Posts by Doctor Syntax

Thought your data was safe outside America after the Microsoft ruling? Think again

Re: America's increasing isolation

"American law"

AIUI the Microsoft case is still wending its way to the Supremes. If Google have any sense they'll appeal this one as far as they can. Until decisions are reached there American law on the point is still unresolved.

But there's good reason to avoid relying on any US-based business to hold information securely, just in case. There's also good reason for multinationals to consider whether the US is a fit jurisdiction in which to base their operations.

For $deity's sake, smile! It's Friday! Sad coders write bad code – official

Re: Cause and Effect reversed

"Bad coding makes unhappy coders"

Or:

Bad coders make bad code and if you make life a misery for staff bad coders are the only staff you can retain.

USA! USa! Udia! India! India! Apple nudges iPhone production base

assemble phones for sale in India within India.

In fact, Apple already do this in Brazil to bypass import tariffs. The Brazilian factory produces just enough phones for local demand and they are the most expensive iPhones money can buy.

And a US assembly plant could operate on exactly the same basis.

If the market has a tariff wall round it and a small local plant employing as few people as possible can make the product cheaper than importing it through the wall then that's what will happen. It won't create many local jobs and it will result in the product being more expensive there; locals will be looking enviously at their neighbours.

In general, especially when taxes and tariffs are involved multinationals are able to rearrange their business to optimise outcomes for themselves when things change. The new optimum may be very different to what the government and those who voted for it intended. Your tax schedules, votes etc are only one factor in what happens. You do get what you voted for; it's just not what you thought it would be.

Microsoft foists fake file system for fat Git repos

Re: Proves Git is unsuitable for commercial dev work

"Is this a sneaky way of them warning the market that TeamSystem is going away?"

Or is it an acknowledgement that git has become the predominant version control system?

BOFH: Password HELL. For you, mate, not for me

Re: "I rarely get cold calls"

"What's my name?"

The Windows support equivalent would be "Which one, I have several. What's the licence number?".

"I smartly answered no sorry I stole this phone."

Or

I picked it up from where someone'd dropped it down the bog. It works OK but it's a bit niffy. Can you do anything about that?

Re: "I rarely get cold calls"

"Hello sir, we have been passed your details because one of your family has been in an accident recently" or whatever.

I think in the future it's going to be my wife who was injured. She's being treated in the Institute for Clinical Orthopaedics, ICO for short, in Wilmslow. Phone number 01625 545 745...

And good luck to the ambulance chaser who tries following that one up.

Re: Same here

"Co-Op bank"

Reminds me, I must ring them and ask why they haven't responded to my email to their Ihavessenascam address reporting, for the nth time, an email from their tame spammers digital marketing company and explaining that it has all the hallmarks of a phishing spam.

GCHQ cyber-chief slams security outfits peddling 'medieval witchcraft'

"He doesn't seem to know what the words "medieval" or "witchcraft" actually mean."

Medieval witchcraft is probably the code name for one of GCHQ's operations.

Re: Hyping APT

"And this comes down to proper information security governance. Which we ain't gonna get."

Until after the event.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/articles/who-might-be-attacking-you

What's odd about that? It just has a picture of its author at the top.

UK defence secretary: Russian hacks are destabilising Western democracy

"And no one has any idea what to actually do about it"

Really?

Send DNS requests for the .ru TLD to /dev/null for an hour or so after each detected hack. Next day for a couple of hours. Then 4 hours etc.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

Re: The spirit of VB6 is alive

"Google B4X. RAD development tool targeting all modern platforms."

A new York bus route is a RAD development tool?

"As Office uses VBA which is presumably sharing a lot of that code, could that mean the end to VBA / poisoned documents and spreadsheets ?"

Maybe that's what they mean by core.

2016: Snapchat loses $515m... 2017: Snapchat rips veil off $3bn IPO

Simple

They're hoping to be bought out by Goggle, Farcebook, Twatter, MS or whoever.

Super-cool sysadmin fixes PCs with gravity, or his fists

"Don't get me started on why I had to rebuild a WIN2k server in 2016 though as I'd be here all day"

Short version: because it works.

Brexit White Paper published: Broad strokes, light on detail

"As for no plan, that's a very tired meme now. ... It was always clear that she'd be seeking to leave the Single Market and Customs Union"

So where's the plan to replace the lost market? That's plan, not magical thinking?

"They're pensioned off on a lovely pension, will walk in to high paying jobs on civvy street."

There might be fewer of those about.

Re: Words fail me

"We should have had a referendum then [Lisbon], given how unpopular that was, and that an almost identical treaty had gone down to defeat in a couple of referenda already."

That I agree with. That and Maastricht should have required ratification by referenda across the entire EU - and needing a significant majority for a change to take place.

I agree that the democratic deficit this has left has been at least partly responsible for the present mess. But to quote Sir Humphrey, "If you must do this damn stupid thing don't do it in this damn stupid way.".

Re: Words fail me

"We don't want skilled migrants but some unskilled ones can come and pick potatoes a month from now if the company sponsors a special visa."

I doubt we'll need immigrants to pick potatoes. There'll be plenty of labour going spare.

Re: Words fail me

"The MPs are supposed to represent the people so the vote in parliament might have been mandated by a bizarre bunch of clowns but actually the vote in parliament HAD to pass in order to recognise the vote from the people."

I expect my MP to do his best for his constituency. He has not done this. He has voted with the herd.

There is no compulsion whatsoever on MPs to be bound by an advisory vote.

Re: Words fail me

"MPs serve the people, not the other way around."

If what people need is different to what a small majority of them said they wanted then they might be best served by providing the former.

Re: cost benefit analysis

"If the EU impose tariffs on imports from the UK, they pay those costs, not us."

Which then makes our exports less competitive so there are fewer of them. Fewer exports means less work. Less work means less jobs. Unless you still think the pink unicorns are going to come along with their pixie dust and make us all so rich we won't need anyone to work.

"The paper is light on detail but big on statements and broad of stroke."

So the pig is still in the poke but the MPs are carrying on with the buying process on our behalf.

Hard numbers: The mathematical architectures of Artificial Intelligence

Re: The problem with defining artificial intelligence

"...is that we don't have a good definition of intelligence in the first place."

One thing we do know: it runs on a much larger scale of parallel processing than we can achieve with any existing electronic hardware.

"But if I also included the detail that it apparently can translate between pairs of languages that were not explained to it and that, most importantly, its minders don't know exactly how it's doing that, you'd be more inclined to think that maybe there's a budding AI in there somewhere."

Maybe someone inserted the obvious and sensible algorithm that says

if pair A to C does not exist and pair A to B exists and pair B to C exists then translate from A to B and then B to C.

and the minders forgot it was there. No need for it to have invented an internal language.

'Webroot made my PCs s*** the bed' – AV update borks biz machines hard

At least they can't get a virus while they're BSODed so AV is protecting them.

Re: Doesn't anyone test?

"As in: you want a test park but the beancounters in control over the budget don't deem this necessary. "

That's an easy one. Beancounters are made to feel important: they get first dibs at all upgrades.

Careless Licking gets a nasty infection: County stiffed by ransomware

"CHEQUES, please"

Yes please, preferably big ones. Oh, I see what you mean. Given where it happened I suppose we have to allow for local customs.

It's holistic, dude: How to dodge the EU's £17m data regulation sting

Re: Four words

The only metric these days always seems to be time

And money. Do it fast and cheap.

Years ago the corporation I then worked for had a massive IT security review put in place owing to the fact that they'd been very publicly embarrassed (I doubt the same cause/effect relationship operates today). As I was being eased out I got lumbered our business's end of it; no problem, I knew where a few of the bodies were buried and managed to find a few more. It was a massive tick-box operation - exactly what you'd expect from an ISO-9000 driven organisation.

The results of the first stage were reviewed by someone from security. We had words on account of my refusing to tick the box to the effect that bought-in software had no undocumented functionality. I pointed out that undocumented functionality would cover bugs* and suggested that if he wasn't happy he go and have a word with procurement to see if they could get statements to that effect from Microsoft etc. A little while later the review was signed off with the box still unticked. I heard later that the reviewer had no IT background, he was from physical security.

And, as far as I know, none of the bodies were ever excavated.

*I'm pretty sure that what was meant was that there were no time-bombs or back doors built in, this having been in the news not long before. They should have been a little more explicit when writing the document.

Tokyo 2020 Olympic medals to be made from old electronics

"8,000 kg of precious metals for 4,000kg of medals."

Some of it evaporates during processing.

Fear not, Europe's Privacy Shield is Trump-proof – ex-FTC bigwig

Re: Yeah, it's a nice story..

"but the laws are pretty clear about this - as are the lawyers involved."

I'm sure the ECJ will be as well as soon as Schrems or whoever gets a case there.

"The transatlantic Privacy Shield data transfer agreement is not at risk from Trump's executive actions, former FTC Commissioner Julie Brill has promised."

To quote* the sage Mandy Rice Davies, she would say that, wouldn't she?

There are a couple of issues here:

1. Once one agency has illegally extracted data the rest can share it legally.

2. The whole thing is irrelevant. There's no way to know that data has been acquired and that there is, therefore, a reason to seek redress and the redress method is in appropriate; the appropriate jurisdiction for a tribunal to obtain redress is the data subject's own, not the offender's.

*OK, I know that's how a journo rendered her evidence for the paper, not what she actually said.

Protest against Trump's US travel ban leaves ‪PasswordsCon‬ in limbo

Re: another opportunist fake protester.

"no political statement while hundreds of thousands were being bombed, ISIL burned people to death. No political statement about the rise of violence and rape in Europe by the same immigrating culture."

@A/C

I think you must have clicked on Submit before you finished your comment as you've omitted your political statement about the deaths and injuries arising out of NI terrorism which was financed by so many US citizens.

Or are you just another Johnny-come-lately fake political protester?

Re: No.

"Having a toddler hissy fit isnt one of them."

Organising an international meeting implies that attendees need to be able to get there.

Having a country suddenly apply arbitrary* travel bans to attendees interferes with such organising activity.

Stating that isn't having a hissy fit although objecting to someone stating it might well be.

*There's no basis for the ban in that any given individual being banned has done something wrong or that there's reason to think they will do something wrong. It's just that they come from some particular country. That's arbitrary. It's also directly contrary to the presumption of innocence which, I understand, used to be a big tenet of the US constitution.

Re: Quick to take offense?

"Per Thorsheim is allowed to boycott any conference he wants to, but his public pontification and flag-waving is telling."

Yes it is.

It's telling us that it becomes pointless to organise international meetings in a country which will arbitrarily ban attendees from other countries. ban them not because of what they've done, not because of what they might do but because they're from another country.

He's telling us that. Most of us hear that. He's telling you but you weren't listening.

Re: Oh FFS

"Somehow i doubt the Trump gives a shit."

Not at present.

But as such actions make it more difficult to conduct intellectual endeavours such as meetings and engineering in the US then the US will start to lose economic strength to other parts of the world.

He might care then, although given that he'll be getting to the end of his term, maybe not. But it's quite likely that it'll take the US a lot longer to dig itself out of that hole than it took him to dig in in in the first place. Sadly the same thing is going to happen in the UK unless some of our own politicians have a sudden rush of brains to the head, look at the example the US is providing and realise it's something to avoid.

Re: Alternatively...

Using it as such marks you out as a person with a different opinion who thinks their own opinion lacks virtue.

FTFY

IETF 'reviewing' US event plans in the face of Trump's travel ban

Re: Where's the outrage at "racist" Kuwait?

"The modern left is just virtue signalling"

This term "virtue signalling". Those who signal virtue must have virtue to signal. So when you use it as a derogatory term is it a signal that your PoV lacks virtue?

Re: "City University New York has more than 100 affected. That's just one university."

"So not quite as many as got murdered and wounded by a Muslim terrorist loon in Orlando. That's just one night club."

It's nowhere near the number killed and injured by NI terrorism over the years. That was supported by many US citizens. Maybe we should ban all US citizens from travel to the UK or Ireland. It's the same "logic".

It looks as if the likely result is going to be the gradual movement of any form of intellectual endeavour out of the US.

Re: *facepalm*

"Jump in to express disgust at what you think will make you look moral in the eyes of the peer group"

There's a little flaw in that. Votes are anonymous - rather like your post - so they're not effective in making the voter look moral in the eyes of the peer group; the eyes can't see them. Please engage the brain before setting the keyboard in motion.

Motivational speaker in the slammer after HPE applies for court order

Re: Judge with a sense of humour

Despite the widely held opinion to the contrary Judges are sharp individuals and usually have a good way with words, having come up through the ranks of the barristers. If you get on the wrong side of one you'll find they're well able to express their opinion.

Nice story. Not quite in the Prenda Law league but nice.

It's amazing what a little self-confidence can achieve.

GitLab.com luckily found lost data on a staging server

Re: Now for the good news..

"So, in a few weeks, GitHub will be the best place to be :)"

According to your reasoning, GitLab will be the best place to be.

Re: +-

"What does that mean?"

More or less.

Re: Ofcourse they went public...

"Maybe I'm too cynical here, I cannot rule this out, but in my opinion Gitlab didn't have a choice but to go public. For the simple reason of damage control."

Maybe you are. All too often businesses come up with a different choice in that their responses are from a standard PR playbook: "Only a few....", "your ... is important to use" etc., none of which is believed by anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

If at the end of this they end up saying that only a few users were affected there'll be plenty of detail to give it credence.

Facebook's dabblings in TV suggest Zuck isn't actually a genius after all

"the collision of telcos and media companies is propelled by the optimistic idea that people prefer billing simplicity over choice."

Surely it's the companies that prefer this. The people's preference comes down to take it or leave it.

GitLab.com melts down after wrong directory deleted, backups fail

"If they're floundering like that, they probably wouldn't be able to grasp your solution"

Flounder in terms of not having been able to answer the hard questions.