we've even done it.

The statement on the MoF website also says "We want to make the UK the safest place to be online with pro-innovation regulation that breeds confidence in modern technology."

That's the kiss of death. They always say something like that when they've no idea how to do it.

"This could significantly increase the number of passwords the average household has to manage – and there are also questions about what happens when such passwords are forgotten or misplaced."

He says that like it's a bad thing. Hasn't he heard that re-use of passwords is a big problem?

There's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here. An alternative, which would deal with the lost password, is to be able to reset the device to a state where the user has to set a password before it becomes operational. This would ensure that an operational device doesn't have a well-known password but it does facilitate setting a weak password or the re-use of passwords. Alternatively have the device generate and display a new, random password on a factory reset. Any reset-and-cahnge system, however, needs to be protected against a remote reset.

The UK market is so huge in world terms that this is going to have a huge effect on IoT design. Or maybe not.

Calling all, um, 'general AI' practitioners: Blighty needs you for public sector glory

Re: Shudder

It lacks only the boilerplate "making the UK the bast place to use AI in government".

In deepest darkest Surrey, an on-prem SAP system running 17-year-old software is about to die....

Re: You wish

The existing staff will be long gone before the need for any support staff is realised. BTW this is local government so they're not civil servants, they're local government officers.

The business case warns the new system would potentially "reduce back-office staff costs" and "reduce the number of business support staff required to support a SaaS-based technology".

They never learn.

Verity Stob is 'Disgusted of HG Wells': Time, gentlemen, please

Why should this be the end of times from the Open University? And kindly leave the Godless of Gower Street out of this.

All these solecisms pale into insignificance compared to the absence of an Oxford comma from the Brexit 50p piece: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51269012

Use our stuff for free and sell your application? That's Qt. Time to give something back

If I were to acquire a commercial licence I have to get the source; that's the GPL.

If I then sell an application built with that code I have to provide my customers with the source and a copy of the GPL. That's also part of the GPL.

Those customers can then distribute the source because the copy of the GPL they receive says that.

In that case I fail to see how anyone who wants a copy of the supposedly commercial-only LTS version can't get a copy,legally, from a customer of a commercial licensee.

Re: Annoying

And why, in consequence, Qt ended up under GPL.

There seems to be a conflict here. First of all, does Qt as it stands consist entirely of code written by employees and former employees? If not are there external contributions under GPL or LGPL? If so how do they propose to make LTS commercial only? They can't apply a non-GPL licence to those contributions which means that any end user has to be able to receive the source.

Even if the previous code is employee only asking to give back in the form of code contributions is going to present a problem: if those are made under GPL type licences it introduces that problem and if not then I don't think there'll be many of them.

UK: From 5G in Tiree to the Isles of Ebony, carry me on the waves… Sail Huawei, sail Huawei, sail Huawei

Re: The horse has bolted...years ago

"I asked her if she thought BT’s total dependence on a Chinese vendor represented a security threat."

No longer being able to make what might be terms strategic products is a security risk and we've abandoned that capability a long time ago.

If we really want security for UK telecoms we should be able to audit the S/W in all the suppliers' kit. We do that for Huawei (the broad conclusion seems to be more cockup than conspiracy) so what about the rest?

Remember the Clipper chip? NSA's botched backdoor-for-Feds from 1993 still influences today's encryption debates

Govts. seem to want the tech industry to develop this magical system for free.

They have the option of putting their our money where their mouth is and offering the tech industrymoney to develop a workable scheme. Perhaps an initial competition for a contract to develop it. The bulk of the money would only be paid when the result had passed scrutiny by industry experts - who would also scrutinize the competition offerings.

If they can't get a workable system out of it they might finally reflect on what it was they were wanting and why nobody in the industry has attempted to do it on their own initiative.

Re: here we go again

"every MP seem to have forgotten the lessons of Clipper."

They can't forget what they never knew.

Re: "that's impossible, as any halfwit can see"

"And, going by the complete numpties currently in power on both sides of the pond, it probably takes a collection of at least 6 of them combined together to accumulate as much as a tenthwit!"

I see you're an optimist.

Re: It just goes to show

"For years their work was made easier by the large amount of intelligence and evidence they could gather by simply monitoring communications"

It seems that every terrorist incident over the past few years, at least as far as European experience has been concerned, has been committed by someone known to the security services. The problem has been that, through lack of staff time, they have been ignored in favour of other targets. If the services are unable to process what data they have already it seems very unlikely that they'll be helped by having more.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

Re: Good, good.

"If I wanted to hire the brightest band best I still need to convince the home office they fit the criteria."

There is a big change in this regard. The decision is being taken out of the hands of the HO and put into the hands of the UK Research and Innovation Agency.

Your real problem will be whether your brightest and best fall into this scheme. It looks as if it will only benefit an elite.

Re: Good, good.

"They can make another law."

Or use an SI via some innocuous-sounding enabling act. It won't attract the same embarrassing attention.

Re: Good, good.

I think Werdsmith is simply anticipating the outcome of those negotiations or maybe of a few quiet adjustments that have to be made after all the headlines have been published. Adjustments can be made by surreptitious SIs.

Re: Good, good.

That's just one part of the Home Office. Some other part is quite apt to not know that or ignore it. It's now a long time since John Reid declared it not fit for purpose. He might have been the only Home Sec in several decades not to be house-trained because house-training seems to be one thing they are good at.

Maryland: Make malware possession a crime! Yes, yes, researchers get a free pass

Re: Have to love governments.

"Seems they think making something illegal will solve the problem."

Let's try a little thought experiment. Let's make murder legal. Somebody kills your nearest & dearest. What are TPTB going to do about it? And will you be happy with that?

Re: Interesting.

Forget defining "computer" - how do they define "possess"? Catch malware and you not only get your computer scrambled, you now find yourself in possession of something that can get you 10 years in clink.

'Trust no one' is good enough for the X Files but not for software devs: How do you use third-party libs and stay secure, experts mull on stage

"And as long as the license of a certain module allows for distribution, we will hold on to the contents so that even if they get deleted, they will still be available for you to build."

But what if the author wishes to revoke a particular version because of a newly discovered vulnerability?

Like its Windows-noob-stabilisers OS, Zorin's cloudy Grid tool is Linux desktop management for dummies

Re: Why bother with the Windows look ?

Which Windows look would that be? There have been so many.

If you think back to the introduction of new versions of Windows over the years some of the biggest objections from existing Windows users have been to changes in the human interface, hence the existence of Classic Shell. Providing the underpinnings have worked OK (hello, Vista) what lies beneath has received less attention. So an objective of distros such as Zorin has been to provide a familiar interface for the users when one set of underpinnings has been replaced by another.

Why should one replace the underlying OS? I'll discount the fact that personally I prefer the Unix way of doing things. From the point of view of ordinary users one has been that they are running Microsoft abandonware on fairly old equipment that isn't going to be able to follow Microsoft's upgrade path. Another is to replace the OS with something more secure. In my case I've installed Zorin, after recovering her files, for a relative who had been hit be ransomware in an email she thought was from someone she knew. In another it was very old kit - one box made by Time & another, even older Dell.

This is a solution that works. It enables people to continue with office applications sufficiently similar in interface to those they've used before or to use the web or email. And before anyone raises such things like "would you give your old mother a Linux box?" these are very likely people who are older than your "old mother". I'm the youngest of a long line of cousins and I'm well beyond 70.

This is a solution that those of us who have used it know to work and to work for problems that do actually exist.

Brit brainiacs say they've cracked non-volatile RAM that uses 100 times less power

I think it's to smooth the way for the next grant by appealing to BoJo. He likes having his cake and eating it.

"How does that in any way follow?"

I wondered about that but then the account ent off into data-centre power consumption. I think what they were getting at would be that it would enable data centres to be bigger and (for some value) better, enabling the thin client thing. The trouble is that, as others have posted, "better" is for the likes of Google & FaceBook. So no thanks, the better option would be more capability in the device and less need to go online which latter, in any case, seems likely to be a bigger drain on power than DRAM.

You're always a day Huawei: UK to decide whether to ban Chinese firm's kit from 5G networks tomorrow

Re: Loss of Sovereignty

It's OK, we're taking back control.

"Bolt that stable door."

The 5G horse is still in the stable. But can US companies make their sales without either paying Huawei royalties are infringing patents?

AI 'more profound than fire', Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai tells rich folks' talking shop

Haven't seen the ad but anything that gets cyclists off the streets can't be bad however reassuringly expensive it is.

Maybe he needs to work on developing real intelligence.

Re: Neanderthalers warn Fire Brigade plan "Stifles Innovation"

Neandertals? Habilis corpus.

Re: @ITMA

"have an APP on my phone that tells me what is currently making mt electricity. "

Does it count your personal electrons?

Accounting expert told judge Autonomy was wrong not to disclose hardware sales

A witness giving a view on things he hasn't looked at himself but been told to "assume"? Does this mean that one of HP's legal team was appearing as a witness of fact? I must have missed it.

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

They're still your ISP despite your compleints so they don't really care.

German scientists, Black Knights and the birthplace of British rocketry

Re: German scientists, Black Knights and the birthplace of British rocketry

"The Pound had been devalued in 1967"

But it wasn't worth less. Harold Wilson said so and he was PM so it must be right. PMs are always right.

Little grouse on the prairie: IBM's AI facial-recognition training dataset gets it in trouble... in Illinois

The Creative Commons group responded to the reports, saying that "fair use allows all types of content to be used freely".

It's an interesting question. As the BIPA has provision for a data subject to grant permission then a CC licence might well satisfy that for a photo posted by the subject. But I don't see how a CC licence could grant permission for an image of a third party. In fact, can Flikr itself, being a businesss, accept images of 3rd parties?

Windows takes a tumble in the land of the Big Mac and Bacon Double Cheeseburger

Re: Asking McDonalds...

"and how they became massive."

So it's not a result of eating the product?

Take DOS, stir in some Netware, add a bit of Windows and... it's ALIIIIVE!

Re: I miss..

Stability? That might be so compared to Windows but as I Unix DBA I had occasion to shut down a Netware RDBMS engine. It stopped the whole thing. Everything on Netware was a single process? Now that really was over-simplification.

"And to this day HP drivers still cause grief."

Not just PC drivers either. HPLIP out of the box doesn't like Debian or Devuan 9.x Despite a lot of complaints the official line is that you have to build it yourself.

Re: apps ?

And that goes for both sides of the pond. The Beeb has programmes, the Beeb's computers have programs.

Clunk, whirr, buzz, whine. Shared office space can be a riot and sounds like one too

I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu