Posts by Doctor Syntax

Trump decides Breitbart chair Bannon knows more about natsec than actual professionals

"not a fuck of a lot would be my answer."

So no assent then?

Re: "all terrorists are Muslims"

"car bombs (IEDs)"

IED = Improvised Explosive Device. The term covered a lot of sins.

"Cornell's Legal Information Institute has the text of US Code § 3021"

Which says Senate advice and consent is required. What will they do? Any guesses?

You know the feeling when you walk into a meeting for a new project. You look around and see maybe a couple of familiar faces amidst the sea of strangers, known obstructionists etc. You give each other a nod because you know you're going to be the ones doing the actual work.

Maybe that will happen here. The pros give each other the nod, convene an actual working meeting and do sensible stuff but keep telling the Trumpets that everything's going just the way that was agreed in the official meeting.

Meanwhile https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928 is heading towards the million mark. (Actually I think it ought to have said he should be held at the airport & deep-vetted before being allowed in, if at all.)

New York to draft in 250 IT contractors because state staff 'lack talent'

Re: In house impossibility

increasing need want to have a maximum of information data at hand,

Texas cops lose evidence going back eight years in ransomware attack

Re: It's 2017 and you can still be pwned by a forged email header

"I've made this suggestion to the Hotmail Support Staff numerous times"

You might as well just send the suggestion to /dev/null.

Re: It's 2017 and you can still be pwned by a forged email header

"People opening mails from paypall.com or paypal.be (im assuming paypal dont own all tlds)"

They own paypall.com and paypal.be is "not available" so I guess they've got a lock on that. In general someone in Paypal's position will be pretty thorough at getting likely faked names under control. If they miss one and assuming verification were de rigeur then anyone wanting to use one would have to register it themselves and leave some sort of trail for fraud investigators. At present it's not a problem for spammers to simply put in paypal.com as I'm sure we've all seen multiple times.

Re: It's 2017 and you can still be pwned by a forged email header

"This is not some special agreement between gmail and paypal but is based entirely on open industry standards"

As things stand this is entirely optional as you make clear: "I have implemented the same anti-spoof protection for some of my own domains".

Until this is universally required the situation remains, you can still be pwned by a forged email header.

Re: It's 2017 and you can still be pwned by a forged email header

"Here is the UK quite a lot of ISPs won't let you send email using their severs that doesn't have your correct address in the 'from' field."

If you don't use their servers that has little effect. It would stop a simple spambot from using their servers which might get them blacklisted and I suspect that's the limit of their worries.

It would only be an effective means of stopping forged headers if they also prevent you from using some other provider's server. Having had my own domain through several changes of ISP the latter case hasn't been a restriction and the fact that so many spams do have lying From: lines makes it quite clear that it's not a restriction in general.

It's 2017 and you can still be pwned by a forged email header

"a cloned email address imitating a department issued email address"

IOW, a From: line can say whatever the sender wants it to say. It's all that the recipient sees because they're not really going to dig down into the rest of the headers and a requirement for verification isn't built into our email protocols.

We don't need to have to train users. We don't need to have email clients pop-up warnings. We don't need to have to run anti-virus on attachments or prevent them being opened. We need to bounce the mail at the recipient's service provider so that the recipient never sees any mail that doesn't come from where it claims to come from.

This may, of course, close off the route whereby some bank or other business has a commercial spammer digital marketing business send you marketing emails pretending to come from themselves. Oh, what a crying shame!

Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users

Re: I call it "Mechanic Effect"

"Machines ARE afraid of the Skilled Fixer. They see that knowledgeable swagger in our walk and decide to straighten up before the tools come out."

But carry a large hammer, just in case they don't get the message.

Re: I am not making this up...

"So I opened the lid, after removing a humungous pile of dust balls that were perched over the DIMMs (can't recall exactly what was in the PC) and those by the CPU, then funnily enough it worked absolutely fine."

OTOH

Back in the days when TVs were not only rare but also magnificent pieces of floor standing furniture my aunt, one of the lucky few to own one, looked in the back of hers. She saw a lot of dust. As she liked things to be kept clean she attached it with the vacuum cleaner. Not a good idea.

Re: No quite wizadry but.../ Percussive Maintenance

"the junior placed the manual on a desk, took the disk unit and dropped it on the manual from a few inches a number of times"

And if this completely banjaxes the disk it's the junior who gets blamed.

Re: "Mechanical Sympathy" and magic

"So when I turn up, just the mere fact of me standing by them makes them take that little bit more care, and suddenly things work."

Another factor can be that simply explaining what they were doing to someone else makes them think about what they were doing & they spot what they were doing wrong. And I think we can all remember ourselves included in "they" at some time or other.

Re: surprised ...

"And besides, who says it is fiction?"

After all, no survivors have ever turned up to say otherwise.

2017 is already fail: Let’s try a Chinese reboot

Re: My boss loved the Outlook calendar.

A long time ago I realised that there are two modes of thinking and any individual almost certainly operates well in only one.

One is suited to complex tasks. It requires deep thinking. Getting into a problem takes time as there's a lot to be assimilated. Getting out can also take time; being yanked out of a deep problem is painful.

The other is suited to simple tasks. The tasks only require simple thought. They are quickly started and dealt with.

Both modes have their uses, one to deal with complex problems and the other to deal with a lot of small tasks because this mode enables one to pass rapidly from one task to the next.

The latter is, of course, the normal mode of thinking of the administrator. The downside of this is that they're unable to achieve the depth of thinking that would enable them to realise that the alternative mode exists, that it's often that used by the people they're administering and that the sorts of reporting schemes they come up with are deeply hostile to it. They'll be able to see the measurement of the time being spent on responding to their recording schemes and accept it as the expected cost of recording but they'll not be able to think deeply enough to see how disruptive it is to the main task nor even that the main task is the important one.

"Until you find out they did #1 and told all their friends so you don't end up hired by ANYONE"

However their friends have suffered similarly, know where you're coming from and hire you as someone who knows what's what.

Re: Can I just mention in passing....

"embraced the tomato en masse"

http://www.latomatinatours.com/

Messy.

Microsoft's Cloud UI brings Windows full circle

"leave the official locked in the car overnight."

You might need to run another test next day. Best use a hire car, let someone else clean it up.

Re: History. They don't respect it.

"C Shell is already a thing."

All hail the % prompt.

Re: For the love of God, get your bearings straight

"Success is overrated."

Is it? I so seldom see it in new UI designs so ai wouldn't know.

"you've designed your roads wrong."

Now tell me something I didn't know!

And now you've got me started on traffic lights. A few weeks ago we had road works on a side road almost adjacent to a junction. They needed to put TTLs because for the side-road traffic but because the obstruction was so close to the junction they had to put them on the main road itself, a light either side of the junction. They positioned the generators & what not on the main road opposite the junction occupying the whole of that lane. No real problem, just a normal three-way light set up - except it wasn't. They installed 2-way lights, the side road being one way and the lights on both directions on the main road being the other. So anyone driving along the main road, expecting three-way lights, found themselves, on a green light, driving straight into oncoming traffic, also on a green light, on the same side of the road. Fun!

"And rather than have them in the car, can we strap them to the front, please?"

No, you can't shout at them so easily.

"Or if this is a mishearing – quite plausible – a Compostable Shell."

Combustible? Be careful of those Lion batteries.

"And the UI designer has to sit in the room and answer all their questions, help whenever they ask, repeat how it all works all over again, and generally tolerate them trying to do the same things that everyone else has to do."

No. There's a far more evil effective version. The only questions the UI designer are allowed to answer are those of the "Where does it tell me how to...?" variety. It requires the presence of an invigilator. The nominal reason for the invigilator is to keep this Q/A on the specified lines. The real reason is to prevent violence.

A similar version should be used with town planning officials who are responsible for navigational road signs. The test driver is allowed to pose the questions as loudly and offensively as seems appropriate and to receive answers in real time. The invigilator may have the additional task of preventing the designer jumping/being pushed out of the car.

Devonians try to drive Dartmoor whisky plan onto rocks

Re: Devonians

"Defnas means men of Domnonia"

Thanks, Tom. Always something to learn on el Reg..

Re: Whisky Galore

"I'm sure the radon adds a special something."

I''d hope it would be matured longer than that.

Re: Whisky vs Whiskey

"Whiskey has an E as it comes from Eire."

Bushmills comes from N Ireland.

Re: Slàinte mhath

Tobermory, where the CBBC show "Ballamory" was filmed, if anyone who was forced to watch enjoyed watching it was interested.

I'm not sure about interested but it would have been an essential adjunct.

Beeb report with pictures of the plans here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-38755219

Looking at pictures of Scottish distilleries on Shutterstock most seem to be rendered white which would match Princetown buildings and the tower on the plans is said to be purely cosmetic. There seems to be no good reason not to have produced a design which would have respected local styles and wouldn't have been out of keeping with Scottish distilleries in either the lack of tower or the colour of render.

"Scottish architecture is suddenly so different from English? What silliness."

Not silliness at all. British - or let's say insular to include Irish - regional architectures are distinctive. Local history and materials affect it. It would be madness, for instance, to attempt Cotswold or Pennine coursed masonry with Antrim basalt.

Tesla sues ex-manager 'for stealing 100GBs of Autopilot secrets'

So hard to get good staff these days. Especially at senior management levels.

Wow, look out, hackers: Trump to order 60-day cybersecurity probe

And what happens if the review comes back recommending strong encryption?

But I like his idea of a switch. The US could disappear from the net so we could be sure of data sovereignty and so forth.

Apple eats itself as iPhone fatigue spreads

Re: I got my first ever iPhone in 2016

"These new ridiculously huge phones are a right pain in the arse"

I think he was referring to the back door.

National Audit Office: UK's military is buying more than it can afford

"the price of an F-35A has dropped to around $100m (down from initial flyaway costs of $279m in 2007)"

Maybe it's because the planes won't be able to fly away?

Mine's the one with the catapult elastic in the pocket.

"intoned Sir Amyas Morse"

Are you sure? Maybe he just wrote it.

Windows code-signing tweaks sure to irritate software developers

Re: H/W vs S/W vs cloud

"Not intrinsically: a cloud service can be built to be much more secure than most people can build their own."

That may be true from a vendor's point of view. From the user's point of view the vendor has to be added to the risks to be considered. However trustworthy the vendor might be in the first place ownership, management and staffing can change and, depending on data sovereignty, the cloud could be suborned by TPTB along with a gag order.

It's somebody else's computer. You don't know what's happening there.

Re: and what will that hardware contain ?

"For PUBLIC consumption."

And these gadgets are being offered for public consumption - or at least that portion of the public that develops S/W for Windows.

Re: and what will that hardware contain ?

"It's supposed to be a FIPS-level HSM"

Wasn't it FIPS that was recommending an NSA-sponsored broken by design encryption algorithm?

H0LiCOW! Hubble's constant update paves way for 'new physics'

"Interesting that a figure that has a margin of error in absolute terms 300% that of the original figure (1.33% margin of error vs 3.76%) is regarded as more accurate."

You're confusing accuracy with precision.

I have a tape measure graduated in cms & mms. I can use it to measure with a precision of 1mm. Unfortunately it's stretched so I can only measure with an accuracy of 10%.

Trump signs 'no privacy for non-Americans' order – what does that mean for rest of us?

Privacy Shield is based the assumption that the US govt will abide by on Parts of several Federal Laws.

FTFY

Re: Time to look for places other than US...

"Trump is acting as if he wishes to isolate the USA from the rest of the world."

I'm glad to see him cracking on with it so much faster than us. With any luck he'll make the US a splendid example of what can go wrong to show the Brexiters whilst we still have time.

Re: Yet ANOTHER Trump story?

And, whilst I'm on, why have I never seen any reference to the fact that, here in the UK, "trump" is a children's euphemism for "fart"?

Maybe you weren't paying attention.

@Mooseman

Downvoted for repeating the same old joke too many commentards have already posted.

Re: Trump has become more deranged

"I had the added tension of living on an RAF base that would have been a first wave target for several years of this period."

Could have been worse: High Wycombe sandwiched between the RAF & US command posts.

Re: Trump has become more deranged

"We should all prepare for a third world war soon."

It's very unlikely. It would damage too many of his properties around the world and there's no profit in it.

Americans fear their data isn't safe, yet do little to defend it

Re: House without locks

"Let's blame Microsoft which failed to provide a human-engineered personal security solution into their product."

If they had would you have actually used it or gone for an independent solution? Telemetry anyone?

Oracle sues its own star sales rep after she wins back $200k in pay fight

Re: Petty criminals

"In my mind, that is what they are, petty criminals"

$200k is petty?

Chinese bloke cycles 500km to get home... in the wrong direction

"Silly question" yes "but don't they have road signs in China?"

If you can't read a map you don't know what signs you should expect to see.

"I mean 500km and you would expect to see a familiar sight or city."

China's big. According to the article even if he were going in the right direction he'd still have been 1500km from home so what he'd see might not be familiar.

Re: How Many Trolls ???

"generally the chances of getting correct directions are worse than 50/50."

And in any case, you shouldn't have started from here.