Posts by Doctor Syntax

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

Re: Grey Areas

"If a government makes it technically illegal to take non-harmful actions in order to refuse service to someone who will not pay for that service"

There's nothing to stop any server paywalling their site. That's not the point here.

And the user viewing ads is not paying. Someone else is paying, the advertiser of whatever product or service is being advertised; and oddly enough they're quite likely paying good money to piss off the visitor who will then be making a mental note never to spend their own good money on that product or service.

Re: Bull

"So, they will do anything to hinder such a shift in the paradigms how internet advertising works."

And as ad-blockers render their current paradigms unworkable they'll change PDQ.

Re: Bull

"Anti blockers work by checking whether the user has seen some ad or received some file, effectively retrieving the information stored in the user's cache about whether that file has been downloaded or not."

Wrong. The cache isn't involved. Neither is any information stored. Actually, if anything, the opposite is true. Ad blocking is detected by some "information" (element of the page) not being present on the client side, because of, you know, it getting blocked.

AFAICS these are two statements of the same thing.

However ultimately neither my view, nor yours, nor Mr Hanff's will be decisive. The decisive view may well be that of a court. Do you intend to provide expert evidence?

Re: Publishers could simply

"Dude, I was so with you until that last paragraph."

To what were you objecting - that he was a publisher or that he had a safe ads policy? Should he have had an unsafe ads policy?

Re: Publishers could simply

If the ads are hosted by the site the ad-blocker would be a no-op unless it blocked the entire site so the first part of your comment would be irrelevant. It would also enable the site would have to take responsibility for what it showed so there would be an incentive to filter out attempts at malvertising and a disincentive to repel viewers with ads that offensively attempt to stick their fingers into visitors' eyes and ears.

@Adam 1. Could you explain your second point a little more clearly.

However, I think you've missed something from the article. It would require the site to ask every visitor to ask permission for their browser to be probed. In the interim either the ad-blocking visitor gets to read the page or, if the page is obscured my any means nobody, ad-blocking or not, probe-consenting or nor, gets to read the contents. This means that the site manages to piss off everyone, including those of whom the site might approve.

It also has an interesting side effect. It would present the page authors the problem of explaining why it wishes to probe the user's browser. If they don't give a clear explanation then it will look a little sinister to naive users and if they do it alerts such users to the existence of these things called ad-blockers which they might then investigate and find to be a good idea.

FBI spies on how many?

Why is this article tucked away as part of the rapidly disappearing news bytes? Come to that, why is anything? If it's not fit for the main page just ignore it.

The web is DOOM'd: Average page now as big as id's DOS classic

Re: Mobile

"Of course it's quicker, you have 'm' instead of 'www' so it weighs a lot less and with the same amount of electrons to push it through the tubes, it can go that much faster.."

Obligatory Dilbert http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-08-20

Re: The Good Old Days

"If only I could configure it to be like a desktop Linux PC"

Ubuntu phone?

Ten years in the clink, file-sharing monsters! (If UK govt gets its way)

Meanwhile

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-36115657

I wonder what the baroness would think of these sentences. Does the offence count as industrial scale?

Romania suffers Eurovision premature ejection

About the headline

I see what you did there but no ejection from the Eurovison Song Contest could be called premature. Long overdue would be the best description.

"The effect of the decision has been most keenly felt by Ovidiu Anton, who was poised to perform Moment of Silence in Stockholm on 12 May. "

A nicely prescient song title.

How IT are you? Find out now in our HILARIOUS quiz!

"as if looking for butchers’ hooks"

Slight hangover from the Cockney quiz?

Edward Snowden sues Norway to prevent extradition

"Since when does the USA play by the rules or give a shit about another countries laws if its own interest are at stake?"

Norway is a NATO member in the front line facing Russia. Pakistan isn't. There's a difference.

Re: The marathon-couch-surfing champion in the Ecuadorian embassy

If he leaves the embassy he faces the humiliation of not being extradited to the US. He also faces some jail time in the UK but that would probably be minor considering the length of time he's already imprisoned himself.

Microsoft headhunters seek Linux folk for secret open source unit

"Could you strip out the contentious Google stuff and replace it with Microsoft stuff?"

Maybe they're already working on it: Cyanogen.

Nevertheless a slight FTFY is needed. "Replace it with contentious Microsoft stuff"

'Impossible' EmDrive flying saucer thruster may herald new theory of inertia

Re: IMHO

"The western world will likely tie itself up ..., doing nothing with it, long past the point Germany, China and possibly others are using it in space craft."

So you don't include Germany as part of the western world?

FBI boss: We paid at least $1.2m to crack the San Bernardino iPhone

'"It was in my view worth it," he added. Of course, nothing useful was found on the iThing.'

And we're not even told what was found that wasn't useful. So what evidence do we have, other than Comey's own statement, that the phone was broken at all?

From his point of view, of course, it was worth it as a face-saving way to climb down from a position he thought he could win and then found he couldn't.

Kent Police handed domestic abuse victim's data to alleged abuser – a Kent cop

Re: Disgraceful penalty

"the ICO blatantly trying to save Police face"

How do you make that out?

The ICO has said there was a serious breach. It's imposed a fine. It's done what it's enabled to do by law.

We complain when public bodies act beyond the law. That can't be squared with complaining when they don't.

Re: Stinks of corruption

"Exactly, the person that 'lifted' (actually stole) the additional data from the phone should be charged with theft"

How many times do we have to go over this? It's just like the unending "copyright violation is theft" crap.

Theft is taking with intent to permanently deprive the owner. Copying isn't theft, it's copying. The two are not the same thing.

"It's one of the ICO's few tools in these circumstances"

It really ought to have been considered at the time the DPA was drawn up. Fines are inappropriate for a public body. There seems to be an assumption that public bodies wouldn't breach the provisions. We now realise that they're one of the categories of data managers who present most problems. In the absence of any other more appropriate provision there needs to be a mandatory requirement for personal responsibility.

But I still can't get my head round the notion that this was supposed to have been carried out in accordance with the force's procedures. Are the procedures really so stupid as to mandate this or are they so vague that anything would be in accordance?

"The force has not responded to questions from The Register as to whether it anticipated allegations of corruption as a result of a victim's private data being passed to a suspect employed by it."

Did you ask whether disciplinary action had been taken? It's one thing to have procedures, it's another to follow those procedures without engaging brain. There should have been a "this doesn't seem right" moment.

12,000 chopped: Intel finds its inner paranoid

Always on

If something is always on I expect it to use a much more frugal CPU then x86 and its descendants. Maybe this is part of the problem.

Re: Citation needed

"I was specifically interested to know what was transformed in the auto industry"

Replace simple contact breaker & carburettor by ECU?

How innocent people 'of no security interest' are mere keystrokes away in UK's spy databases

"Have you tried removing data, such as records of dead people from a CRM system?"

Removing data should be a design requirement. If it was and the implementation was competent then removal shouldn't be difficult.

In this case we're dealing with public servants who in positions of trust. That means they should be able to show that they deserve our trust. If it's difficult or impossible to remove the data of innocent people then we can reasonably infer that they didn't include that in the design, that they didn't intend such data should be removed and that maybe we can't trust them.

Re: FOI

A subject request under the DPA would be the appropriate route. You might need an FOI request to find out where to send the DPA request.

Re: Very Sloppy Headline Writing

"Sadly some may break the rules, that is what supervision, management, the police and other agencies are supposed to be there to control"

True. And those who break the rules, at least those rules which are part of legislation, can be prosecuted. But are those who break this set of rules prosecuted? If not why not? People have been asking "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" for a very long time and with very good reason.

Intel told Irish council all was well just before 12k job cuts announced

Re: Why does this always come as a surprise to politicians?

'Listed companies are obliged by law to release "price sensitive" information to the markets in a controlled manner'

It depends when the last meeting with the council was but it seems dubious whether 'at the last meeting between Kildare County councillors and Intel, the company claimed things were picking up' is a controlled manner.

Magnitude malvertisers spew 400 attacks from abused Scot ad firm

Re: People who work in the ad industry

I'm sure that as soon as they've had their morning coffee the usual suspects will be along here to tell us that it's only the ad industry that keeps the web running - and to prove your point.

"When the advertising industry gets its own house in order"

When? Don't you mean "if ever"?

Qualcomm channels Star Trek's Scotty as it faces a mobe chip wreck

When making projections, don't mistake sigmoidal growth curves for exponential.

FBI's Tor pedo torpedoes torpedoed by United States judge

Re: Stable Doors

"The FBI clearly messed up and need a telling off, but it can't be in the public interest for this many convictions to go down on a technicality."

That technicality might one day protect you against a false accusation.

Along with "if you've nothing to hide"* we keep hearing "nobody is above the law". Well, that one is right, nobody should be above the law and that includes the law enforcers.

*Which is too close to abandoning the presumption of innocence and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Prof squints at Google's mobile monopoly defence, shakes head

"Neither the article author nor the EU have come up with any solid proposals as to how their idea of a mix-and-match phone would actually work."

If the finding goes against Google that's Google's problem. But one solution seems clear enough from reading the article - remove the restrictive terms on licensing the APIs.

Re: Maps, etc.

"Google is trying to control the Android stack, that much is undeniable, so the question is whether that control is ultimately harmful to such an extent that it is illegal"

And determining whether it's illegal is the outcome of legal processes such as that which the EU is launching. If they're doing that they must have a basis for believing it to be so and the present article presents informed opinion that supports such belief.

As you say, it's a question. Don't you agree that it should be answered by the appropriate mechanism?

Re: Maps, etc.

"zero substantive rebuttals."

The case was stated in the article based on someone who's actually read some of the licensees' contracts. I look forward to reading your substantive rebuttal of that.

Official: EU goes after Google, alleges it uses Android to kill competition

Re: The EU ins in Apple's pocket

"why is the EU picking on Google"

It was explained in the article. It was explained in replies to other comments asking the same question. You should read them.

Re: Others?

"Paradoxically, the best course of action is for them to just close up the platform and turn the whole thing into a binary blob."

That would require them to replace all the GPL-licenced stuff with something else, probably BSD.

Re: Ubuntu Phone

"Can I go into a phone shop on the high st and buy one?"

Do you have to go into phone shops to buy phones nowadays? Last time I looked you could buy them online.

Tweak Privacy Shield rules to make people happy? Nah – US govt

The fig-leaf is starting to curl at the edges already.

"The problem is that they can't .. at least not without falling foul of US law when the feds come a-knocking."

There are ways. Microsoft think they've got one with the data trustee set-up they're putting together in Germany. An alternative would be to have EU nationals set up an EU corporation to run the operation in the EU in data centres owned by the EU corporation under EU law as a franchise with the terms of the franchise specifically preventing the US parent from accessing the data.

I can't think why they haven't done this already - I'm sure there's no shortage of legal expertise in setting up franchises when it comes to tax arrangements - unless they don't want to share the money with their franchisees.

"or US companies operating in the EU the solution is simply making a sincere effort to abide by the law there."

No. The solution is simply to abide by the law. Sincere efforts are not enough. It will take a serious reorganisation of how they do business. If the Microsoft data trustee scheme proves effective then that sort of solution would suffice. If not then they'll have to resort to a franchise operation where the entire operation is hands off for the US parent.

Sneaky Google KOs 'right to be forgotten' from search results

If they can handle stuff they don't want to be found like this it makes a mockery of any claim that RTBF would be too difficult to implement.

Are bearded blokes more sexist?

Re: Sometimes I'm just lazy

"I spend about half the time clean-shaven and half bearded"

You could try both at the same time. Just shave one side...

I don't like to generalise but I think surveys with questions like those quoted will be biased to people who tend to generalise.

Google's 'fair use' mass slurping of books can continue – US Supremes snub writers' pleas

Re: Here's the test case.

Google could claim copyright on the scan - and on the OCR. Some of the OCRs are certainly creative - nobody could accuse them of plagiarising the original author's words.

Catastrophic 123-reg VPS cockup deletes Ross County FC website

I don't know the ins & outs of this particular site* but I suspect in a lot of cases the business has no IT knowledge whatsoever. They found somebody local who could "do" them a website for some amount of money. The somebody has then arranged to host the site and moved onto the next client. The client may not even have seen the T&Cs, much less read them, much less understood them. It wouldn't surprise me if there were e-commerce sites there where the business's only copy if its entire transactional history is the website's database complete with customers' credit card details.

*It's football - my personal view is that anything involving 22 men chasing a bag of wind up and down a field could be removed from the planet with no loss whatsoever.

Re: Once again, a clear demonstration that a belief

"without the IT they had NO business at all."

I've often thought that the best way to deal with PHBs who want IT to justify itself is to offer to switch it all off for a day to see what happens.

European Union set to release anti-competition hounds on Google

Re: Once was Microsoft, now it's Google...

"others such as Cyanogen use to provide their own version of Android without google included."

And remind me again who was it who put a big investment into Cyanogen?

Translated: BlackBerry CEO John Chen on cops-snooping-on-BBM

Re: Look at it from a Contract perspective

' people doing things that they know in their real heart of hearts is a "bit dodgy" need to bear this in mind'

Do you, in your real heart of hearts, know that it's a "bit dodgy" to order you groceries online and pay through online banking? If not then, by your own arguments as far as I can follow them, you are entitled to best security to protect that transaction and your bank account.

Your phone, tablet, laptop or whatever can't have two automatically selected encryption modes, one for dodgy and one for not dodgy.

Re: So, what are YOU doing to protect yourself?

"you should assume that when the Feds arrive with the proper papers they'll be given what they ask for."

Barry, sit down before you read the next bit, it might shock you.

Sitting comfortably? OK.

There are other governments in this world besides the US.

Some of them might not have human rights policies that you agree with. Who makes the call when one of those rocks up to $vendor with proper papers? Does $vendor let them all in? Or none? Or should they call you with your great powers of judgement of who's right and who's wrong?

Stay sitting down because the next bit might shock as well.

In addition to governments there are also criminals who might want to break encryption.

If you've given out the keys to legitimate requests (whatever those might be) how do you control them so that the criminals don't get them? Or if you tackle the issue by installing back doors you do you prevent the criminals from discovering them?