Posts by Doctor Syntax

As Alexa's secret human army is revealed, we ask: Who else has been listening in on you?

It would almost be worth buying one to play it Stanley Unwin recordings. Almost.

Client-attorney privilege? Not when you're accused of leaking Vault 7 CIA code

"The government responded ... saying that it had no way to speed up the process because the CIA officer in charge of reviewing the material is independent from its prosecutorial team."

I strongly suspect that if the court ordered that if the review wasn't completed in, say, 6 hours the material would be handed over anyway they'd suddenly find it possible to review it in 6 hours.

What, BTW, happens if the reviewer decides the material is classified?

Welcome your new ancestor to the Homo family tree; boffins have discovered a new tiny species of human

Re: Which is it?

"Or perhaps the classification of these bones is incorrect."

Having watched studies of human evolution develop over a number of years it seems very likely that proposed evolutionary trees will get revised. Or refined according to choice of words.

Ancestor?

Not very probable. Distant and long-lost cousin.

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Re: Good

"I personally hope they don't extradite him if he still holds UK citizenship"

Did he ever?

Re: Is this the best that the USA can come up with ?

The biological features of lettuce and chicken are very different. There are plenty of internal places for bacteria to hide in a chicken after it's been externally washed. If it needs to be washed externally it's a good indicator that the interior might have problems.

Not biased against you and not going anywhere, judge tells Post Office in Horizon IT system case

Re: Tough

"Having read the whole thing"

Did you notice the bit where it appears to have been a board-level decision to appeal? It explains a lot.

I'd have liked a fly-on-the-wall report on the meeting with their solicitors.

Re: Evidence?

"So has the software in use at the time, as verified by some decent code versioning system, been subject to a proper audit and found to be trustworthy or not?"

There are expert witnesses involved but there are also mentions of the original version, called Legacy Horizon no longer existing. I'm not sure exactly what this covers. There's a comment about relying on memory and original design documents. Given that the reliability seems contentions from the start you'd expect that original code should have been preserved for reference.

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

"Doctor Syntax, be honourable and admit that you got it completely wrong!"

In case you hadn't noticed, when he skipped bail the bail was from a warrant for extradition to Sweden. There was never any mention of a US extradition from the UK. There never any mention of a US warrant for extradition when he was in Sweden.

The report cited near the top of the comments was dated Nov last year and mentions prosecutors being told "over the summer" to go ahead. That's a long, long time after he holed himself up.

It's been complained about many times that the US/UK extradition treaty is extremely one-sided and that accordingly he stood much less chance of being extradited from Sweden. If he really was concerned about extradition to the US he was hardly likely to make the UK his first stop on leaving Sweden.

Oops!

Re: @JohnG

"In fact one of the ironies is that some of his fans argued that his time in the Embassy should count as jail time."

Indeed. When he was in the embassy he was being illegally detained there. Now he's out he's being illegally not detained there. Or something like that.

"I'm more interested in the Cat"

It wasn't there. It escaped last year.

Re: @Jellied Eel Kinda Sorta

"I'm thinking possession is kinda the law, but something of a political hot potato as well. And isn't he an Ecuadorian citizen now?"

I suppose it's up to the Home Office to decide how to handle the queue. I wonder how many people will get copied in on their emails. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47855428 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47888214

"they have to consider the risk you pose to other people"

And also the possibility that the complainant might have been threatened into withdrawing the complaint.

Re: final straw?

You know what they say about sarcasm on the Net....

Are you really trying to persuade us that he's worth $4.2m? After all, it's nearly as much as his own valuation of himself (probably).

"So, he was right that they were after him all along then?"

Not necessarily. They want him now. It's a long time ago since he skipped bail and a lot of other things have happened since then including a change in US government.

"He's not been convicted in a court of law...nor for that matter tried."

It's running away from being tried that's the immediate issue.

Re: International Law

The phrase "International Law" is routinely used to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean.

Until it gets to an actual court of law in which case the speaker needs to specify exactly what law they mean.

Re: You mean

"Those actors paid by the US gov"

Citation needed.

Re: final straw?

Misdirected whoosh? I think it was BeBopWeBop who was being sarcastic. But you know what they say about sarcasm on the Net...

Re: final straw?

I suggest you all do some more reading, unless you are offical typists just doing your job, in which case "well done men, now he can go and get Trumped!"

And in what way does any of this change my oft-expressed opinion (including an earlier comment below) that by acting thoughtlessly he's put himself into a corner he can't get out of? He ran from Sweden. He jumped bail. He had cases to answer in both Sweden and the US neither of which were political and there was no indication at that point of any proceedings planned in the US. My view was that the then current US government would be smart enough to punish him by refusing to stroke his ego by pursuing him. An evolution of that position was that the current bull-in-a-china-shop administration would lack such finesse and that he'd missed his opportunity long ago. I find the report which you link verifies that view.

Good try at shilling, A/C, but you really need more cogent arguments if you come to this forum.

Re: Does he yet have a ticket to the USA ?

"This is what he was afraid of: the USA, somehow or another, finding a way of getting him over the pond."

In that case he shouldn't have done a runner when he was (a) out of reach of the US in Sweden and (b) when the US had a government with enough wit to realise that treating him as not worth attention was the biggest punishment they could impose.

Re: Lesson learned

And keep the place clean and tidy.

You're forgetting that what St Julian says is law.

Apple disables iPad for 48 years after toddler runs amok

Re: But we all have something to learn from this..

"I learned Windows (was XP + 98 dual-boot then) when I was four years old."

The grown-up name for XP back then was "Windows for Teletubbies" in the UK and Fisher-Price was, I believe, the US epithet. So entirely appropriate.

Re: Three year olds can't read

I'm not quite sure of the age but our son picked up reading PDQ from the Ladybird books. Our daughter had much more of a problem and turned out to be somewhat dyslexic. However I think her misspelling of sulphur on a poster presentation was more due to her post-doc supervisor than dyslexia.

Uncle Sam wants to tackle bias in algorithms by ordering tech corps to explain how their machines really work

Stand by for responses along the lines of "If I could understand your question you wouldn't understand my answer".

Re: The best way to stop this nonsense...

Not at all. All that has to be done is evaluate balance of campaign donations from various sides.

Windows Subsystem for Linux distro gets a preening, updated version waddles into Microsoft's app store

"the install could take several hours before you realise just how unwell they’ve gone."

Windows users should feel right at home with it, then. Linux users not so much.

RIP: Microsoft finally pulls plug on last XP survivor... POSReady 2009

Re: ReactOS (as the new XP)

If you wanted to support specific application S/W and interface to some specific item of H/W then taking an open source O/S and doing whatever might be necessary to ensure compatibility might be a good line to take.

Are brown dwarfs stars or planets? Boffins find evidence for proto-suns in a solar system

Re: Surrounded

Ambushed?

Trapped?

Re: Bloody UNIX

....and the plural of knife is knifes?

King's College London internal memo cops to account 'compromise' as uni resets passwords

"use the KCL standard operating environment and not some comedy homebrew setup"

After all, the KCL standard operating environment worked so much better at safeguarding data than comedy homebrew setups such as users backing up their data onto their own media.

Who had 'one week in' for a Making Tax Digital c0ckup? Well done, you win... absolutely nothing

HMRC sent us a statement:

"As we did during the pilot, HMRC is continuing to work closely with developers to ensure our service is smooth and that teething problems get resolved quickly."

Alternative version:

HMRC did not send a meaningful statement. Instead they tried to fob us off with some anodyne boiler-plate which did not properly address the issues raised and with which we will not insult our readers.

Go on. Bite the hand which feeds the pap.

Turn me up some: Smart speaker outfit Sonos blasted in complaint to UK privacy watchdog

"We take the privacy of our customers extremely seriously and our privacy policy is aligned with the latest legislation."

Where have I heard that "aligned with the latest legislation before". Oh, yes, Paypal justifying, as they think, sending your login ID to every merchant you buy from. A carefully crafted phrase to mean nothing but look, as they think, persuasive. Neither of their thoughts are convincing and it doesn't read any better coming from Sonos.

Yahoo! tries! again! with! 3 billion! email! account! theft! payout!

Nice one for the credit monitoring agency. They not only get a nice wodge of cash, they also get to slurp 196m more people's data.

Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence

"HP were not even sure what the ball looked like."

Or even where it was.

Re: All quite clear

"Buying an expensive used car?"

The tyres were OK when I kicked them.

Re: Auditors?

"By admitting they were misled, aren't KPMG just admitting that they're incompetent?"

I think the word is "alleging". That puts the blame elsewhere. I expect the Autonomy PoV will be along the lines of they weren't misled at all, they didn't look. Or maybe the sale went through without the final report which would have had it in. HP seem to have let everyone off the hook by not waiting for that.

"they have the internal experience to know how this stuff works."

Starting with their CFO. Given the way her opinion was treated would anyone else have stepped up to get a dose of the same?

It seems like the old story - give the benefit of your wisdom on a decision that's been made and you're being negative.

Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly

"I once watched the staff at Santa Pod Raceway ...using a jet engine"

A clear case of using whatever you happen to have at hand.

You were warned and you didn't do enough: UK preps Big Internet content laws

First sentence of the pargraph 1:

"The government wants the UK to be the safest place in the world to go online, and the best place to start and grow a digital business."

That's the kiss of death. "The government wants the UK to be the best..." is the ritual prelude to just about every failed "initiative" that a govt. has come out with as long as I can remember.

Re: Seems a bit mixed

"We do have legislation."

That's civil law. What's being proposed is criminal law which a whole different thing.

"we'd be very surprised if the idea of finding individuals executives personally liable make it through the legislative process"

I wouldn't. After all it's in the current DPA and GDPR on which the DPA based. In fact I could quite easily see chunks of the DPA being cut and pasted into this, or maybe the DPA being a framework onto which the domain-specific bits of this and any future legislation get pasted.

Re: Can't think of a catchy title

"This time with the added goodness of additional layers of perfect forward secrecy and other assorted crypto."

But still without advertising.

Re: Soft censorship laws - realigning with China

Freedom is not "I can say and do whatever I want whenever I want".

Well, actually it is, thst is totally the definition of freedom.

OK. You want to remain alive. The bloke over their with the gun wants to kill you.

How do you resolve that one on your rules?

UK watchdog reveals naughty list of which companies haven't paid data protection fees

Re: Government by the Freemium model

OTOH if they're in the PII handling business they should recognise a letter from the ICO when they see it. If they don't then a fine for non-registration might be the least of their worries. It's nice of them to flag themselves up for closer attention from the ICO.

HMRC accused of not understanding its own IR35 tax reforms ahead of private sector rollout

Re: PSC my ass...

Agreed. A far better term would be Small [insert service provided such as IT] Outsourcing Business/Company. That's what freelancers run.

So they have. Thanks.