Posts by Doctor Syntax

Tech contractors begin mass UK.gov exodus in wake of HMRC's IR35 income tax clampdown

Re: "the job of Government is to support the people, not tax the people"

"Contractors are going to have to come up with a better argument than one which appears to the public to only be about avoiding tax."

OK, here's one. Everyone has the same tax rules but permanency of job is seen as a benefit in kind and is taxed accordingly. The extra tax brought in this way is used to lower income tax rates. Nobody's avoiding tax but HMRC employees get to pay more tax for the benefit of having safe jobs. MPs should like this - their jobs are only safe until the next election - and ministers even more so - their jobs are only safe until the next reshuffle.

Re: this is an old paul daniels trick...

"Big guns pay bribes the standard British way - over the table and fully legitimate. It is called DONATIONS. Your average freelance IT contractor bod does not."

Right back when it started I reckoned that we should have got together via the PCG and made a donation to Labour. Maybe half a Bernie would have done it - and if it had been worked in true Bernie style we'd have got our donation back a little later.

Linux on Windows 10: Will penguin treats in Creators Update be enough to lure you?

Re: So it's Eniw...

Eniew not is Wine?

You're Donald Trump's sysadmin. You've got data leaks coming out the *ss. What to do

"You've got data leaks coming out the *ss. What to do"

Tell the ass to stop tweeting.

"anyone with a personal mobile phone can take pictures of documents and sync, stream or simply walk out of the building with them. Cellbusters can help identify rogue cellphones "

That deals with cellphones as cameras. What about cameras as cameras? Have they ceased to exist? Even if you have to go to eBay for it there's always http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Minox-B-Vintage-Subminiature-Spy-Camera-No-Reserve-/162409310216?hash=item25d0596808%3Ag%3AFZgAAOSwhlZYsbIW

Autonomous cars are about to do to transport what the internet did to information

"we will be able to use an app to summon a vehicle anywhere, at any time, at a price that will be very inexpensive, because all human labor has been taken out of the equation."

Forget the control mechanism for a moment. It's possible to summon driven vehicles now. Why doesn't everyone use cabs for commuting? Because summoning them at any random time is fine, trying to summon them at the same time as everyone else isn't. You want a car at the rush hour? - your best bet is the one you own.

Anyone buying vehicles to provide a commercial service isn't going to attempt to satisfy peak demand because at off peak times - i.e. most of the time - most of their fleet would be underused. In order to make it work they'd have to push up prices to make using a hire car as expensive for customers as possessing their own.

So you might be able to hire a car inexpensively but not at any time or you might be able to hire a car at any time but not always inexpensively. Having the human labour cost included makes little difference.

Git fscked by SHA-1 collision? Not so fast, says Linus Torvalds

Re: That's not how hashes work

"A 160 bit hash _does_ in practice produce a unique result for any given input (unless you spend 6,600 years of CPU time to search for two given inputs with the same result)."

AIUI there is now a method of constructing a colliding pair of files with rather less than the 6,600 years you suggest. That's what's set off this whole discussion.

I think one of Linus' points is that constructing a file which gives the same hash as an existing file and having it compilable is problem of a very different order of magnitude.

Sysadmin's sole client was his wife – and she queried his bill

Re: Working for friends and family T&Cs

"Linux install time is calculated at 10minutes per gig of data to save + 20 minutes to install and fully update Linux."

Install Linux alongside Windows. You don't then have to transfer data as Linux will be able to see it on the Windows partition.

Working for friends and family T&Cs

1. W10 is excluded

2. All other versions of Windows are liable to be replaced by Linux

Re: Two Rules Apply

do exactly what she says she was doing

FTFY

Motorola's modular Moto Z: A fine phone for a weekend away

"the Hasselblad mod being just a licencing exercise largely irrelevant because the very good onboard snapper is pretty good."

The real use case here would be if the add-on camera were the only camera. I'm sure there are plenty people here who visit clients where phones with cameras aren't allowed*. It would be very handy to be able to remove the camera and have an allowable phone.

*I have visited one such site with a colleague. They checked our phones but forgot to ask if we were carrying cameras. My colleague had one in his pocket.

New UK laws address driverless cars insurance and liability

Re: Ubair

"Otherwise you just pre-book your known usage long in advance"

How far in advance do you have to book to get one at 8 am to get you to work when everyone in your street and the next street and all the streets around also want to book one within about 15 minutes of the same time?

Re: updates

I am sure there will be some "if it runs Windows..." comments to follow.

As in: You stop at the traffic lights, the car starts to run an update and won't move until the update's finished and it's rebooted three times. It then won't start because it no longer supports the brand of petrol you're using?

Re: We are living through the end of private motoring ...

"As soon as cars become autonomous, the rationale for having one plonked on a drive doing stuff all for 20 hours out of 24 (say) starts to look a bit silly."

It would look silly if the 4 hours when my car is being used are a different 4 hours than when your car is being used and both are different from the 4 hours when the car from the house across the road is being used etc. The reality is that all those 4 hour slots are largely overlapping, one car can't serve all three users, you still need three different cars.

Or to put it another way, it's impractical for everyone to commute to work by cab irrespective of whether it's a black cab, minicab or Uber: there aren't enough cabs to go around during the rush hour and making them self-driving doesn't make a jot of difference.

Re: "unauthorised alterations" eh?

"However it doesn't work anyway because of the motorbike."

You think you'll be allowed to use a motorbike in the age of the autonomous car?

Re: Appropriate

A nice unclear term? It's a loophole that even the most inept Satnav could find its way through.

Don't worry about Privacy Shield, it's fine. Really. I promise, says US trade watchdog head

Re: Political theatre

"they can't"

Can't what? From the rest of your post I take it you mean they can't play by EU rules.

In that case maybe you should look at Microsoft's arrangement to have Deutsch Telekom act as a data trustee. There's also the possibility of a franchise arrangement - have an EU owned franchisee run the operation under licence, the franchise agreement being under EU law with terms specifically forbidding the supply of customer's data to the franchiser. Either means the US corporation foregoing a degree of control to achieve a better outcome for themselves, a notion which admittedly seems to be beyond the grasp of too many at the moment.

Re: Fake news. SAD!

"Its lifetime after facing the judges will be measured in minutes (not even hours or days)."

That's slightly hopeful thinking. I don't doubt the overall sense of your conclusion but appeal courts don't work at that speed.

Re: Political theatre

"Is Europe going to ban US companies from handling user data? No."

That depends on how many iterations it takes of the agreement/ECJ decision loop before the message gets taken. Also, lets wait & see how many €20m fines it takes for US companies to realise that they need to take this seriously and either pull out of the market or ensure that they're able to play by European rules. Sadly, for us in the UK, it'll all be too late - we'll have taken back control from the EU & handed it to the US.

"In my opinion, nothing has changed,"

That bit's probably right. It's still a crock.

I want it hot and wet – preferably with Wi-Fi

Re: I am old school

"I like just white coffee."

I'm older school. I don't even like coffee.

I suppose I'd better charge my phone; it's been bleeping occasionally for the last 8 hours or so.

Amazon goes to court to stop US murder cops turning Echoes into Big Brother house spies

Amazon have an easy way out of this. Don't store any recordings after processing, other than those which involved a purchase in which case they become part of the business's financial records.

Re: i'd like to see the option

"they only upload audio when the Echo/Alexa/Dot/Google is triggered."

Is that what you believe or what you know?

Re: Amazon is keen

"meanwhile those nasty government agents are trying to do nefarious things like uphold the law."

Probably their greatest offence is not offering to pay for access.

I was authorized to trash my employer's network, sysadmin tells court

Re: Criminal or civil action

"In short, this case will live and die by a strict discussion of the word "authorized" - to be or not to be."

No. It turns on (a) what he was authorised to do and (b) intent. The charge was that he intentionally caused damage without authorisation. If he wants to argue this on contract terms he needs to point to the clause in his contract where, by implication or otherwise, he was authorised to commit damage. Not just access systems or even delete stuff, but commit actual intentional damage. The intent bit comes in when he does an rm -rf * or equivalent in several different places where that's damaging; once might be an accident but repeatedly on the same occasion?

Re: To do this damage as a hacker is a criminal offence, however...

"to do this as an employee with full access to those systems makes it a civil offence NOT a criminal one."

By analogy you seem to be arguing that an employee dipping into the till isn't committing fraud or theft.

Re: Double Standard for Directors and Employees

"After reading the comments I am surprised more haven't pointed out that Directors of companies regularly (and these days often) take actions that are damaging to the company."

A number of comments mention this. Irrelevant. That's not a matter before the court in this case.

Re: Guilty but not guilty

"but his argument on everything else is good."

Huh? He's authorised to intentionally commit damage? That's the crux of the matter.

Re: Missing the point

"intentionally causing damage without authorization , to a protected computer."

How do you parse this?

I can only parse it one way: he did not have authorization to cause damage but he did so and intentionally. Being authorised to access the computer is irrelevant, it was the damage he wasn't authorised to cause. And the additional factor is the intention. We all have the risk of that accidental oops moment which does cause damage but the intention to do so would be lacking.

"the Jury can rule it- an accident, self defense, murder (first, second or third degree)"

Nevertheless, the judge should have explained to the Jury what all these terms mean and what they need to believe about the evidence in order to arrive at one of them. Actually only a coroner's jury would need to arrive at one of the first two decisions, in a criminal trial it would simply be "not guilty".

"There have been cases where juries take the law into their own hands ...but these are sufficiently rare that legal scholars get exercised over it."

Unless it was in a court west of the Bann.

Re: This will impact others as well

"If this guy trashed the systems, and stuck around without leaving a note, he would be a-okay according to the law"

I doubt it. As described, it wasn't a single action but a wide-spread trashing of various parts of the infrastructure. It makes it very difficult to believe anything other than intent. To take an analogy, if you damage one piece of kit it might be possible to argue percussive maintenance gone wrong but if you take a sledge hammer to the whole production line it's going to be criminal damage.

Re: My God, what a hairball

"this defence is nothing short of genius"

Yes, but only as a means for the lawyers to extract another set of fees.

Re: This should be covered by a different clause in the contract

"Which would be a civil matter (breach of contract) and not a criminal matter."

If someone were provided with a key to the business's premises (authorised access) and used that to let them in out of hours and then smashed the place up with a hammer it would be prosecuted as criminal damage.

If someone with access to the company's ledgers used that to gain money to which they were not entitled it would be fraud, a criminal offence.

There's nothing novel in the application of criminal law in a case like this.

Re: "I wish for world peace"

"He won't. We have juries to even out the edges and maintain the spirit of the law"

This is an appeal. If the US system is anything like the UK it won't be heard by a jury. In fact, it's an argument on a point of law. It's up to the appeal court to decide if it makes sense.

Brit lords slip 30Mbps Universal Service Obligation into UK Digital Economy Bill

Re: Stupid dick.

"So at a stroke Manedleson"

TFO says Lord Mendelsohn so a different stupid Dick (or Tom or Harry).

Ad men hope blocking has stalled as sites guilt users into switching off

Re: The ads are bad...

"A simple cookie-ish thing where a user could actually express interest in ads they may find interesting would help make the ads more relevant, and waste advertisers less money."

The simplest thing of all would be to relate the ads to page content and not to the viewer. If the viewer bought a new car last week there's no way that the ad networks can know that and all the effort to sling car ads will be wasted. If he's now browsing garden make-over sites it ought to be a big clue as to what he might respond to now. And for that there's not need to track; in fact the ads could be static in-page. The only downside of that from the ad-networks PoV is that it cuts out their entire business. Isn't that a shame?

"It's the ad men who are the customers."

No. It's the advertisers who are the customers. The only thing admen sell is advertising space to advertisers.

Re: As I said before...

The silent ad stream would be only for plain text, limited HTML, and PNG/JPG images that get a pass from a scanning program[1] *before* the ad publisher distributes them.

FTFY

Re: As I said before...

"But how will you (or I, since I feel the same) know when that is ?"

Their problem. It was they who created it.

Re: It's not so much the ads

If I am searching for academic information, then the answer is most definitely not "Barnes and Noble" or "Alamo Car Rentals"

You can add estate agents to that list. Every last one who never met their father.

KCL external review blames whole IT team for mega-outage, leaves managers unshamed

Re: Those who don't learn from the past...

"That this sort of thing can happen in spite of a DECADE of 'change', strategic plans, and new CIOs—that is the real horror."

ISTM that it didn't necessarily happen in spite of these things but maybe because of them.

Re: What I find surprising is...

"1. Any company ... 2. The business"

A University of College is not a company, neither is it a business in the sense you seem to mean. Putting all the resources into a single IT operation in a college ought to be about as likely an undertaking as herding cats. It's not surprising that there was no effective communication between IT and users as just about every researcher in the place probably has different requirements.

Re: Learn from this and sympathise

"so we basically kill one off completely, every 6 months"

Scary. A real failure on the other live system midway through the test?...

Re: Learn from this and sympathise

"Businesses arn't normally all that keen to let you take systems down to do this."

With good reason. The downtime is a secondary consideration. The main one is that if you're needing downtime on the live system it means you're doing the test on the live hardware and if the backup/restore fails for any reason you've just blown away the system you were trying to restore. You do not do your restore tests on your live hardware. You rent hardware for that purpose, ideally you have a DR arrangement which includes the facility for periodic tests. That way you can do your testing without any down time and without any time pressure other than the slot allocated. Your first test will be an interesting learning experience.

BS Detection 101 becomes actual University subject

I was wondering if it was still in print. Good to see that it it - why would it ever not be.

'At least I can walk away with my dignity' – Streetmap founder after Google lawsuit loss

Re: As I said before...

"Google was the stroppy upstart and innovated and didn't stop innovating."

It's got a hell of a way to innovate before it matches OS standards. If they were really serious about producing good maps why didn't they buy the OS's mapping and add their own interface? If you're serious about maps it's content that matters and Google's mapping content is minimal.

Re: I'm in two minds

"it's just that Streetmap wasn't as good."

Take any bit of countryside you want and tell me where Streetmap's map isn't as good as Google's.

"Google maps was full of ajaxy goodness, with draggable maps and fast response times"

And Streetmap's maps were full of detail. Oddly enough, when I look at a map I want detail, not shiny.

"Google is a damn search engine. If I search for a postcode I want to see a map. Furthermore I want to see the best one."

And if I put a post code into Streetmap I'll see it on a map. Ironically it is actually a full-featured map I'll see it on. If I see it on Google I'll see it on something that's really no more than a street plan.

Re: Disgustingly Evil

"Similarly, some Soviet-made maps of the UK were made that had even greater detail than the OS possessed"

They also included some details of military installations that the OS omitted in case they got into enemy hands!