Posts by Doctor Syntax

Decoding the Chinese Super Micro super spy-chip super-scandal: What do we know – and who is telling the truth?

So many birds with one off the record briefing stone. Draw attention from whatever exploits you're making with Intel ME. Prepare the way for "Nice little motherboard business you've got there. Pity if something happened to due to manufacturing off-shore/not co-operating with us. Remember the Super Micro incident".

Re: Should we be worried ?

"and fit itself into even the smallest box you have left lying around."

But you won't know if it's still alive until you open the box.

Former General Electric boss explains how he got the internet wrong

"To be a smart buyer of technology, he said, you have good practitioners. And that requires talent."

Tell that to all those buying outsourcing, especially HMG.

It's good to know somebody gets it at last.

Sendgrid blurts out OWN customers' email addresses with no help from hackers

"The Reg asked Sendgrid yesterday why it hadn't focused on making sure nobody could access the pages without proper credentials, instead of just asking crawlers to please not show the information in their search results. We'll update when it responds."

Don't hold your breath. They probably don't understand the question. They're in marketing.

Re: 3rd-Party Cloud Email Solutions

"It really helps too when you write to a firm to opt-out, but get this as a reply 'Rejected high-probability of spam'."

If you're in the EU just grass them up to your local data protection regulator.

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

Re: Inconvenient Truths

"The UK on its own is no longer a world super power, and the sooner we come to terms with this, the better the future will be"

Joining the EU was the result of coming to terms with this.

Re: RE: Mooseman

"The EU is in multiple self inflicted crises, the chaos is already there. Everything is going to be the end of the EU and Eurozone according to its presidents and leaders of member countries."

Project Fear.

Re: RE: Mooseman

"I always wince when I hear we have a poor hand to play."

So do I for the simple reason we have no hand. On the most minuscule of majorities on an advisory referendum HMG has decided unconditionally that we leave. No feasibility study. No planning (you may remember that a citizen had to go to court* to even get them to realise that they needed Parliamentary consent). That, as far as I can see, amounts not no hand.

*Sadly mistimed. If she'd held her hand until now it could have thrown a real spanner in the works to discover that the invocation of Article 50 didn't meet the constitutional requirement.

Re: RE: Mooseman

"And May is a poor negotiator letting them get away with it."

Did you not understand what Mooseman wrote? That it was the UK - us - who insisted that non-EU countries should not have access to the encrypted data. Or do you not understand that Brexit means that the UK becomes a nonEU country?

Please enlighten us as to how you would negotiate us out of that one?

California cracks down on Internet of Crap passwords with new law to stop the botnets

Re: What a stupid bill

"All they need to say is that you need to be forced to reset the password from the default in order to use the device."

Great idea. That's why the bill makes exactly that provision.

Re: Not in anyone's interest

"security = PITA, so unless you can come up with something worse than a PITA"

Make insecurity a bigger PITA.

Re: Not in anyone's interest

"the owner doesn't care as the bulbs continue to work"

The owner will care if the law obliges the ISP to cut them off from the net. Next time they'll buy better light bulbs. Even if, by that time, the original vendor is making better light bulbs they'll find they have lost reputation.

Re: No need for a unique password

"companies get complaints and lose customers"

If the playing field is level the only place for a customer to go is someone selling something that behaves the same way. See my comment about some not learning except by experience.

Re: No need for a unique password

"Then curse and snarl six months later when he forgot it and needs to to force a reset on his IoT thingy."

Experience is a dear teacher but there are those who will learn at no other.

Re: But will they give out the "unique" password?

"You have a brick."

Next time buy something that handles such stuff better.

Re: The problem...

"They will need someone to program a password into each device"

There is an option to force the user to secure the device with its own password before it will become operational.

"I don't need Big Brother telling me what I need to do to improve the security of my devices."

Frankly I don't give a toss whether you take any steps to secure your devices at all. What I do care about is you exposing an insecure device on the network where it can be weaponised to attack me or anyone else. If it takes legislation to force you to do that, then so be it.

Re: Any device manufactured in California..

"the person who manufactures, or contracts with another person to manufacture on the person’s behalf"

It still doesn't apply to devices on sale from non-Californian manufacturers even where manufacturer is defined as above. Selling or offering for sale would be a better target. The killer blow would be forbidding the connection of an insecure device to the internet with liability on both the owner and the ISP. If a customer is found with an insecure device facing the net the ISP would be obligated to disconnect them until the device is removed. That kills the market for such devices.

New Zealand border cops warn travelers that without handing over electronic passwords 'You shall not pass!'

Re: Do Not Underestimate The Power Of Sheep and Kiwi Fruit

"NZ doesn't have a number of crop pests."

What it does have is a particularly nasty flatworm that eats earthworms and it's exported them here. That's not only GB but also N Ireland - I don't know if they've got south yet but I had the bastards in my garden in Lisburn. It's a great pity they didn't pay as much attention to not letting stuff out as they do to not letting stuff in.

Re: Empty device + TeamViewer

"install and use TeamViewer"

That helpful man from "Microsoft support" will even do that for you.

ISTM that's what's needed here is something akin to a Chromebook in that it contains no data but where, in place of a conventional login, you VPN to a server of your choice which could be a Google account as per Chromebook but could equally well be a Nextcloud server or anything else. No default, previous login etc would be kept on the device. The user could then present an innocuous server account for customs and log into a confidential server for work.

Re: Australia has more draconian laws

"I remember thinking that in Belfast in 1991"

I assume that that was in reply to "the terrorists have won". A lot of us thought that a good deal earlier. Given that the largest parties in Stormont are essentially the political wings of the main terrorist movements you could be right.

Re: Have fun!

"What do you expect they'll find?"

More to the point, what do you expect you'll find on it when you get it back? In your case, you appear to expect nothing extra. That view isn't shared by others here.

Using Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations? Using Skype? Not for long!

"If you change how something works, then what you've done is not refactoring."

Unless you refactor it so it's easier to break.

UK.gov asks biz for ideas on how to 'overcome' data privacy concerns in NHS

Why does it remind me of this:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45707226 ?

UK should set its own tax on tech giants if international deal isn't reached – Chancellor

Re: What kind of conservatives want to tax everything?

"Providing entertainment without a monetary price tag."

Without a monetary price tag maybe. But I refer you back to your previous comment about not being stolen from. How about users having their privacy stolen. And even if the users accept this, how about those who are non-account holders having their privacy stolen by way of shadow profiles?

Re: What kind of conservatives want to tax everything?

"Who gets to dictate fair..."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer pro tem.

Re: A thought experiment

"Just watch Jeremy Kyle"

I'd rather not, thanks all the same.

Re: A thought experiment

"How massive would the unrest and protest be in the country as millions of addicts demanded their social media fix back immediately?"

They'd take to Twitter in their droves to protest.

Haven't updated your Adobe PDF software lately? Here's 85 new reasons to do it now

Haven't updated your Adobe PDF software lately?

No. Don't use it. Okular does quite nicely.

Manchester nuisance-call biz fined £150k after ignoring opt-out list

Re: ICO information in reports

"Why treat like a Parking Charge with a reduction for prompt payment?"

Because otherwise non-recoverable enforcement costs might be greater than the reduction.

Re: What about pinning the CEO's balls on a board displayed on public place?

That should help promote women to senior executive posts.

Re: overnment is planning to make directors personally liable

"See also the proposed death by cycling laws."

Your comment ignores the fact that there are already laws dealing with death caused by motorised vehicles but when a cyclist caused a death the only legislation that could be found to apply was that drawn up to deal with management of horses. Are you arguing that because cyclists cause few deaths there shouldn't be a means to prosecute those few?

In my view as soon as I leave my gate* I become part of the traffic irrespective of whether I'm on foot (human or horse!) or on wheels (and irrespective of the number of wheels or te power source). As such I have equal responsibility with all other road users to ensure my safety and that of the rest of the traffic. Is that unreasonable?

*Like a good many rural lanes there is no separate footway; it's all road surface. I use the word surface in its most general sense.

Re: Government is planning to make directors personally liable

Don't just plan it: do it. GDPR/current DPA (and, I think , the previous DPA) already has this facility so if the prosecution could be brought under DPA rather than any other act this should be done.

Another power which would be useful would be to freeze a company bank account and company registration as soon as the company is first contacted.

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

Re: walking directions

" just keeping the (Twinkle free) Post Office Tower to my right as I walked"

Too many pubs and you just find yourself orbiting the tower.

"Walking's kinda hard for someone with a bum knee."

Amen to that, brother.

Re: Tea with milk

"stuff that's squirted out of a cow without any intervening processes (the tap has a sign 'boil before using'"

You boil your cows?

Re: Tea with milk

"Sshhh, nobody tell the God's Own Country mob that their water is soft and not dead hard"

It depends where you are. Up in the dales it's hard. In the [millstone] gritty Dark Peak it's soft, all the better for our once-upon-a-time textile industry.

Re: Too many apps

"If lost in a forest go always down. You will reach a stream or gully and leave the forest along it. Going up will inevitably end on a hilltop."

It depends on the local terrain. In some places if you follow a stream you'll end up stuck in some form of mire. If it's not mountainous stick to the ridge and follow that down*. A lot of pre-historic tracks were ridgeways for good reason.

*Unless the ridge ends in a sharp drop.

UK ruling party's conference app editable by world+dog, blabs members' digits

Remind me again...why are email addresses supposed to be good IDs for access to anything other than the email account and maybe not even for that?

Re: "Everything blamed on the firm they bought the app from."

"Who ships an app with 'no security at all, just anyone can alter anything' as a possible setting?"

Innumerable IoT vendors?

....The end of the page also states: "Comments, Webshells and shellcode are welcome."

Despite the issue being widely pointed out on social media, her team is either unaware or unable to fix the problem.

Why would they? They probably think it makes them look really knowledgeable. Sort of like hashtags.

Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub

Re: "I think AT&T [...] would have known a bit about keyboard layouts"

"Keep in mind IBM back then was one of the largest international companies"

Maybe that's why they have their own Unix brand, AIX, although ISTR the original port wasn't in house, it was by Interactive.

Re: "Keep in mind that back then"

"Keep in mind IBM back then was one of the largest international companies"

If IBM were that infallible how do you explain the special cable that had to be made to join the header to the 9-pin D connector on an AT serial port? Somebody in this mighty international company didn't even know that the numbering convention of a header is different to that of a D connector and nobody reviewed the design to fix it.

"Because that's the net change from UNIX to MS-DOS command line syntax, the dash and forward slash got changed to forward slash and backslash."

Actually there's a third. / becomes the escape character instead of \. It's a perverse three way shuffle.

Re: To some MSDOS was an major leap forward.

"The Z8000 was late and a disaster compared to 68000."

It worked OK. My first Unix box was a Z8000 Onyx although what was sold was a bit tightly configured. We had to by another half meg of memory and a 40 meg disk for the database. Moved on from there to a trio of Zilog boxes.

"DOS pretty much was a clone of CP/M86, which was barely more than a translation of CP/M 80."

I thought QDOS which became MSDSOE was written because Digital Research were dragging their feet over CP/M-86.

"Or maybe IBM already had by then a large international customers base, and knew more about different keyboard layouts than a bunch of engineers in some US uni who believed the whole world began and ended there."

Very likely but what's that got to do with the price of fish? I think AT&T, the guys who gave the world the word "octothorpe", would have known a bit about keyboard layouts, especially for their system which was signed off internally on the basis that it was going to be word-processing documentation.

"Maybe the IBM lawyers could read code and didn't want to risk getting sued"

I'd always assumed that the \ and / stuff was to look a bit VMS-like in the way that CP/M looked a bit PDP-8-like. I think if lawyers were involved they'd have been even more wary of that.

I was intrigued by a comment in the readme.doc for V2.0. It seems that the original plan was to use / as a path separator and - as a switch character , i.e. like Unix (or, as the notes say elsewhere, Xenix) and the change to \ and / respectively was at the behest of IBM.

Rookie almost wipes customer's entire inventory – unbeknownst to sysadmin

Re: One simple trick...

"Move/mv protects you from your errors."

Not entirely. I had a similar experience with mv. I was left with a running shell so could cd through the remains of the file system end list files with echo * but not repair it..

Although we had the CDs (SCO) to reboot the system required a specific driver which wasn't included on the CDs and hadn't been provided by the vendor. It took most of a day before they emailed the correct driver to put on a floppy before I could reboot. After that it only took a few minutes to put everything back in place.

Send up a satellite to zap space junk if you want Earth's orbit to be clean, say boffins

A plasma beam requires both energy and material. The energy can be replenished from solar panels but the material will be exhausted. An alternative would be a laser pointed at the junk which then provides the material itself by evaporation. Of course the manoeuvring fuel will get exhausted anyway.