Posts by Doctor Syntax 42697 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
Maybe this is a reaction Microsoft's statement recorded elsewhere ( https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/20/2111240/microsoft-will-solve-cancer-within-the-next-10-years-by-treating-it-like-a-computer-virus-says-company ) that they'll "solve" cancer.
Apparently they intend to treat cells as computers and reprogram them. Should work well unless too many BSOD at the same time.
"So basically you are saying the same thing as the judges: monopoly (by M$) is good!"
No. I'm saying these are two completely different cases with different facts.
I read the previous report. It turned on reimbursement of the cost of the licence for an unwanted piece of software which had been removed.
This, should it come to court, turns on the locking of the device to prevent the removal of the unwanted software. In the report here there's no mention of wanting reimbursement for the licence and if that continues to be the case then the complaints are quite different.
I doubt, however, that you'll want to prevent facts getting in the way of a good rant so please continue.
"EU Judges are already on M$'s payroll, and have ruled that, see here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/09/sony_wins_case_over_preinstalled_windows_software/"
That is a somewhat different situation dealing with a refund of the cost of the licence when the installed Windows was blown away to install something better. Locking the thing in place is a different matter. Cases are determined on facts and the facts in this situation are very different.
"I'm not a Brit, so I have to ask: does that mean he's like the Meta Baron or something?"
He's an ex-local government politician, ex-MP with form, particularly when he was Home Secretary. I don't know how it fits with your admin but back then it included, police, prisons, forensic science and spying on the populace. He seemed particularly keen on the last. He is also blind which explains some of the previous comments.
"There are a couple of ways to manage patent applications:"
3. The patent office follows whatever process it wants but if a patent is invalidated all royalty fees collected against the patent are to be refunded and the office is jointly and severally liable with the patent "holder" for all refunds, damages and costs.
"Self-driving cars have remarkable potential to make a significant dent in the $160bn worth of time and gas that Americans lose stuck in traffic every year"
So self-driving cars don't get stuck in traffic like ordinary cars? Are they made of dark matter or something so they can just drive through?
"A bank might spam you with unwanted crap"
Unfortunately the banks' spam resembles phishing spam quite closely. They're training their customers to be robbed. The disconnect between their marketing and any staff with an inkling about security makes it difficult trust any scaheme the former come up with.
"HP are surely protecting their livelhood."
Not very well.
In order to sell printer cartridges they first have to sell printers. Their reputation has suffered over recent years. If they don't do something PDQ they'll not be able to sell printers. Nor PCs. Sitting around selling not very much isn't going to give them a livelihood in the long term.
When this story broke on /. (over the weekend, elReg!) the comentards there were quick to blame Carly but she's long gone. It must be the entire corporate culture there.
It's simply beyond belief that this is the husk of a company with a once unbeatable reputation for quality.
Fortunately when I bought a colour printer recently I made a conscious decision not to buy HP. My old-school mono-chrome HP just soldiers on, of course.
HP really needs to haul itself out of this pit if it's to survive. This lark might yield a good quarter now. It will just result in a lot of bad quarters and years ahead.
"the employment exchange, by using warrants not tickets."
Employment exchange? That dates you. They've been Job Centre, or is it Job Centre Plus (or maybe something else now) for yonks.
My brief encounter with them when they were still Employment Exchanges gave me the distinct impression that their staff's default mode of thinking was paying money to the permanently unemployed and thus institutionalising that status. Certainly the erk I dealt with - who was possibly on the wrong side of the counter - had to have it explained to him that not being able to sign on on a certain date because I was travelling to a job interview didn't mean I was unavailable for work that day.
Does anyone remember the Rand editor? It was the editor provided with Interactive Unix on the Onyx Z8000 boxes long ago (for some reason we didn't have the "games" tape which had things like the C-shell and vi on it). It was used with VT100 terminals but had the interesting property of being able to panic the machine when one particular key (I can't remember whether it was ESC or Break).
Icon just in case it was ESC.
" I just want a text editor so it's vi all the way."
That'll be nvi : https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi/
Once upon a time I remember coming across some forum post saying that the poster preferred vim because nvi hadn't had any updates for years. Clearly he didn't grok that that's why some of us prefer nvi intended, according to the man entry, as "bug-for-bug compatible replacements for the original Fourth Berkeley Software Distribution (4BSD) ex and vi programs."
"No, the actual risk is not strictly zero"
And in any case forensic examiners are not miracle workers whatever TV fiction might say. It's the art of the practical. In fact a test which is intended to be non-destructive is by no means the norm. e.g. "I can't show you that particular fibre. It was squashed between two diamond anvils but here's its IR spectrum."
I think many of recognised, at least in principle, that if you could remove and read out the contents of the NAND you could implement such an attack. Kudos for this guy for implementing it. Not that it removes the suspicion of "I couldn't find anything on it. $1,000,000 please" as being an entirely satisfactory outcome for the FBI irrespective of what "couldn't find" might represent in terms of effort.
"how much you've grown in the last quarter"
Some really expensive sue-balls turning that growth negative might have an effect. At some point there's going to be one big enough to take a sizeable business down and raise insurance rates for those who haven't taken sufficient care. Insurance might be the key; if real security is cheaper than premiums security will be the answer. I wonder if all that user-owned IT will actually be covered in many cases.
"But I'm also willing to bet that all that empire building is going to look a lot less good for the first manager responsible for getting a hundred million or so customer details leaked because he chose a cloud solution that got hacked."
Maybe the appropriate recourse for the IT dept. would be to hire a pen tester to go after the empire-builder's cloud so the data gets leaked back to IT who can then notify the manager responsible with some examples of the data.
I suppose they could tell him that it wasn't a public leak. Eventually. When he'd completely emptied his alimentary canal.
"If you think that any cubicle-dweller has a realistic chance of simply becoming a successful independent contractor overnight maybe you should try tackling world peace first."
A. Where do you think all the successful independent contractors came from? Not that this is what I was suggesting.
B. I've seen one branch of a business by a combination of layoffs and relocation gradually drop a huge number of staff who would have had the necessary set of skills to set up a successful business in the same industry except that they were shed over a period. Why do I think this? Because they'd already done that for their employer.
"Actually, as a user the only things I care about are the features I need, and the efficiency with which these features are implemented."
One very desirable feature is that features can't be taken away at the whim of a vendor. And a vendor who owns the application, server, protocol and anything else they can think of can't be relied on for that.
"You know that you can set any firewall rules you like right?"
Most net users are using whatever bit of kit their ISP posted out. If a penny can be shaved off the cost of that kit they'll do that. So now you're relying on the built-in firewall from the cheapest possible PoS bought from numpties who leave hard-coded test credentials in their S/W. And you expect an interface which will enable users to set rules and a firewall that will reliably obey them?
"You'll still have a firewall/router with v6. ... the IPs are constantly and randomly changing"
Which makes extra work for whoever's programming the firewall and hence increases the probability of bugs. We have enough problems with leaky router/firewalls already without adding more places to leak.
Pessimistic? Certainly - we're dealing with security here.
'You may say point (1)[not allowing unsolicited inbound connections] is an antiquated way to build networks - that there is no such thing as a "secure network" behind a "perimeter" any more. I'd agree, but try convincing most business of that.'
Surely allowing such inbound connections is the antiquated way. It belongs to a time when internet users trusted each other and were largely justified in that trust. And as for there being no such thing as a secure perimeter that's a bug not a feature.
