Posts by Doctor Syntax

Walk with me... through a billion files. Slow down – admire the subset

As I started to read the article I found myself thinking "these guys need a proper database" and then - whadya know - they invent a database for the job, B-trees and all.

I always reckoned that the Unix file system design reflected the database technology of its day and, although the implementation has changed somewhat to allow larger discs, journalling, remote storage etc, the design of the interface has been more or less frozen since then. Perhaps it's time to move forward and at the same time build in some protection against malware and its effects.

European Commission intervenes in Microsoft Irish data centre spat

"The government could exercise discretion to pursue alternate channels, where available.”

What an utterly pathetic excuse. The mechanism was open to them from the start.

The amicus brief should be simple and to the point: if the DoJ wins the Privacy Figleaf is torn down and never replaced.

IT buyer? Had enough of pesky resellers cold calling? You aren't alone

"we are inundated from domain brokers 3-4 times a day despite being one ourselves"

Just put them on your own call list and ring them a few times every day until they stop.

"those lines normally cost £1.50/minute."

Probably only cost them a few quid to record enough for a tape loop.

Re: TPS anyone?

If all else fails, we have a special "procurement" number which we put them through to - a particularly painful "your call is important to us" message with stretched tape effects, big volume jumps etc.

That should be reserved for really persistent offenders. They're likely to realise they've been had fairly quickly. The first pass should be something which just possibly could be really genuine on-hold and a real slow burn. The worst example I heard - it really was on-hold - was Greensleeves, synthesised with excruciating precision at a hypnotic moderato.

BTW, your message should eventually change to "your call is unimportant to us".

"Our staff time is valuable. You have the following choices, please listen carefully before choosing:

If you are cold calling and want to leave a sales message on the answering machine please press 1. If we choose to listen to your message you will be charged X currency units per minute.

If you are cold calling and wish to speak to a member of our staff press 1. You will be charged 10X currency units per minute with a minimum charge of 1 hour.

If you are not cold calling press 3. If you are a cold caller and abuse this option you will be charged 100X currency units per minute with a minimum charge of 1 hour.

Your company will be invoiced. Our terms are payment within 2 days. Our debt collection colleague hopes your company will not pay as he has not eaten for a couple of days."

Investigatory Powers Act: You're not being paranoid. UK.gov really is watching you

Re: Re. surveillance

"Why exactly are the authorities asking for more surveillance powers again?"

It's a rinse/repeat cycle. Every time they try the Act eventually gets taken to court and found to be illegal. When that happens they replace it with another variation on the same theme. The Home Office probably has a stack of them already written so they're instantly ready to drop another before Parliament when the current iteration bites the dust.

Re: My fingers are crossed those of you on the east side of the pond.

"Someone has taken the race to the bottom seriously."

A lot of people take it seriously. Some are either just better runners or had a head start.

Re: Operation haystack...

"A few PB each and even google wouldn't be able to help for all the tax breaks in Ireland."

As the ISPs are to do the storage the price of those PBs will be added to your ISP subscription.

Re: The cynic in me says it's academic ...

"Bank records, verified as correct by the bank, are pretty good whether or not the warrant was signed by someone of the correct rank."

And due process counts for nothing?

"It's only in cases where the probity of the investigator is important that there's any risk - say, for example, a blood stained glove. And that's something that the judge can rule on and the jury make their minds up on."

The blood stained glove might have nothing at all to do with what's alleged. It takes a properly documented chain of evidence for the judge and jury to even begin considering whether it does.

Re: Yawn

"You may not like surveillance but it was a valid point."

No it wasn't.

The whole thing is predicated on ignoring the presumption of innocence which has been a cornerstone of English law for centuries and of the concept of due process of law which goes back even further, to Magna Carta. When such fundamentals of our basic rights are being yanked away like this we have every right duty to complain. Paranoia doesn't even enter into it. It's not the surveillance in itself that matters, it's the dismantling of the very foundations of our law.

Re: No surprise

"while she was a remainer."

Do you believe she really was? It would be inconsistent with wanting to ditch the ECHR and ECJ. I think that she expected the vote to go remain and didn't want to do anything that might have endangered her position post-vote.

Re: If they are going to make it easier for them

"I do not believe in the infinite dragnet and will simply bypass it and recommend the same to anyone else as well."

I can see where you're coming from on this but it doesn't get round the fact that important principles of English law are being set aside. This legislation regards everyone as a suspect on no good basis and I personally resent being regarded as a suspect on no good basis.

Re: The cynic in me says it's academic ...

"We don't have the situation as in America where evidence doesn't amount to proof of something just because the right paperwork wasn't completed or procedures were not followed."

If the right paperwork isn't completed with all the due signatures in place and the procedures not followed there's no basis for believing that the exhibits placed before the court are those taken in the investigation, that there wasn't any cross-contamination between seizure and examination or that essential evidence hasn't mysteriously disappeared.

Of course having all that in place doesn't ensure that interference doesn't take place but it's an essential first step to getting things right and also for investigation when it becomes clear that something went wrong.

"I think that's how it should be; we shouldn't let guilty people walk free just because the authorities are also guilty of some crime."

Due processes of law are there largely to ensure that the innocent don't get convicted. Or do you subscribe to the idea that provided someone doesn't walk free, to use your term, it doesn't matter too much who the someone was?

And remember this: once there's a conviction it's very unlikely that the investigation will continue unless, years down the line, convincing evidence comes to light that there was a miscarriage of justice. By that time it's likely to be too late for any meaningful reinvestigation. A wrongful conviction is very likely to result in the actual culprit walking free.

Re: Yawn

"It is getting increasingly hard to tell if you are a troll or just a wanker."

Or a wanking troll vs a trolling wanker.

Re: Yawn

Maybe if people didn't break the law there wouldn't be a need for law enforcement due process of law and the presumption of innocence?

FTFY

What really pisses me off about this is that the laws are written on the basis that I'm guilty of something. Something that hasn't been defined, but just guilty of it anyway.

It makes me wonder why I spent about a third of my working life as part of law enforcement (got that 'unwarranted triumphalism' - as part of law enforcement?) dealing inter alia with terrorism offences if what's supposed to be my government chooses to impose the same sort of anti-democratic rule that the terrorists would had they won. In fact it's arguable that in this respect they have won.

" the plans do contain baby steps in the right direction."

The author is being very polite. Putting a trace of lipstick on the pig would be a better description.

Sky regulators brace for millions of Xmas toy drone sales

By boxing day a good proportion of them are going to be wedged in trees, TV aerials and any other snags that happen to be about.

VW's US environment boss gets seven years for Dieselgate scam

Re: outrageous

"Perhaps throwing personal criminal liability on company executives is long overdue and should be extended to other aspects of company conduct."

Let me qualify that: liability to company executives when specific individuals can be identified as culpable in a specific case.

If legislation seeks to make individuals liable as opposed to the corporation that that would almost certainly need to be the directors as no other job titles are defined in law. The alternative would be if the legislation defines a specific role such as a data protection officer who could be held responsible whatever the job title - with a fall-back to the directors if they fail to appoint and empower one.

Re: outrageous

"Corporations exist to make profit for shareholders - since shareholders (the generic blob of shareholders represented by Wall Street) are only interested in short term profits and dividends then their prime motivation is money."

There are a couple of classes of shareholders to consider. The Wall Street crowd are certainly only interested in the short term which can be defined as the end of their current bonus period. Those of us who are pensioners and who actually provided the money invested in this are interested in the long term continuation of profits; we are not particularly happy with the antics of the speculating crowd, nor of those company employees who respond to them. Perhaps throwing personal criminal liability on company executives is long overdue and should be extended to other aspects of company conduct.

Opportunity rover survives Martian winter for eighth time

They don't build 'em like that any more.

Re: Obligatory...

Previously the amount of dust expected was "some".

And they were only targeting 90 days anyway.

OK Google: A stranger with stash of pirated films is spamming my Google Team Drive

"There will be dancing in the cubicles at Dropbox tonight... (well and Redmond, maybe they'll get a fourth user for OneDrive now?)"

Dropbox, OneDrive?

Still somone else's computer. Their rules are your rules, their problems are your problems.

Muzzle our public watchdog much? UK.gov Data Protection Bill adds affect the ICO

"Ministry of Fun ... said the government had consulted the ICO about the preparation of the new clauses" but carried on anyway.

Euro Patent Office commanded to reinstate 'Nazi judge' it attacked

Perhaps they should have added that the moral damages should be paid out of Battistelli's own pocket and not reimbursed to him.

EU data protection groups: Fix Privacy Shield or face lawsuit

although it’s better than Safe Harbor, there are still “significant concerns” to be addressed.

More lipstick on a pig.

It still relies on the data subject enforcing their rights by civil litigation in the US. Really?

There's only one satisfactory way of doing this: if an EU business exports personal data to the US or any other non-EU country for processing that company remains entirely responsible for the outcome. If there's any breach or other mishandling then the civil and judicial penalties of the GDPR fall on that company as if the breach had occurred to data holdings within the company itself and the company should make best efforts to protect the data subject from any consequences of the breach. "Breach" should include spying, surveillance, seizure of data or whatever by the government of the non-EU country irrespective of whether the action was judicially authorised or supported by the powers that government gave itself.

The question a company then has to ask itself before transferring data is whether it's a risk it's able to accept.

TFA omits to link to the actual report. It's this: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/just/document.cfm?doc_id=48782

Former US State Department cyber man: We didn’t see the Russian threat coming

Re: “Tech people need to tell policy people about the next coming threat.”

"Policy people have this bad habit of only pretending to listen to experts."

Or of only listening to experts who say what they want to hear.

Apple looks forward to wiping $47bn off its overseas profit tax bill – thanks to US shakeup

Re: Yes, by all means, bring that cash home

"US banks that, through their chicanery, brought us Financial Collapse 2008"

Not on their own, they didn't. Not only did they have help from non-US banks, they also had help from politicians who thought that in no way was a house price bubble inflationary and to be taken into account in fixing interest rates.

UK.gov failing to prevent £10bn of annual online fraud, say MPs

I think the HO's view would be that there's no problem that can't be solved if only they had access to every byte of data that flows online.

Boffins foresee most software written by machines in 2040

Re: Ok machine, I want you to...

"dedicated to all designers/developers that had to deal with micromanaging types and did not kill them"

We had a volume at 11 shouting match between two of the client's directors in the middle of their general office as to how a particular batching operation should be carried out. Privately we thought it should be operator configurable and built that in. The configuration would be able to be set to fit either of the directors' views - or anything in between and maybe more. During commissioning we set up something that looked reasonable. AFAIK it was never subsequently altered.

Re: Clippy

"So there's a domain (legacy bloatware) that's fairly unambiguous, with mountains of menial detail."

What would the AI do with all the bugs which are in there but undiscovered because in the operational domain they're never triggered? It might add a few hundred K lines to deal with them.

Re: We've been here before...

"In this case, if you happen to be a prescriptive linguist, you should use less, because '10 minutes' isn't plural here."

A handy rule, if you care about this sort of thing at all, is to do a units conversion. Would you write "it took fewer than 1/6th of an hour"?

Re: The 80's are calling

"and want their ideas back."

Indeed. Will this really be the Last One.

Re: The less you know, the sooner you will be replaced

"It seems the people who write such papers ...will be replaced first."

They have been and the replacements keep arriving.

Car rental firms told: Tell your customers about in-car data slurps

Re: I tend to stick

Above that, the big companies seem to have a massive scam going where they bill your credit card a couple of hundred pounds for "dents" after the car is returned with no such damage.

Had that happen to me. Unfortunately it was after the last trip for a gig in N Ireland. If it'd been earlier then on the next trip an old colleague would have been able to have found a contact in the RUC Fraud Squad.

"some said they would update their privacy policies as part of prep for the General Data Protection Regulation"

They may update their policies. It'll probably take some fines before they update their practices but it looks like that's what they'll need to do.

Microsoft adds nothing to new Semi-Annual Windows Server preview

"introducing bugs to existing code to see who can put up with them for the longest"

You wrote that as if it was something new.

Mailsploit: It's 2017, and you can spoof the 'from' in email to fool filters

There seems to be a view in some comments that being able to spoof From: is a Good Thing.

I challenge that. It facilitates all sorts of crime and what's possibly worse is that business who "legitimately" make use of this are training their correspondents to be phished.

Take a typical phishing email:

- The From: field claims it came from some bank.

- Examination of the headers shows that it came from elsewhere

- It has a link to an image of the bank's logo - probably a genuine link as an image of the bank's logo isn't difficult to find on the bank's website

- One or more links in the body of the email that appear to point to the bank's web site but on closer examination point elsewhere. The object of the email is to get the victim to click on one of these.

Now take a typical outsourced valuable marketing message spam from a bank:

- The From: field claims it came from the bank.

- Examination of the headers shows that it came from elsewhere

- It has a link to an image of the bank's logo

- One or more links in the body of the email that appear to point to the bank's website but on closer examination point elsewhere (this is my experience - they use a sub-domain of the bank but it resolves to the digital marketing spamming company). The object of the email is to get the victim to click on one of these.

The result is that the genuine article authorised spam looks exactly like a booby-trapped phishing spam. The wary will treat the two alike and ignore the bank. The unwary will treat the two alike and get phished. It's time this was stopped. If, as a by-product, it stops banks and other businesses spamming the public nothing of value will be lost.

Re: There are spam filters that pay attention to the contents of "From"?

"Trying to change this simple fact would break all kinds of things."

Many of them bad.

Re: I dunno

"Removing the ability to spoof the from address would stop third party companies handling mail on someone else's behalf; a very common thing in business nowadays."

And that is more important than stopping the mechanism for all sorts of common, serious criminal behaviour?

"And making any of this compulsory or improving SMTP is a problem because the system is too widely used and still too important to break."

The evidence is that it's already broken. Is it too important to fix?

Hyperloop founder goes on immediate leave following sexual assault 'smear campaign'

Re: Do you guy's actually read what you write?

Whatever they write I'm quite sure that all of them know not to form a plural with an apostrophe.

Dentist-turned bug-biter given a taste of freedom

Re: One should be very careful

"About repeating the sentiment that Patterson Dental's Eaglesoft has security issues (as mentioned by several commentards). That might influence google's search results in a way that leads searchers to conclude that Eaglesoft, from Patterson Dental, has serious security issues."

I'm afraid we've been careless. If you search for patterson dental security on Google el Reg comes 5th.

Clearly a good move on Patterson Dental's part. By having the publicity descend on FBI officers it's maybe deflected attention from Patterson Dental's Eaglesoft having security issues. That would help avoid the Streisand effect drawing attention to such security issues with Patterson Dental's Eaglesoft. BTW, doesn't HIPPA have anything to say about such issues?

Once again, UK doesn't rule out buying F-35A fighter jets

"At this rate we'll have the Prince of Wales permanently anchored in Lough Neagh"

It wouldn't fit through the lock at Toome. Better try Lough Foyle.

"maintenance costs to be cut significantly."

Maintenance costs cut - F35s? Does not compute especially as the maintenance is outsourced non-competitively.

Viagra's Irish plant STILL giving local men and dogs stiffies (not really)

At the weekend – signalling the beginning of the "silly season" for journalists – The Times splashed a rehash of the time-honoured tale

It's just as well el Reg would never stoop so low.

You're SAP-ing my will to live: Licensing debate lumbers on as ERP giant tries to rebuild trust

Re: Failed with us

" we engaged SAP in a frank verbal discussion on what we could and couldn't do with our license. They were very forthcoming and honest."

Perhaps you should have recorded it "for training purposes".

Dirty COW redux: Linux devs patch botched patch for 2016 mess

Re: Huh?

"And even that is pre-supposing that the requirements can still be regarded as 'bug free' themselves, as Lee D pointed out."

Also pre-supposing that the theorem provers are bug free.

It's bugs all the way down.