Posts by Doctor Syntax

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

Re: Five varieties of Firewire cables

"There is a large plastic container in the garage full of serial comms cables"

Don't forget the breakout box.

Re: Guilty as charged...

"it needed a very large diameter pump connector"

You can never find the duct tape when you need it.

Re: Microwaved

"In fact, her gravy was more robust than her sprouts"

Maybe she made it that way to stop the sprouts falling apart.

Re: Interference

"I can claim fair market value for everything I donate, which is invariably far more than I could have sold it for otherwise, & get a fat refund cheque back shortly afterwards when the taxmen realize I've just donated a small fortune."

That's the US version. In the UK it's the charity that gets the refund. It was, after all, the purpose of donating it.

A client had one of these http://www.constructor-storage.com/Global/Constructor-Group/Images/Products/Storage-Machines-and-WMS/Vertical-Carousell-Paternoster/Vertical-Carousell-Paternoster_6_large.jpg in their despatch area. It would make the perfect kitchen accessory for storing the other kitchen accessories.

I'd need another in the study/office/computer room/storage area for all the computer stuff.

"Carrots in May.

The veg will be ready

come Christmas Day."

Surely carrots sown in May and harvested just before Christmas will be big enough and hard enough to club carol singers over the head.

"sprouts and mash make far better bubble & squeak than cabbage and mash."

Which just goes to prove that can be eaten fried - after boiling.

In Soviet California, pedestrian hits you! Bloke throws himself in front of self-driving car

Are we completely sure that this person didn't leap and strike the car in just the same way that bollards and telephone poles do - allegedly?

Don't panic... but our fragile world is drifting away from the Sun

Re: The long view

" Basically, Gaia juggles the CO2 content to maintain room temperature, and last time round that was achieved by evolving grass"

Not a very effective juggle. Plants remove CO2 to convert to sugars to respire which converts sugar back into CO2. More fixed carbon is recycled by animals eating the plants and by other animals higher up the food chain. The only net removal of carbon from the atmosphere is by saving some of it as a standing crop which is recycled more slowly by death and decay of the plant. A very small proportion gets stored away as fossil forms of carbon.

Grass supports grazing animals very well (note the common origin of grass and graze) and the ungrazed vegetative parts don't live long. Apart from on peat lands trees do a much better job than grass of maintaining a large standing crop per unit area. And even peat can be formed from mosses and sedges as well as grasses.

Re: The sun is losing mass?

"And what about all the hydrogen being fused into helium and generating so much heat we can see it glowing 93 million miles away? E = mc^2 and all that?"

Yes I read that recently. Where was it now? Oh, yes, paragraph 3 of the article.

Is the writing on the wall for on-premises IT? This survey seems to say so

Re: The cloud will get bigger

"Even Amazon hosts its stuff in the cloud and not onsite - Albeit the Amazon AWS cloud"

Remember the essence of cloud: somebody else's computer. If Amazon are running Amazon on Amazon Web Services (spell it out for clarity) in what way is it somebody else's computer.

And if the US govt win the MS case? Just re-run the survey when the respondents have been told the US govt can take a look at all your documents, accounts, orders, emails etc.

There are other, legal ways to nab Microsoft emails, privacy groups remind Supremes

"Meanwhile, IBM said that it could damage US cloud providers' business prospects."

Or just tell it like it is: it could damage the US's ability hang on to large parts of its tech industry if the companies that make up that industry are forced to conclude that they can no longer operate from US soil.

Linux's Grsecurity dev team takes blog 'libel' fight to higher court

Re: GRSecurity / Brad Spengler

"How he can afford a lawsuit, I can't fathom."

You raise a very interesting point. Perhaps his lawyers are working on spec. or somebody's funding him, in which case who?

Re: Lawyers and Catfish

"What sort of legal nonsense is this?"

US legal nonsense?

Court throws out BT's plans to reduce pension rates

Re: Pension contribution holidays

"It's funny to remember that many pension funds in the 1980's were forced to take pension contribution holidays by law"

And not at all funny to discover how many people don't know the reason.

Re: RPI not reliable

"Seriously more reliable than BT - the only reason the fund is in deficit is because the took a pension holiday where they stopped paying into the pension fund 'because it didnt need the money' "

That sort of decision is made by the tax man. He counts such payments as tax evasion. It's not the tax man's problem that a decade or two later the fund is in deficit.

Actually that's a thought: could the pension fund sue HMRC for having made a defective ruling?

"If they paid out dividends at 75% of what they had paid for the last 20, 25 years the pension pot could now be full."

During part of the time they'd have been prosecuted by HMRC for tax evasion had they done that.

"The pension benefits and fund contributions were calculated based on expected market returns on investments 40 years ago, and the market isn't giving those returns."

In the interim, when things were going well or high interest rates had raised projected returns on annuities, IR/HMRC would have declared the scheme to have been over-funded and ordered a contribution "holiday". Continuing to fund an over-funded scheme is counted as tax evasion. Not avoidance, evasion. Civil Service pensions, like the state pensions, closely resemble Ponzi schemes in that they're paid out of current income, in this case tax income. That means that tax officials never have to think seriously about the real long term of funded pension schemes. (My own declaration of interest here: both BT and CS pensions.)

"That won't matter significantly to BT, but it will matter to all the other pension funds who have invested in those shares."

It would matter to some extent to BT as harming other pension funds would require action that could then harm the companies those funds serve and in which the BT pension fund is invested.

It's depressing, however, how many people commenting here never seem to catch on to the simple fact that share holders are very largely institutional and they probably have a direct personal interest in them; they are amongst the "fat cats". The education system really needs to look seriously at how it teaches (if at all) the basics of finance.

User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work

Re: @ ChrisCabbage

"that muppet cleaned and oiled (under strict supervision!) every gun in the armoury."

So someone had to provide the equivalent amount of time of strict supervision. What was he being punished for?

Re: Your Network is broken!

"I've deleted the internet!"

To which the only possible reply is "Good. It was getting far too big."

Re: This one, every time

"To have a copy of the video in the "Digital file" and a printed copy in a paper file for him."

Remember, IT's ultimate revenge is to give the user exactly what they requested. Although in this case he might have complained about the lack of sound.

You get a lawsuit! And you get a lawsuit! And you! Now Apple sued over CPU security flaws

Re: Companies always withhold details of security flaws

"Binary blob patches can be issued ahead of the vulnerability disclosure. This happens all the time."

Yes. They can be issued ahead of the disclosure but this requires time for development and testing. The complaint seems to be that the disclosure wasn't made immediately, neglecting the time needed to do things right.

The correct procedure must surely be that the finder of the vulnerability discloses it confidentially to the vendors who then work out mitigations which can be released along with the disclosure. Anything else gives the opportunity for malware to be developed and released first. Given that we're dealing with kernel level stuff here errors in the patches can have effects on users right across the board so thorough testing and optimisation is going to be needed before release. Malware developers aren't going to face such constraints and would probably win the race. There is, in this particular instance, a real but limited cause for complaint - the BSD authors weren't included in the initial confidential disclosure.

Re: Companies always withhold details of security flaws

"which would be bad for everyone but the black hats."

And lawyers. Don't forget the lawyers. Their children need to eat.

Re: GDPR

"Apple hold lots of personal data in the cloud that they suck up from iPhones. This suckage is enabled by default, so Apple is now the de-facto data controller."

You'd have a point if the suit dealt with data taken from the Apple cloud. I may be wrong but I don't think Apple is running that on an array of A6s.

NHS: Thanks for the free work, Linux nerds, now face our trademark cops

I migrated my Dad to Linux last weekend, (from Win XP and Office 2010 to Linux Mint 18.3 and LibreOffice) you'd have thought his world had ended "because the font in my email signature has changed"

You should have waited until he'd had some particular software nasty encrypt his files or whatever.

"No chance while a neoliberal government runs the UK."

Would you explain this further, explaining what neoliberal means with a detailed argument as to (a) how it applies the the present government (this would involving how the current occupants of Downing St and surrounding area could be construed as a government in any meaning of the word) and (b) how this influences the situation described in the article.

Or should we just assume you're spouting some word you read somewhere?

Re: So familiar

"Who can we lynch when it all goes wrong?"

Remind be again, who got lynched when Wannacry brought the NHS to its knees for several days?

Re: Good sub-ed needed....

"Can someone sub-edit this article so it's actually readable please? I got fed up with trying to decipher the typos, misplaced apostrophes and general misspellings halfway through."

Seconded. I was thinking about emailing my local MP and sending her a link to this article but given the mess it's in I doubt it would be a good idea.

Crypto-cash exchange BitConnect pulls plug amid Bitcoin bloodbath

"Bitcoin is just another name for the Dollar."

If it were then its value would remain static against the dollar.

Make Apple, er, America Great Again: iGiant to bring home profits, pay $38bn in repatriation tax

"I thought the tax cuts Trump has introduced will reduce the tax liablility for him and his family by $1 billion?"

As the article says: the Trump-friendly tax reform bill

Re: Academics

"Who pays tax on wages and salaries?"

The recipients and their families when they use the income to buy stuff.

Re: Academics

"to already fat shareholders"

Maybe you're one. Do you have a pension plan, personal or via your employer, or any other sort of savings that get invested in shares?

Re: 15.5 percent and Apple Incentive

"There is only a handful of non-tax heaven countries with rates under 15. In the Eu it is just Bulgaria and Hungary."

Just wait until the UK is out of the EU. If the local business tax take sinks low enough becoming a tax haven will be a viable proposition.

Re: 15.5 percent and Apple Incentive

"So unless Apple guy want more USA designers, USA Apple campuses, USA Apple servers, or USA Apple buildings, there are little reasons they would bring all the profit back."

Surely all these things you list are expenses which would be set against tax. Paying out money in this way reduces profits on which the tax is due. The reason to bring back profits is to pay dividends. In the past Apple has borrowed money to pay dividends. Now they can repay those loans. They'll have time-shifted the tax liabilities on the profits distributed as dividends from the past, when the tax would have been higher, to the present.

"Apple’s announcement also explained it will use lots of the cash in the USA on things like a new tech support center that will contribute to 20,000 new hires it plans to make in the Land of the Free. It’s also promised to build another campus somewhere in America, given its staff a $2,500 bous and tossed another $4bn into the fund it’s using to help US manufacturers innovate."

I'd have thought those were business expenses to be set against tax. Couldn't they have done that without any tax liability at any time?

HTML5 may as well stand for Hey, Track Me Longtime 5. Ads can use it to fingerprint netizens

Re: Give me a G!

"Not like they can do much against a company that, say, operates entirely outside the EU except for those ad requests."

Providing the hosting is also done on a company that operates entirely outside the EU. Forget using the likes of AWS.

"The ad companies want our profiles by hook or crook, and they're getting VERY good at finding ways to sniff us out without having to ask. They're also probably much aware of laws and sovereignties, meaning any attempt to push would simply see them pack up and move someplace friendlier. It's not like they have a whole lot of physical real estate to move around, is there?"

Whether or not the ad companies are located somewhere legally accessible there are other entities at the ends of their chain who might not be so mobile.

In order to do any profiling they have to get access via the web sites. If a web site allows some profiling link to be installed on it I think it likely that the operator could be classed in the EU and the UK as a data controller and the hosting company could also be classified as a data processor. At the other end of the chain the company whose products or services are being advertised is also likely to be scooped up.

Where the web site is being run as the window on some business such as an estate agency or a car dealership they can hardly avoid having a legal presence in the countries in which they operate. The same applies to businesses placing adverts. A small business engaged in selling by post might be able to avoid these constraints; even so such a business with ambitions to grow might foresee the need to establish such a presence in the future.

Hosting companies, however, are likely to have interests in the EU and/or UK. Running a web site on Amazon's infrastructure? If they think they're likely to get roped into this you're going to find they are pretty insistent on what you can do in terms of placing trackers on your pages.

I think I can guess where Schrem's new organisation is going for its initial targets.

Wanna motivate staff to be more secure? Don't bother bribing 'em

It would help if email clients flagged up emails with From addresses different from their actual source addresses.

Yes, I know it would put a crimp in some businesses which their owners consider to be legitimate. Too bad for them but it would be for the greater good were they to go out of business.

Re: "Report spam/phishing" buttons

I think that would work fine if it they could be deactivated or "muted" for clueless users.

It points to the need for training of those who report too many false positives and, if they prove untrainable, flagging up the problem to HR. (OK, it's quite likely HR will include more than their fair share. Their problem.)

Having said that I'm in the habit of sending false positive reports. I send them to my bank in response to their train-our-customers-to-be-phished emails. Which reminds me, when I sent the last one I told them I'd discontinue that particular email address in the new year if they hadn't responded. Time to to that.

Re: Implement security properly

"I'm thinking that the only way to properly secure a remote connecting device is by some sort of secondary physical device that acts as a key"

Many years ago I remember reading about the Olivetti (remember them?) lab in Cambridge which had a system whereby when a user walked up to a terminal it would display their personal desktop. That, IIRC, used their security badge. I never read what happened if two users sat down near the same terminal.

Re: Dont' name and shame persistent offenders

"What do you so when your situation is par for the course?"

Go freelance and insist on prompt payment of invoices. (And in answer to your next objection, don't take contracts there).

France to lend Brexit Britain sore souvenir of Norman yoke – the Bayeux Tapestry

The relationships are more complicated than equating the Normans with the French. They were at loggerheads with the French kings who were nominally their overlords. This situation continued over the centuries. I've seen it expressed that Henry II was spending Christmas "in his private two thirds of France" prior to the murder of Thomas Becket. Eventually they started thinking of themselves as English as the French made fun of their old-fashioned provincial accents. Eventually, however, they lost out to the French by the end of the Hundred Years War, not that it stopped them styling themselves as Kings of England, Ireland and France at least until well into the Tudor period.

"but they had gone a bit native once they settled in Northmandy - even started speaking some funny Romance language."

They seemed to do that wherever they settled - although they loaned English some words our Viking ancestors who settled in England eventually spoke English. Likewise those who settled in Russia ended up speaking Slavic.

Re: In return

"http://www.visitpembrokeshire.com/attractions-events/last-invasion-tapestry/"

Another site to be ignored for displaying SFA unless a stack of sites are enabled on NoScript.

"Less understood depictions contained in the tapestry include a number of naked characters along the border – not least the mysterious man with an erection."

The tapestry is thought to have been embroidered by nuns. Just saying.

Sueball smacks AMD over processor chip security flaw silence

I suppose there is a case for suing them for failing to spill the beans on Intel's Meltdown. Nevertheless. given that both were discovered as part of the same investigation I can't see how AND could have been expected to pull off a stunt like that without outing themselves for Spectre.

Re: Confirmation

they are more than happy to start international wildfires if it makes them a bit more money. without having the ability to think through far enough to realise it would lose them money through the company having to pay damages resulting from exploits. That's the danger of never thinking more than a quarter ahead.

"These people and the lawyers can smell money and that is all they care about."

Having them declared vexatious litigants would give them something else to care about and would be entirely appropriate.

I'd hope that if this case comes to court there'll be a line of expert witnesses all explaining in great detail that withholding public announcements until mitigation is ready is best practice. Given that as a finding of fact in this case (and the similar one against Intel) would make such cases more difficult to bring in future and would also be a great deterrent to future premature disclosure.

UK.gov slammed for NHS data-sharing deal with Home Office

Clearly I wasn't thinking properly when i wrote that comment. It's Yes, Minister series 1 programme 1: "Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title".