Posts by Doctor Syntax

No Huawei out: Prez Trump's game of chicken with China has serious consequences

Re: Excellent article El Reg

Unfortunately the uncritical mention of the telent "backdoor" could earn it thumbs down. I suppose in mitigation t was attributed to Bloomberg so maybe it was just an invitation to point and laugh.

The way things are going it will soon become a distinct disadvantage to being a US tech business.

Re: Disgusting

"Since that kind of lawful intercept is going to be built into ANY infrastructure equipment at that level,"

Somewhere in the repository of this great web-site (I CBA searching for it) is a report of the hardware itself being intercepted in transit to a target and a back-door being sneaked into it. Is that what you consider lawful?

Re: Airbus & China

"His grasp of history relating to trade wars can probably be measured on a pinhead."

Just trade wars?

Programmers' Question Time: Tiptoe through the tuples

Nice blast from the past...

..Clack's Farm, even if it was a different programme.

Apple arms web browser privacy torpedo, points it directly at Google's advertising model

Re: So what is to stop the user ...

My own approach now, for many sites, is to fire up a separate browser which has its history cleared on close-down. Do what's needed on that site and then close down.

"The protocol is great, but it may be too big of a change for most ad tech to understand and then deploy,"

I think they'll understand it only too well. It will let the advertisers see just how effective - or otherwise - all the advertising services have been.

"You've charged us How Much to get that one sale?"

We listened to more than 3 hours of US Congress testimony on facial recognition so you didn't have to go through it

"A new definition of how well a company is doing needs to be implemented that takes into account the harm the company does and subtract that from its profits for shareholder value."

Even under old-fashioned definition successful suits from those false positives or fines for breaking privacy laws can subtract from those profits. And on the subject of the latter, if any EU citizens are included in the training data I'd expect that would introduce GDPR charges.

Michael Punke ... said at the time it has “not received a single report of misuse by law enforcement.” It’s difficult to verify that claim, however, considering that the police haven’t been transparent about how it’s used.

More to the point, is there any definition of what legitimate use and, by implication, and misuse would be? Without that it would be impossible to make such a report.

This is a sett-up! Mum catches badger feasting on contents of freezer

Re: Badgers are awesome.

"the badger's mates were fighting over who would have dinner

Sometimes there's nothing as cruel as nature."

A long time ago I worked for a biological supplier. One of the products was dead (and pickled n formalin) rats fro school practicals. Sometimes rats escaped so we had a rat problem. The head of microscopy (prepared microscope slides were another product) decided to do a bit of culling after hours & brought in an air rifle. After shooting one of the rats he realised rat blood would have trypanosomes - good for a few slides - and went off to get a syringe. When he came back the rest of the rats had dragged it off to eat.

Re: Catflaps - let's drag this back to IT...

In which case she can then block up the flap.

Twist my Arm why don't you: Brit CPU behemoth latest biz to cease work with Huawei – report

Re: US components

"now part of Softbank, which is Japanese"

Possibly it's Softbank which is being leaned on.

Re: Definitely a surprise

"where the whole Chinese population will decide that the Americans are ruthless and untrustworthy."

If they're only deciding that now they've been slow off the mark.

I wonder what the legality of all this is in terms if international law. The repercussions of this could be enriching lawyers for years.

Now Chinese-made drones rubbing US govt up the Huawei: 'Strong concerns' DJI kit threat to national security

"The United States government has strong concerns about any technology product that takes American data into the territory of an authoritarian state that permits its intelligence services to have unfettered access to that data or otherwise abuses that access,"

The rest of us have strong concerns about any technology that takes our data into the territory of the United States government that permits its intelligence services to have unfettered access to that data or otherwise abuses that access.

UK's planned Espionage Act will crack down on Snowden-style Brit whistleblowers, suspected backdoored gear (cough, Huawei)

Re: 1984 !

"52% Leave, 48% Remain. What exactly is unclear in that?"

Nothing. It clearly means that the country was deeply divided. That's a terrible start for a major change like that so what did May do? She assumed the country was united and has persisted in insulting half of them by keeping telling them that. Is it any wonder she's in a mess?

Re: 1984 !

There were various options available in the wake of a slight majority in an advisory vote. A sensible one as for any major undertaking, would have been to undertake a feasibility study and/or an impact assessment. An impact assessment might have looked (amongst other things) at what would be the likely impact on, say, the order book of Scunthorpe steel plant and the knock on effect on the viability of the plant and the direct and indirect consequences for employment. At that point people could have been asked to vote in a binding referendum once they knew whether or not their vote might cost them their job.

So what happened? Refusing to acknowledge that the country was deeply divided on the matter it was eyes closed and charge. Invoke Article 50 without any significant planning at all. Now we're in a hole but never mind, keep digging.

Re: 1984 !

There was supposed to have been "boilerplate" documents in place that only required the name of the country wishing to leave and the date of departure

Really? Could you point to something that says that, other than Leave bumph.

Re: An interesting test...

Don't forget that, even though only 52% of the country voted Leave, our elected "representatives" seem to be able to ignore inconvenient votes claim it's the whole country when it suits them

They also keep telling us that they "promised" Brexit when about half of us don't consider it a promise but a threat.

Actually they didn't manage to get at John Reid, he who described them as "not fit for purpose".

Re: 1984 !

Can you make a reasoned argument (not an unpunctuated stream of consciousness) to explain why an advisory referendum should be considered a mandate.

The present mess is a first rate example of why a non-binding referendum - or any referendum that doesn't produce a supermajority - should be avoided as a means of making constitutional change.

That's the Home Office for you. People can go into it as quite reasonable human beings, or at least, quite reasonable facsimiles of such, and emerge as Home Secretaries. They remain Home Secs even when they go elsewhere like, say, No. 10.

Re: if we're doing literally anything

"What a pathetic cry for help from the home sec"

Nothing to do with cries for help. He's just had the standard brainwashing that the Home Office gives new Home Secs. This is what the Home Office has wanted for a long time. The restraining influence for the last few decades has been the oversight of European courts. It looks as if we're en route to getting rid of that.

Obviously looking forward to not having European courts to stand over him. Brexit gets rid of the ECJ (at least, they hope so) and ECHR will follow. This is long term HO police coming to fruition.

Wanted: Big iron geeks to help restore IBM 360 mainframe rescued from defunct German factory by other big iron geeks

Re: A couple of potential problems

"Where are they going to find spares for those?"

When they got into the building they discovered they'd got a whole second 360 so they should be OK for spares although, of course, sods law....

"But why would you want to?"

I don't think the US had got round to putting back doors into 360s - apart from the ones for the engineers to get at the bits.

Re: Plug for the National Museum of Computing

"it's within walking distance of Bletchley railway station, which is about 45 mins from Euston."

Euston's further from here than Bletchley.

Re: correction

"Stan Kelly-Bootle"

I often wondered whether "Bootle" was really part of his name or just an end-of-Fylde marker.

For the kids: an amazing bloke, folk singer, 1st computing PhD from Cambridge, wrote The Liverpool Lullaby (ask your grandparents) and, in addition to the Devil's DP Dictionary, wrote a regular hilarious column in Unix Review.

Re: Just bunged them a tenner

That's a big if you've got there.

360/20 - even older than the 1907 I started on.

"If anybody has a way to safely and slowly optically read 80 column IBM punched cards that would be extremely helpful."

Maybe they should go back to eBay and see if anyone has a card duplicator and a supply of cards. They'd need to supervise it carefully - I once came across a friend leaning nonchalantly against the duplicator not noticing a partial jam had lead to the output hopper converting all his copy into origami.

"I can't imagine what my wife would say if I dropped 3 grand on a mainframe."

I'd need to clear out the garage to put it in and SWMBO might decide that was good value for money.

And a very good reason to do so.

Backup your files with CrashPlan! Except this file type. No, not that one either. Try again...

Re: Whatever happened to three copies ?

While you have a point you need all your copies to be as reliable as possible. Even if you have two copies elsewhere this should ring alarm bells.

Do Not Track is back in the US Senate. And this time it means business. As in, fining businesses that stalk you online

"By preventing the use of interest-based ads, this bill will result in more ads, more paywalls, and less content,"

Actually the best way to interest-base an ad would be to place it on a web page whose content is directly related to the product being advertised.

From the advertising industry's PoV this has the massive disadvantage of lacking lucrative, allegedly value-adding services which they can sell. The fact that it might provide the client with a better result is irrelevant.

Where there's a will, there's Huawei: US govt already eases trade ban with 90-day reprieve

Back in the day we used to have second sourcing. It would be difficult to sell a component unless it could be obtained elsewhere in case the primary supplier were to be unable to supply (e.g. being hit with an earthquake or finding itself in a rogue state). That seems to have fallen by the wayside but this sort of thing could bring it back into play. In a few years time - or maybe even less - it might be impossible for a US manufacturer to sell components abroad without sharing sales with a second source outside of US jurisdiction.

Re: You know who else isn't acting in Americas best interest?

It looks very much as if he's doing a good job of disrupting the US and, as far as he can, the Chinese economies. I'd say from Putin's PoV it's a good ROI.

Let adware be treated as malware, Canuck boffins declare after breaking open Wajam ad injector

Re: Thank you for advertising your opinion.

And if I were to have your ad thrust, unwanted, into my face then I'd avoid buying whatever it was that you're flogging. You'd have been ripped off by the advertising industry. The advertising industry isn't interested in selling your stuff to me. Not in the least. All they're interested in is selling advertising to you. So anything that tries to force advertising onto people who don't want it,j just so they can sell more advertising are actually committing fraud against their clients; they're taking money for harming those clients' interests.

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Re: Stock Control System

That is really evil I like it.

Re: I'm boring

Elm has a much classier grain.

Re: I'm boring

"a photo of my real wood physical desktop, after clearing and cleaning it."

That would have been too drastic for me.

Freed whistleblower Chelsea Manning back in jail for refusing to testify before secret grand jury

Re: Almost humorous reading the posts

"The uk got rid of it, and just replaced it with the prosecutor deciding on their own."

We have committal proceedings before a magistrate. That precedes any full scale trial. How do I know? I've given evidence in such hearings. They serve the same purpose as the OP described for the Grand Jury but without the secrecy and one-sidedness and with a magistrate making the decision.

Re: Almost humorous reading the posts

"A grand jury isn't just used to determine if a trial should be held, it's also used to determine if a trial SHOULD NOT be held.

Many times, a grand jury investigation shows the innocence of those connected with the case."

Wouldn't a non-secret hearing with the defendant able to challenge evidence be a better way to establish innocence? On this side of the pond we decided that and abandoned the institution. Instead the prosecution have to make up their minds as to whether they have a case.

Committal proceedings are held in open court with the accused able to challenge the prosecutions evidence. It serves the same end as that for which you praise the Grand Jury but is open and fair. It's more likely to achieve the end of deciding whether there shouldn't be a full trial than a secret one-sided, outmoded kangaroo court. Some of your non-citizens are quite familiar with the alternative; some of us have even taken part in that process. Some of us think that it's a more civilized option.

"That's what people do, even in the full face of the cameras, in such things."

You've unwittingly pointed to the crux of the matter. The whole point is that this isn't "in the full face of the cameras", it's a secret hearing process that other parts of the civilised world realised some time ago shouldn't be used. Read the article and you'll find that that's exactly what she's objecting to.

Testifying in open court is something else entirely. The defendant is aware of the process and can challenge the evidence. The Grand Jury is a secretive, one-sided process with all the coercive powers of a court and none of the safeguards.

Re: What happened to the 'right to silence'?

"Anyway, if courts could not issue subpoenas, summons, or the like, those able to intimidate witnesses the most would win."

The Grand Jury isn't really a court. It's part of the investigative process. If the prosecutors are thinking about prosecuting someone they should make up their own minds instead of roping in some citizens (how are they chosen, BTW?) to decide in secret. If they were to decide they have a case let them put it on, issue a subpoena and let her refuse or testify in open court as she sees fit.

Giga-hurts radio: Terrorists build Wi-Fi bombs to dodge cops' cellphone jammers

Re: WiFi? Timers!

It depends on what's required from the mechanism. A timer is good enough for allowing the bomber to get out of range. It may be good enough for attacking some specific event of significant duration such as a meeting. It wouldn't be good enough for targeting something less predictable such as someone passing a particular point; for that some sort of command system would be needed and this find suggests that that was the objective.

Re: Re:have a machine with a 4G module just poll a random Reddit page

" they do not go for an engineering degree and then take that knowledge and build a bomb from scratch."

Back in the '70s the IRA had developed stuff a bit beyond the bought-in 27MHz model control receivers and actuators. Don't overlook that someone who's taken an engineering degree can become a terrorist, or even the fact that someone without an engineering degree can learn a bit about electronics, especially with the internet as a source of information.

Salesforce? Salesfarce: Cloud giant in multi-hour meltdown after database blunder grants users access to all data

Re: Two problems....

And especially when it's some other businesses' transactions at risk, not your employer's. The essential requirement for a DBA is paranoia and it's hard to feel that they're out to get you when you know it's somebody else entirely that's at risk.

Get out of Huawei, it's an avalanche of news from everyone's favourite Chinese bogeyman

"Placing Huawei on the US's entity list also bans it from acquiring American companies without politicians' approval"

Does this mean that they have to acquire a few politicians first?

Oracle AI's Eurovision horror show: How bad can it be? Yep. Badder

"the final is tomorrow (Saturday) night."

Final? If only.

Office 365 user security practices are woeful, yet it's still 'Microsoft's fault' when an org is breached

"Not much use if OneDrive is seamlessly enabled on the lost laptop though"

Convenience wins out over security every time.

Microsoft sends partners hundreds of unwanted OPI: Other People's Invoices

This Agile/DevOps stuff is so great. No need to test. Just shove it out, fix any balls-ups the users find and shove it out again. None of that inconvenient testing.