Posts by Doctor Syntax

IPv4 is OVER. Really. So quit relying on it in new protocols, sheesh

"This isn't about rejecting protocols that support IPv4"

Actually, it seems to be about just that:

The IAB expects that the IETF will stop requiring IPv4 compatibility in new or extended protocols. Future IETF protocol work will then optimize for and depend on IPv6.

That will only be viable when the IPv4 ceases to be used. The article refers to the the IPv4 address pool being "exhausted". This is an unfortunate choice of words. "The pool" is that of unallocated addresses and it's exhausted because the addresses have been allocated. The pool of IPv4 addresses being used is far from exhausted, it's pretty well full and there are a lot of them.

Replacing IPv4 with new IPv6 addresses won't be straightforward. A more sensible approach would be to assume that IPv4 will continue in use indefinitely with IPv6 being added and only change that approach when it becomes clear that in fact IPv4 use really has been discontinued in practice.

Brexflation: Lenovo, HPE and Walkers crisps all set for double-digit hike

Re: ...pies and beer

"The bad news is both of our desires are currently impossible.

Yours by physics, mine by EU regulation."

Your list was:

unilateral free trade In which direction? Inward trade? If so, yes a Brexited Britain could do that. So everyone can sell into the UK but we have to face tariff barriers everywhere. Why would we want to do that? Or outward trade? That depends on other countries lowering their tariff barriers while we raise ours. Why would they want to do that?

lower taxes Not going to happen post-Brexit. Your taxes are going to increase to pay all those subsidies to Nissan etc. to make up for not being subject to EU regulation inside the customs union.

an end to subsidies The EU is very much against those. Ask Ireland and Apple. But as per my point above, we're likely to be very keen on bribingsubsidising foreign manufacturers who set up here to be inside the EU and have found we've moved them out.

Re: don't for get the Chocolate 'repackaging'

"Incidentally, is it just me or do the small mars bars taste better than the big ones?"

Maybe they get cooked through properly when they're deep fried.

Re: I can't help but feel this is the calm before the (shit) storm.

"I posed this in a previous thread. Nobody replied. Maybe you'd like to try."

A down voter. Instead of voting down why not give us your answer?

Re: Brexploitation

"If you really think that short term price rises caused by speculators are a bigger issue than who makes our laws, then I wonder is there anything you wouldn't sell off for a price?"

First I need to disabuse you of something. Ultimately neither the UK nor the EU, either separately or in combination are in complete control of what happens here or in the rest of Europe. Nobody is. We live in a world in which all sorts of complex interactions take place. Various people can drive bits of the system but we all have to live with the overall result. Sorry. Your simple view of how things are isn't real.

Secondly the value of any currency relative to any other is determined by the market - what rates people are prepared to exchange currency at and what amounts of any currency they're prepared to pay for particular goods and services. It's not speculation, it's trade. Overall people place less value on sterling than they did. It's going to be a fact of life for a long time and it will have a significant effect on any British govt's to determine how life is lived in Britain irrespective of any legislation Parliament passes. You got your Brexit vote through. Stop trying to blame others for its direct consequences.

Re: Cause and effect?

"So trade dependent on imports does become more competitive, albeit by a smaller amount than goods or services which are wholly sourced within the UK."

Which was my point. Although once wages start chasing the inflation caused by the £ devaluation and all the other stuff even that advantage goes.

Re: I can't help but feel this is the calm before the (shit) storm.

"Because we were finally given a referendum and that 'result would be carried out immediately'"

I posed this in a previous thread. Nobody replied. Maybe you'd like to try.

From the text of Article 50:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

What are the constitutional requirements for the UK to do this? Please quote the authority for your answer.

As another commentator has said in this thread, it's a major constitutional change. As such it's surely imperative that it be done legally. In fact, as I said in that other thread, I'm in favour of HMG's appealing it up to the Supreme Court.

Re: You know the joke meme about how do you confuse a blonde ?

"I'd like to see unilateral free trade, lower taxes and an end to subsidies."

I'd like to see free whiskey. Other preferences are available.

Re: don't for get the Chocolate 'repackaging'

"No, you miss the point, we will only see downside until we complete Brexit, then things will get a lot better because we can start to slash away the business/trade choking weeds of EU legislation disguised as UK legislation, and have much freer and cheaper trade with non-EU countries."

If you're interested I have a load of pixie dust to sell. It's in a cart pulled by a Unicorn you can also buy if you like.

Re: don't for get the Chocolate 'repackaging'

"That sort for thing has been going for ever."

Wagon Wheels -> Barrow Wheels

Re: I can't help but feel this is the calm before the (shit) storm.

"numerous post-referendum polls have shown that idealogical reasons like sovereignty and identity were more important to voters than anything else"

So why are the Brexiteers now whining because a British court has re-emphasised the importance of the sovereignty of Parliament, something which has been central to British government (or control if you prefer the term) for over a third of a millennium?

Re: Whilst I don't disagree with the thrust of the article...

"most of the volume of the packs is fresh air."

Gotta import more air to replace what goes into the bag.

"Anyone who voted for Brexit and who is now suffering?"

As far as possible May will make sure they don't suffer, hence the deal, whatever it was, with Nissan. How will she finance it? Presumably at the expense of sectors that voted Remain.

Re: Cause and effect?

"Doesn't this mean that UK goods are now more attractive to overseas buyers?"

Only to the extent that they don't depend on imports.

Add it to the tab: ICO fines another spammer as unpaid bills mount

Re: Cut off the head

One of those coming in to Chez Nous is likely to get an abrupt variant of "I am not interested in this call" which in turn is usually followed by a reprimand from Mrs Commswonk "they're only trying to make a living".

You could be a vegetarian who grows or forages all their own food and knits their own clothing from wool gathered from the surrounding hedgerows. You could even offer to sell the caller some of your surplus lentils.

Re: Cut off the head

"There seem to be two separate issues here - the companies that do the spamming, and the companies that hire them."

I think there's an alternative approach: rather than work for direct hire the spammers generate leads which are sold on to companies that actually have some product or service. This would be somewhat more difficult to deal with in this way. The owner of the spammer can shut down and still have the leads to sell on.

"This is made worse by it not being possible to trace all faked or temporary CLI's"

How do you think telecoms companies bill the calls? If it originates on their system they know who made the call. If it didn't originate on their system they know who put it through and bill them. Telecoms companies have someone to bill, if they didn't they'd be out of business.

Re: Go after the lawyers as well...

" To set up any small business, the easiest way is to buy an "off the shelf" company, set up by a lawyer."

When I bought mine it was from an accountant. (An aside: one of the alternatives offered was one letter away from being the name of a then well-known database. It didn't seem like a good choice.)

I still think my idea was the best.

Take a number in the 147x range. If the caller dials that immediately after a call their telecoms provider credits their account with a couple of quid as a fee for taking the call (a tenner if they were TPS registered) and adds that, plus their own handling charges to the caller's bill. If the call originated from another provider they charge that provider who can then add their own handling charge and bill the caller. Extend as required until it gets onto the caller's bill or a provider who was stupid enough to accept traffic from elsewhere without having the required arrangements in place.

Yes, it would require sufficient calls to be reported against a caller to activate it, both to avoid fat finger errors and to deal with someone who decides to try to collect from all incoming calls, however innocent.

And yes, telecoms companies do know the origin of calls with fake CLI - how do you think they bill them? Come to think of it, double the payout for a call with a faked CLI.

Telecoms companies would start being more careful about who gets to set up accounts, otherwise they'd end up with a lot of unpaid bills. They'd also be faced with the up-front costs of putting the arrangement into place although the costs would be recovered through the handling charges. The consequences, of course, would be that the scourge would disappear very quickly and the telecoms companies would end up with being unable to recover those costs. However if this scheme was presented to them as a potential Transaction Handling Reimbursment in Event of Abuse of Telecoms scheme I'm quite sure they'd quickly come up with an effective alternative means of stamping out the whole thing.

Re: Go after the lawyers as well...

"Might I also suggest that the lawyers involved in liquidating these companies and then setting up new ones should be disbarred for aiding and abetting a crime."

I doubt it requires a lawyer.

Facebook 'fesses up to WhatsApp privacy blunder in UK

Re: Prediction: The ICO will do f*ck all

Revised prediction. She's taking her job seriously so May will get rid of her.

Turn off remote admin, SOHOpeless D-Link owners

'As Ribeiro notes, “D-link has a long history of vulnerabilities in HNAP”, many of them attributed to embedded device hacker Craig Heffner of dev/ttyS0.'

Was Craig Heffner responsible for creating the vulnerabilities or for the discovery of them? I suspect you meant the latter but the wording implies the former.

New Relic: Turtles? No. It's cloud infrastructure all the way down

Re: "There's no such thing as 'The Cloud'..."

"trot out the same old same old thinking"

There's plenty more same old thinking I'm happy to trot out. I expect gravity to stop bits flying off the world, I expect broken cups not to spontaneously reassemble themselves etc.

Re: "There's no such thing as 'The Cloud'..."

Dammit. Beaten me to it. Have an upvote and a

We're going to have to start making changes or the adults will do it for us

Re: The problem in IT is the anarchic attitude...

"Experience suggests rules long out-last the reasons for them"

I've thought for a long time that a rule should be accompanied by its rationale. That way (a) PHBs & CxOs who wish to override them can be made aware of the risks and (b) it's possible to see when changing circumstances remove the rule's reason for existence.

Technological evangelism means someone thinks something they are doing is better, and a lifetime's worth of experiences say that on close examination it turns out to be the same old same old gussied up with a new name.

FTFY

Browsers nix add-on after Web of Trust is caught selling users' browsing histories

Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title. Sir Humphrey would have approved.

UK spying law delayed while Lords demand Leveson amendments

Re: First the Brexit vote, now this.

"I think the appeal is more of a hissy fit as they have been embarrassed"

It may be but even so I think it's the right thing to do. Imagine the situation if it was left at this stage, the MPs voted for May's bill, Article 50 was invoked and then someone was to appeal the current decision to the Supreme Court alleging that it wasn't legally invoked. Taking it to the Supreme Court rules out any further uncertainty which is simply the sensible thing to do.

As is leaving it to the MPs. After a few more % of inflation and a few big employers indicating they'll leave the UK MPs voting against invoking Article 50 could be hailed as popular saviours. A week is a long time in politics: there are quite a few weeks between now and March.

Re: First the Brexit vote, now this.

Seeing as you raised the Brexit court decision and obviously disagree with it see if you can answer this:

Article 50 starts:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own

constitutional requirements.

What is the UK's constitutional requirement for this? Please quote an authority for your answer.

Tesco Bank limits online transactions after fraud hits thousands

Re: As I understand the situation

"So why block logons to online banking? That suggests that they have been totally hacked..."

Probably a reasonable precaution until they determine what the problem actually was. Yes, it prevents customers getting on to check but if this was the route so it would stop any further fraud so they had little option.

Re: Corners cut?

"Tesco & Tesco Bank have pots of money"

Rather less these days that the stock market was hoping for. I believe they still have pots of honey.

Mythbuntu busted as last two devs working on media centre distro quit

Re: Kodi Problems

"All I wanted was a decent PVR."

Then try Mythbuntu while you can still download the iso.

Google makes it to third base with Home digital assistant

Re: It's evil

"This is just the next step in the subversion of the general purpose computer."

There seems to be an effort to get us back to the days of there only being a market for 6 computers (or whatever the number was) in the world. The modern twist on this is that rather than being single computers they're networks of data centres (AKA clouds). Everything else is just a programmable client (programmable by the parent company, not the "users") with which to access them. And yes, we need to put "users" in quotes because they're the entity being used.

Re: Same wake word for all devices, really?

Clearly it should be possible to set individual "words". "Oi, you" would seem to be a suitable alternative.

Re: Kitchen interface for Spotify

"I do not understand why someone downvoted you for that post."

Probably on account of the fact that someone who thinks £50 isn't too much to spend on something like that has more money than sense. It's the sort of voting that brought us Brexit.

And surely, a Jambox in a kitchen should be a place to keep your pots of jam.

Any questions? No, not you again at the back, please God no

Re: Fear of flying

"For you guys that are afraid of flying. I am an Aerospace Engineer, i design the bloody things for a living. And I continue to be happy to fly"

Many of us write or have written software for a living and are far from happy about being driven or flown about by software.

Software licencing gets easier in the cloud? Not if your name is Microsoft

Re: You can keep it.

Microsoft, SugarCRM (and derivatives), etc: do they keep personal data of customers?

If so do users have the customer's permission for that and are they registered with the appropriate regulator?

If not they stand at risk from the DPA or equivalent. Things get even worse if it's hosted by a supplier. They then have to worry about - or should be worrying about - where it's hosted, whether the hoster is also registered and just how much cover the Privacy Figleaf provides. Given the standard gung-ho approach of the average salesman or marketroid I suspect that many of the users of CRM are in contravention. Maybe a visit from FAST is the least of their worries.

World-leading heart hospital 'very, very lucky' to dodge ransomware hit

Re: Prepare

Please tell me you missed out the sarcasm tag. Or that you're USian and can be excused on grounds of not knowing any better.

Re: Why

Because the users complain, especially if they're being used to transfer important information such as X-ray images or lab reports. See Spotswood's post for a more practical approach.

Re: Bleedin' obvious

" There's a small management overhead, yes, but it's a damn side better than dealing with an outbreak, which has not happened yet."

And how long before some bozo says "Why are you doing all this? There haven't been any problems so it's just a waste of time."?

Re: Luck?

AIUI the luck bit comes with the fact that the backup completed just before the attack struck so was pretty well up to date.

"using mixed media including tape, given that some attacks target digital backups."

So that's analogue tape. Are they using cassette recorders?

James Dyson's new startup: A university for engineers that doesn't suck

"Have you noticed that all the Wrexiteers commenting on the High Court judgement clearly have absolutely no understanding of the legal issues involved?"

Generalising much?

Adblock overlord to Zuckerberg: Lay down your weapons and surrender

Re: Wall Street is looking for a Facebook blocker

If a load of bankers(sp?) are stupid enough to believe growth can go on for ever what do you expect?

Re: The ultimate ad-blocker

"So yeah, the visible viewport would not show ads to you; but this concept fails to address the bandwidth, performance, and security issues that the current generation of ads has foisted on us."

Security issues wouldn't be a factor unless you have an exploitable /dev/null. Bandwidth, set a maximum size - accept the first K or so and then break the connection. If the advertising agency has any wit they'll count that as the full advert sent and bill the client accordingly.

Re: How ads work

"It's dangerous to believe that ads don't work on you because you choose to ignore them."

I didn't say they don't. They piss me off so I buy from someone who's adverts I didn't get. Businesses have definitely lost my custom by getting in my face. My home insurers are going to be the next to experience this when the renewal comes up shortly.

Re: Simple solution...

'No, because they can use bandwidth usage as a Turing Test to see if their ads are really being "seen".'

A few moments' thought - OK, these are advertising people, a few days' thought - should show them that that really isn't information they want to have. If they don't have it they could, with as clear a conscience any advertising company could have, bill the client for an advert shown.

Re: yeah, about that

"What if I were to tell you .. they possibly make more than a smidge more than that off a person (who doesn't block ads)...?"

A) I'd want to see evidence

B) Any advertiser selling something I might possibly buy stands a better chance of selling to me if I've blocked their ad. and hence helped them to not piss me off.

Re: Eyeo says it [..] wants "user empowerment"

"I've got adblock and have used it for years just fine in conjunction with NoScript. Don't see any ads when I'm surfing"

Snap. And what's more UO seems to interfere with the Beeb weather site. No doubt it can be tuned no to but AB+ and NS do what I want with no problems.

Anti-ultrasound tech aims to foil the dog-whistle marketeers

"track the user's visited content across different devices to then push relevant, more targeted ads."

I think you misspelled irrelevant.