Posts by Doctor Syntax

The Telegraph has killed Prince Philip

Re: House of Lords

"order her Generals to take the cabinet to the tower."

Yes, please.

"I think a modern democracy deserves an elected head of state, what could possibly go wrong with that ?"

The standard answer is that you always get a politician. And then we discovered what can go wrong when ypu get one who isn't.

As to the HoL my preferred solution would be to have at least a good proportion ex-officio from such bodies as the Royal Society and the chartered professional bodies. Of course they'd be experts and get disregarded. What the HoC really doesn't want is an elected HoL, they like their unrivalled status as the elected chamber.

Re: Proof of the Illuminati

"He died from being given a Speedball by the royal doctor"

With the timing being news management so it would catch next morning's Times instead of being announced first on the wireless where it would be heard by men in pubs wearing caps - or something like that.

Re: Proof of the Illuminati

"They already know what's going to happen, they just release information as and when appropriate to their plan."

Remember George V.

"We will be reviewing our publishing processes as a matter of urgency."

A newspaper reviewing its publishing processes because it got something wrong? That should be a headline in itself.

WannaCrypt victims paid out over $140k in Bitcoin to get files unscrambled

Do we know whether anyone who did pay actually got their files decrypted?

Re: The most worrying comment is ...

"To change or reform it is heresy to most voters, and politicians know it."

Which is why it's a given of British politics for each party to accuse the other party of doing so.

Re: The most worrying comment is ...

I'm not at all surprised that NHS Digital can't be sure about every any NHS body.

FTFY

Re: Eh?

"It's been covered extensively."

What has? The North Koreans' arses?

Microsoft breaks Office 365 sign-in pages ahead of surprise update

Hot/Live/OutMail has had this for some time now. It's combined with an animation of dots crawling across the bottom of the name box just before the password dialog is shown. I wondered if this was some kind of mechanism to defeat bots attempting logins.

Canadian ISPs do not Canuck around: Bloke accused of piracy grilled in his home for hours

Re: The true nature of big corp

"And the only way to do that is to directly punish the decision makers, not the corporation."

You punish the lawyer by getting him disbarred.

Re: The true nature of big corp

When I enquired if I could have a lawyer present the HR bloke said "No sorry you can only have staff or union."

It would have been interesting to see what happened if you just turned up with your brother. They probably wouldn't have had the legal nous to determine whether they had the right or not if your brother simply said "See you in court".

Coming soon to a Parliament near you – UK's Data Protection Bill

Re: EU again

"takebackcontrol?"

Let me try and simplify this for you.

Taking back control was sold to the voters (or at least to those who bought into the idea) as allowing the UK people to take back control from some nefarious EU and its courts. It should have failed under the Trades Description Act.

What HMG, and particularly our Home Sec in residence and Home Sec in command, mean is that they, the govt., take back the control that the EU had granted to the EU people.

For instance every attempt by successive governments of whatever colour to undertake mass surveillance has foundered when it gets to court and is judged by those EU standards. When they take back control they can do what they want because they'll have removed themselves from the control of the court that exists to protect you.

Make no mistake, you don't get control; you get controlled.

I've been thinking over the implications of various surveillance laws, including the possible demand for passwords to encrypted devices, seizure of servers etc.

In the real world a company computer might hold information subject to various regulatory regimes including the DPA. Any agency gaining control of such data, either by interception or by physical seizure, usurps the role of whoever would have been responsible in the owner's organisation. This ought to transfer such responsibility to that agency.

Perhaps this Bill would be an opportunity to put such transfer into statute law rather than leaving the issue to be decided in court in the event of a breach.

Re: Laymans terms..

Seconded. An excellent idea.

Apple, Google pull options trading apps after Australian regulator shows scams

"90% of nothing by the sound of it."

But only up to 90%.

90% of what?

If you love your email standards, SMTP your feet: 35 years later

Re: Already exists

"It's called your email address."

And you set up one specifically for your bank (and others for each other correspondent you wish to verify). Added bonus: if it leaks you know who to blame.

Grab a fork! Unravelling the Internet of Things' standards spaghetti

Re: Well ...

"My greenhouse's "smart thermostat" has been running for over thirty years."

It can't be that smart if it's still working. If it was smart it would've retired years ago.

Does anyone else find it alarming that Danny could only find two opportunities to mention the word "security" in the entire article - and one of those was part of a company name?

The BrickerBot's author's work isn't over yet: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/brickerbot-dev-claims-cyber-attack-that-affected-over-60-000-indian-modems/

'Real' people want govts to spy on them, argues UK Home Secretary

"I think a larger majority of the population would like their MP's communication open to inspection, not specifically excluded!"

Yes, they probably would. Right up to the point where you explain that that would include some problem that they have that they take to that MP. Then their view might change. They might actually start thinking that it's a problem with any communication they might want to keep private.

Re: "As for Rudd, she must have a gun to her head for spurting out all that crap."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." as Upton Sinclair put it.

In Rudd's case I think it's almost the converse. It would be difficult for her to understand even if her salary did depend on it.

Re: The idiocy of this runs even deeper.

"Doesn't mean a ban on all encrypted communications"

TPTB then have the problem of sorting out the banned from the unbanned. They also have to set up a mechanism to allow VPNs on a case-by case basis and I'd like to see them try to blame that red tape on the EU.

Re: The idiocy of this runs even deeper.

"exchanging one-time pads via USB sticks carried by racing pigeons"

How do they exchange the racing pigeons?

Re: The idiocy of this runs even deeper.

"I fear the problem is that everyone else is just as uneducated in relation to encryption, so whatever the politicians say, will be believed...Too many people don't care about privacy, yet."

The first explains the second. But what happens if, instead of asking about Windows 10 telemetry, you ask about the banning of encryption making their online banking more easily hacked? If you put it in those terms I think you'd find people did care.

Re: Rudd: liar—or fool?

"it's still a tad surprising that Rudd's handlers continue to let her talk such unadulterated shit"

No, this is the shit they've given her to talk. And because of the shallowness of her understanding she can do so with no trace of cognitive dissonance.

"Can we all please stop pretending that the government is clueless and stupid?"

Actually Fly-in Amber has publicly demonstrated that she couldn't actually remember her briefing properly so it's obvious she never understood it. Hashtags.

Re: Has it escaped her attention?

"I don't know if my MP Lucy Frazer has had an opportunity to discuss things with Rudd. ...However I did write to her (it's very rare I write to anyone) before the election to tell her I wouldn't be voting for her"

I wrote to my former MP to tell him some time ago that, on account of his following the party line on this very issue, I wouldn't be able to vote for him as long as May* remained party leader. Note I said "former MP".

*Forget Rudd, she's just the monkey.

Re: Ask her this

"Would you do your banking over the Internet without "end to end" encryption?"

Actually I was thinking did nobody in that meeting have the wit to challenge her to publish her online banking credentials, her Waitrose login credentials etc? And then explain to her bewildered self that that's effectively what she wants the entire electorate to do.

Re: Ruddy Hastings

To a politician, "The Enemy" is those with the power to vote.

And to a government minister those with the power to vote include those who can vote in Parliament.

"Nurses and teachers can't vote against me till the next election -- backbenchers can vote against me at ten o'clock tonight."

Re: Real people?

"You have to go back s long way to not have Intel management engine built in"

Shock news warning:

There are computers that don't use Intel processors.

Re: The idiocy of this runs even deeper.

"All non-breakable communications will be declared illegal."

That would get a real push-back from business. Take, for instance, VPNs.

And take, for one small example, my daughter's employers. They are a pharmaceutical business. Her role is managing clinical trials in hospitals a hundred miles or more from their offices. She works from home. Her company laptop communicates via HQ with a VPN. By that means she is able to connect to their office system securely. She is able to take part in teleconferences securely.

Given the nature of her work there will be various regulations and requirements governing the data on her laptop (which I assume is encrypted). There will be personal data relating to trial subjects. This will be subject at the very least to existing DPA and forthcoming GDPR laws. I'm not familiar with clinical trials legislation but there may be additional regulations relating to that. There will be issues of commercial secrecy. There will also be financial regulatory issues: clinical trials results can affect share price.

Banning encryption over the net would require some form of point-to-point comms link to be put in place instead, otherwise it would mean that such trials couldn't be organised except from the office. In practical terms it would restrict the trials to fewer hospitals. Restricting trials would slow down the process of obtaining approval and place the company at a competitive disadvantage unless it chose to relocated to a saner business environment.*

These sort of issues would be reflected in businesses up and down the country. Do you really think the business community would stand for it?

*As a side issue it would also put my daughter out of work but with Brexit coming along that would be just another unemployed PhD?

Re: "The only country that is Up Shit Creek *with* a Rudder."

"A piano could drop on her head tomorrow and within a week her replacement would be spouting the same line."

What's even worse is that once they've been brainwashed they stay that way. Look at her predecessor. Fly-in Amber is only the Home Sec in residence. May is the Home Sec in command.

Facebook pulls plug on language-inventing chatbots? THE TRUTH

@A/C

I want never gets.

Re: 'Language' in chimps and bots...

"All Nim (and Washoe and all the rest) seem to do is produce the words with no meaning attached to word order or repetition."

I think it's fairly clear from the example you quoted that Nim wanted to be given an orange to eat. A moment's thought should show that that involves a concept, eating, that's way beyond anything a machine could begin to comprehend but which is fundamental to the existence of any animal.

Just a minute...

Given the amount of repetition in that sample it's hard to believe there was much, if any, information in there, let alone intelligence. Unless, of course, the information was encoded in the number of repeats.

Another day, another British Airways systems screwup causes chaos

"Although informed sources came up with plausible theories about what happened, the actual cause has not been acknowledged by British Airways."

ISTR reading that BA recently said they wouldn't make the full explanation for that public. I think a visit to the relevant HoC Select Committee must be in the offing.

No vulns. No hardwired passwords. Patchable. Congress dreams of IoT: Impossible Online Tech

Re: @Gene Cash

"Then that short-list would actually be an EMPTY list as a field-deployed, embedded system like that CAN'T be patched. Not only would it be deployed too remotely for anyone to see to it after it's installed, but a safety-related system like that REQUIRES that it be untouchable so that it can't be "hacked" to kill people."

The fault mentioned related to certificates. The only need to handle certificates would be to verify communications. The need to verify communications would only occur if the device could communicate. If it can communicate it isn't too remote to be patched, it isn't untouchable and if hacked can kill people.

The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act

I thought it was a rule that all US legislation should have an appropriate acronym. The nearest this gets to that is TITCIA and that's only be dropping the preposition.

Re: Move in the right direction

"Bruce Schneier is apparently being listened to on this topic: he knows more about it, and has more realistic, intelligently reasoned views, than both houses of congress put together."

If he's any spare time can we borrow him for the HoP?

Re: @Gene Cash

"Now suppose you're 60% of the way through this project and this certificate handling bug is discovered. What do you do?"

In the situation you describe the processor wouldn't have made the short-list because it wouldn't have been patchable.

Brit voucher biz's signup page blabbed families' details via URL tweak

Kids Pass said that the pair had been blocked “in the early hours of Sunday morning by our 'out of hours' social media monitoring team” and unblocked “within a matter of hours when this error was spotted.”

I think we could hazard a guess that the "'out of hours' social media monitoring team” was outsourced and probably off-shored and that if it had an escalation procedure at all that would have included not ringing anyone important until next morning UK time.

Sorry, psycho bosses, it's not OK to keylog your employees

The EPO's position seems to be that of terrorists everywhere when brought to justice: "I don't recognize this court".

Re: Play the game

"Sorry but I'd take my chances and sack them."

Did you read the article? That's just what they did do and it didn't work out well for them.

Look out Silicon Valley, here comes Brit bruiser Amber Rudd to lay down the (cyber) law

"You can think of examples from history, I'm sure."

The evidence seems to be that he fails at the first three words.

Re: Not for me, thanks all the same...

"let's just get on with the job and make the best of it eh?"

I suppose so but when the outcome becomes clear, let's not forgive and forget at the next election.

Welcome to the Rise of the Machine-to-Machine. Isn't it time to 'block off' some data ducts?

"I think quite succinctly, one of the big security problems at present is the trend to run absolutely everything over port 80."

And the usual reason, when one is given, is because it's the one port that won't be blocked. Convenience continues to override security.

"Web 2.0 then focused on letting us actually do something with that information."

Web >=2.0 is all about making it impossible to do anything without going online.

Case in point in the last few minutes. SQMBO (but not by large cinema chain!) tried to book tickets over the phone. They will no longer do that, have to to it online. This gets to be like the old Adventure games in that it's a mass of obstructive menus. e.g. go to the specific cinema site, select day and film, click Book and promptly get asked for what cinema. Confirmed purchase at least twice on successive screens.

Do the idiots who run these businesses never try running this maze occasionally and ask their minions hard questions such as "Couldn't you make it simpler?"? Evidently not. And no, I will not set up an account for them to leak. They can have a temporary email address that gets torn down in about a month, or sooner if they decide to spam it. At least I got away with only having to allow 2 Javascript sites, including Visa verification.

Red Hat acquires Permabit to put the squeeze on RHEL

Re: Licensing sense

"The article may not say it, but then the article does not say that the sky is blue"

It does, however say "ready-to-run Linux kernel modules of [Permabit's] wares"

Dirty carbon nanotubes offer telcos chance at secure quantum comms

"After all, what's to stop Eve emitting a new proton to Bob to replace the one she read?"

It seems to be a bit more complicated than that but I'm still not clear why, by intercepting all the channels Alice and Bob use rather than simply eavesdropping, a MITM attack becomes impossible.