Posts by Doctor Syntax 42029 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"No idea why Microsoft are the only ones to get bashed on here"
What do you mean by "here". If you mean on this thread it's because the article is about a Microsoft owned business. If you mean on el Reg in general your argument is based on a false premise.
"We did ponder if it could be any more secure, but it was pointed out that if we did that it was easier to take a sledgehammer to the adjoining wall."
For some value of locked no door is locked.
In particular the "Yale" lock* is just a latch that needs a key on the outside but can be opened without from the inside. Given an adjacent glass panel no break-in expert wouldn't be delayed for a moment as my daughter discovered during her student days.
*Yale do, of course, make regular lever locks as well. I have one in my own door.
"You could just pop your obsolete laptop in your compost bin alongside the grass cuttings, egg shells and potato peel."
They'd need to do a better job than the so-called compostable plastic bags. A few years ago there were allegedly compostable bags for collecting kitchen waste. The waste composted, the bags didn't. Similarly the so-called bio-degradeable plastic bags the Co-op sold vegetables in. There seems to be a new generation in that in the last few days National Trust, English Heritage and Gardening Which magazines have all arrived in bags which claim to be compostable. We shall see - although I might pose it as a question to GW.
I discovered, however, that Morrisons' paper bags are bio-degradeable. More than three carrots weight and they fall to pieces.
"It turns out that the US most certainly, definitely and decidedly want Assange in their mucky paws."
It might have escaped your notice but the US changes its government from time to time. Past US governments might have decided not to stroke his ego by making a fuss about him. We now have a US president who will stroke his own ego by making a fuss about anything at all.
Assagne's best option might have been to indicate his preparedness to leave for Sweden of his own accord as soon as Trump was elected and hope that he wouldn't be delayed in the UK long enough for Trump to get into power and get round to his case.
"He should have run to Sweden as soon as he got that."
Via HMP for bail jumping which would have given the US chance to set up extradition proceedings assuming they wanted to at that time. His best plan of action if he wanted to avoid extradition to the US would have been to have stayed in Sweden, even at the risk of spending time in a Swedish prison although where he'd have gone subsequently would have been a matter of some doubt - would the Swedes have deported him?
"Democracy absolutely requires that the losers acknowledge their defeat and that they accept it."
No it does not. Democracy allows the argument to be advanced again and again. Just about every advance to what we now accept as right and proper has been defeated democratically, possibly many times, and then, democratically, accepted.
Losers resorting to violence after losing democratically is, of course, another matter.
"What are the Chinese going to do - sue them in Federal court ?"
What could happen is that Huawei starts to sue every competitor, in every market the competitor sells in, whose competing products use the components they're not allowed to use on the basis of unfair competition, illegal government subsidy or whatever fits in the jurisdiction. There are a lot more courts around the world than Federal courts.
"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?
"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?"
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
