Posts by Doctor Syntax

Facebook to forcefeed you web ads, whether you like it or not: Ad blocker? Get the Zuck out!

Re: OK, let's catch that lie: Facebook is NOT free.

"You ARE paying for Facebook"

An alternative view is that you're not paying for Facebook. You are what Facebook is selling - to anyone who wants a slice of you.

Re: So FB is taking responsibility...

"..for vetting each and every ad that runs on their network, 24/7/365.25, to ensure that it does not deliver a virus / ransomware / spyware / browser hijack payload to users."

They're going to need to, aren't they? Because every slip gets to be expensive.

Re: Simple solution...

"the only data they are selling is my anonymous Facebook account data" and that of "my extended family who are spread out all over the country, and there isn't a day goes by that I don't get to see and enjoy photos and videos of my young nephews, neices and cousins as they learn to walk and talk, play in their gardens, start at their new schools, attend their proms, graduate from their Universities, and eventually post their own videos of themselves getting wasted in fancy dress."

Re: I'm wondering

"And If you end up unwittingly serving up a nasty trojan-bearing ad the reputational damage is all yours! Using an ad broker at least spreads the blame around a bit."

If you serve up a nasty from your own servers then you're open to actual damages so have good reason to be careful after the first time.* Irrespective of using an ad-broker you're likely to get the reputational damage anyway - the users don't see the broker.

*Or maybe a whole lot of times if your CEO happens to be a baroness and you're a bit slow moving.

Re: Just one

"it's a lot better than blasting a bunch of people with emails in the hope they find it interesting, and not an annoyance or an intrusion."

Change your email address and don't give out the new one to the pests.

Re: Just one

"only let me know what they are doing via FB cr*p."

Do you care? Do they care if you don't know?

Just don't use FB & tell them that if they want to contact you they'll have to use email or even - wow! - pick up the phone.

Funny story, this. UK.gov's 'open banking app revolution'. Security experts not a fan of it

"their security guy is one incredible chap"

I'd prefer credibility in a security guy.

Re: I'm all for online banking...

"Maybe people aren't switching because, on the whole, UK banking is very good? I've only ever moved to take advantage of deals not because of bad service."

Really? More likely people aren't switching because they're uniformly crap having dead-heated in their race to the bottom. I've only ever moved because of bad service and am running out of places to go.

Bungling Microsoft singlehandedly proves that golden backdoor keys are a terrible idea

Given that Microsoft have more or less given up on the RT as a source of profit wouldn't it be a good idea to unlock them? It wouldn't cost them anything and would be good PR. The only problem appears to be that, AFAICS from the article, the same keys are used everywhere so they couldn't restrict this to the RT.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update crashing under Avast antivirus update

It used to be said that anti-virus firms were engaged in an arms race with virus writers. Now it seems they're engaged in another arms race with Windows.

Re: We'll see more of this with W10

If the company has a legal department perhaps yo should draw their attention to the T&Cs. Just to be sure ask them what exceptions they might expect and whether they can find them.

Internet of Car...rikey what the hell just happened to my car?

Re: The worth

"I would venture that very few hackers are actually interested in taking over control of your steering or brakes."

There are few idiots who drag obstacles onto railway lines. Nevertheless they exist and are a nuisance at best and very dangerous at worst. I don't see any reason to suppose that those who'd do that wouldn't also be interested in crashing your car if it came in range.

Re: The worth

"If we get to the stage where oiks can stand on motorway bridges, press a button on their Pi-powered gizmo, can crash a stream of cars into each other, can do it time after time at any time of their choosing, we will indeed have a problem. But we are a long way from that."

So you're saying that the time to solve a problem is after it's gone into production? Surely conventional wisdom is that you build security into the design, not try to add it on afterwards. Because by the time we have that problem it will be far too late to fix it.

Brit network O2 hands out free Windows virus with USB pens

Re: "We apologise for any inconvenience"

All the PR boiler-plate apologies exacerbate the original offence. I can only surmise that PR is populated by those too incompetent to be employed in marketing.

Re: Full Disclosure

"Who at O2 ordered the USB marketing campaign"

Any marketing campaign even vaguely related to IT should be overseen by a competent IT security professional. This, of course, is the second best option. The best option is to fire marketing.

Even now someone in Microsoft marketing is working on a give-away USB device that installs Windows 10...

Meanwhile, over at O2, proof that being detached from BT doesn't improve management.

Hybrid cloud: Deciding the right mix for your workloads

"To me an on-premise system is one that sits ... in secure data centre to which your office has suitably fast connectivity"

I'd have thought that a better minimum definition of on-premise is that if the connectivity goes down you can see the digger that did it. Or the cleaner who pulled out the plug.

'Nigerian scammer' busted after he infected himself with malware

"How is that not illegal?"

The burglar is in a poor position to complain about being burgled, especially when his own tools were used.

Re: why are they not being treated as accessories?

'they nabbed the whole "company" and have records that could cause the victims to claim restitution.'

Claiming is one thing, getting is another. I doubt any company who has lost money during the monitoring period would have consider the eventual outcome to have been worth the cost of their losses.

There's always a trade-off between gathering information and allowing harm to continue. It will always seem easier to err on the former side when it's someone else's harm; allowance should be made for that.

They monitored the operation for several months. According to another report they did attempt to contact at least some of the victims to warn them (and were themselves suspected of being scammers) but essentially the let the scam run rather than blowing the whistle PDQ. So why are they not being treated as accessories?

Breaking 350 million: What's next for Windows 10?

" Regular people are simply scared of an upgrade breaking something..."

And when those upgrades have gained a reputation of doing that, quite rightly so.

"... and having to learn new things."

Experience with smartphones and Chromebooks indicates that that's not the case.

"When they buy a new PC they will not have a choice."

That depends on the H/W vendors. If they decide that Windows has become a toxic brand they'll offer a choice.

Re: It's not all bad

"For a year all new machines have come with Windows 10"

Bought one with W7, upgradeable to 8.1 with an included DVD, a couple of seeks ago. Admittedly it was the last of that particular model they had in stock but there were a few other models on their site.

Re: Deja Vu

" Windows XP = 10%...The Windows XP segment isn't going to shrink very quickly. It clearly consists of users (or applications) that are happy as they are."

As this is online usage the real XP share might be higher than that as it will include boxes that are tied to specialist H/W that never even provided W7 drivers but never go online.

Re: What's next for Windows 10?

"Except that Google gives me ads when I visit 80% of web sites."

Given the ready availability of ad-blockers I'd have thought that that must be a matter of your personal choice.

Re: How to sell hardware

"The Windows 7 post SP1 convenience Rollup, which has EVERY update since SP1 to April 2016."

It seems to have some other update as a pre-requisite!

It seems every iteration is moving W10 a little further towards becoming a toxic brand. At some point H/W manufacturers may either move to Chromebooks or the like or get together to fund development of an alternative OS, maybe based on Linux, BSD or possibly ReactOS which they can control.

Some benefits of digital health to NHS may be delayed by consent model consultation – expert

"A new consent and opt-out model"

When will they learn? Opt-in

Linux 4.8 rc1 lands, with Surface 3 support promised!

"It just grows including support for every nasty and not so nasty processor and chipset that comes out."

Which just get loaded as modules at boot time. I guess you've never looked at a Linux system.

Re: Keep on hacking

@Bob Vistakin

Thanks, Bob. Made my morning!

Windows 10 Anniversary Update is borking boxen everywhere

Re: Bork bork bork

"I believe a lot of that was 'outsourced' to overseas locations"

Not entirely overseas. They have users testers everywhere.

"The only issue I have with W10 is the Start Menu"

You haven't read the T&Cs then? Not all the comments about "telemetry"?

Re: A bad workman always blames his tools

And those who bought the tools he made blame the bad workman.

Re: It is good that microsoft is on hand with excellent advice

"That's the downside of a rolling release."

...which is what Windows seems to have become.

Re: It is good that microsoft is on hand with excellent advice

"and those who are not can easily get the files back with a linux live CD."

After which they can just install from the Linux CD.

In the midst of reading these comments I had an alert pop up about 4 updates (to fontconfig stuff). They were downloaded in less than a second and released 105 K of disk.

US Politicians tell DEF CON it'll take Congress ages to sort out how to regulate crypto

Optimistic

Seeing as they want two mutually incompatible things sorting it out in a year seems a tad optimistic.

Privacy warriors drag GCHQ into Euro human rights court over blanket spying, hacking

Re: @Rich 11 -- Simple Absolute Answers

"Your last paragraph sums politics... succinctly."

It sums up almost everyone in any managerial or administrative position, political or otherwise.

"Why single out the UK government? Did they think it would be an easy target?

Why not try the same thing against the US government"

Because it's UK legislation that's being challenged.

Because the UK is a signatory of the ECHR where C = Convention.

Because the UK is subject to the jurisdiction of the ECHR where C = Court.

Because none of the above apply to the US.

Is it really so difficult to understand?

"Did you know that leaving the EU also doesn't get us out of the Eurovision song contest,"

Bad news.

"but it will mean the remaining EU members will give us nil points."

Meh.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

Re: The year the BBC died

I doubt the Beeb will miss you either.

Re: Scrap the BBC

"All it shows is crap now a days."

How do you explain the large audience it gets? And before you trot out the obvious answer, bear in mind that that audience might consider your preferred viewing to be crap.

Re: License per concurrent device connected.

"Is that a contravention of the law?"

it depends if it's running under mains power whilst you're watching - assuming, of course, that you don't have a long mains lead plugged in back at your place. Or something like that.

"the UK is not leaving the ECHR or the EU"

The latter remains to be seen. The former, even May has admitted can't happen - much as she'd like to.

Re: I got exactly one letter.

@Richard 12

Have you any idea how unpopular it is round here when you come up with facts?

Re: Once upon a time detector vans existed

"it is inevitable there is a case where guilt or innocence on the available evidence comes down to a simple mathematical probability at which point a threshold has to be determined."

Not really. If you take a typical trace material investigation you're effectively saying there's a 1 in x chance of this material being found on someone being hauled in at random and asking the jury to decide if x is a big enough number. But the situation is that the defendant shouldn't have been hauled in at random, there should be other reasons to have arrested him. That should also be part of the evidence. You should have multiple lines of evidence coinciding.

What I'm not happy with (as per Bazza's fingerprint case) is someone with a match in the records being charged and that match being the only evidence submitted.

Basic scientific method is that you form a hypothesis (for some good reason, not at random) and then try test it by trying to disprove it. You look for tests which make it difficult for the confirmatory result to be obtained by chance.

If fingerprint or DNA is the most discriminatory technique at your disposal then if that's your original reason for suspicion your confirmatory evidence, by definition, isn't going to be as good. If you allow for the fact that there could be an innocent basis for the fingerprint or DNA being found (including contamination in the case of DNA) then the case is actually resting on less good evidence.

Microsoft: You liked Windows 10 so much, you'll get 2 more in 2017

Even my 11-year-old granddaughter expresses a wise preference. It turns out that she's used both at primary school and prefers 7.

Her mother let her own laptop upgrade to 10. I wonder what she's going to way when Little Orphan Annie arrives on it, adverts & all.

Re: Happy with anniversary update

"Now you can really use the power of the Linux commandline and scripting under Windows"

But wouldn't you be better off running it under Debian or Suse or Slackware or...?

Re: Ample is as good as a feast

"Which part of Microsoft do you work for?"

He doesn't. He's from another planet - possibly another Universe.

Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

"Does anyone really *like* what MS is doing these days?"

MS love it. They're giving themselves as much access as they want to your PC.

Re: Windows 10

'For the life of me, I cannot understand why M$ thinks it's OK to remove control over the configuration of production machines. I guess they just assume that only Enterprise Edition customers use their computers for "real work," and the rest of us just play Candy Crush Soda Saga.'

Haven't you worked that out? Even if you only use one computer for real work you're supposed to go out and entangle yourself in enterprise-scale licensing and costs. There may be an option coming a little later for a remote desktop terminal install which just signs you in to do all your work on Azure.

Re: Windows 10

"If I were in charge I would certainly hold off on rolling out any more OS "features" for a while."

That's because you don't understand frog-boiling. There's a strategy at work here.