Posts by Doctor Syntax

Privacy, net neutrality, security, encryption ... Europe tells Obama, US Congress to back off

Re: And suddenly ..

If you're so knowledgeable about this the following comment surprises me: "Thinking that Microsoft will win this is in my opinion wishful thinking. It would establish a precedent that a single company can change the law,"

This and the Enron bit have been trotted out before and it's wrong. Nobody is challenging the DoJ's right to subpoena evidence if they follow due process. The precedent that the DoJ is trying to set here is that if a company looks after the records of someone else then those records become part of the company's records. Enron's company records would have been Enron's company records wherever they were held and a decision in Microsoft's favour wouldn't change that.

There is a mechanism in place for a request to go through due process of law in Ireland. They chose not to use that and invent the theory that other people's email is part of Microsoft's coompany records. Why they did so is a good question. Was it a fishing expedition which couldn't be made to stand up in Ireland because there was no good prima facie case?

If such a precedent were set think of the possible consequences. SomeCo is acting as a safe deposit for documents establishing somebody's right to property; say the deeds of your house. SomeCo goes into receivership or whatever the equivalent is in the US. The receiver can treat the deeds as SomeCo's company records and make whatever use of them that will raise money. When it's put like that does it seem such a good precedent to set?

Re: how many of the MEPs were from the UK

You can check for yourself by reading the linked PDF. And the answer isn't just damn few, it's none! Not unless we have an MEP with a very non-UK sounding name.

Re: And suddenly ..

"Now let's see what finally happens in the DoJ vs Microsoft case because that will pretty much set the scene for the rest of this year."

This year? That's optimistic in terms of court proceedings. And whatever happens the consequences will probably rumble on for a good few years.

Bloodthirsty data parasites hungrily eye up healthcare sector

Re: care.data

"should have a published plan of what they will do *when* it is stolen"

I like it (apart from the fact that "stolen" isn't the legally correct term). It should extend to loss from anyone they've sold it on to and anyone they in turn sold it on to ad inf. - which would place an obligation on purchasers to report back. It would at least concentrate the minds.

"Claim from our insurance" wouldn't be a satisfactory complete answer although it might be a good thing to include. Insurers need to start thinking what they might be on the hook for and start dictating precautions.

And the plans should apply when someone downstream combines anonymised data with a data set capable of de-anonymising it.

care.data

SUCH a good idea!

Happy birthday to you, the ruling was true, no charge for this headline, 'coz the copyright's screwed

Re: Copyright theft

"they should be ordered to pay all that back."

With interest. Compound interest.

"so should the tune not be out of copyright anyway??"

Sometimes reading is so difficult. From TFA "expired in 1949".

Revealed: Why Amazon, Netflix, Tinder, Airbnb and co plunged offline

Re: @ Voland's right hand If only there was a way

"the sparky didn't like working on live kit"

Clearly you need a BOFH. Choice of working on live kit or the cattle prod.

Ex-BT boffin Cochrane blasts telco's 'wholly inadequate' broadband vision

What would be the cost of laying FTTP for the whole country? Not just densely populated cities but the whole country - isolated farms included. And the true cost, not the sort of estimates that are used to get the contract so that the difference to the true cost, along with the profits, can be added in as extras.

You call THAT safe? Top EU legal bod says data sent to US is anything but

The EU needs to give a deadline by which the existing SH will be dead unless there is a major change in US legislation - one which will be binding on the NSA with a treaty binding the US govt.

No more NSLs.

No more rubber stamping courts.

No more DoJ fishing expeditions.

The whole lot repealed from US law.

The deadline should be just sufficient for companies to bring their data home with a modicum of panic if they get their backsides into action PDQ; sufficient panic to give them serious worries about ever getting into that situation again.

Then let's see how fast US officialdom can reform to try to meet the deadline from their side. It would help if there were increased political pressures in the US. Isn't there an election coming up soon?

If you absolutely must do a ‘private cloud’ thing, here's how

Re: Business Critical Data out there in the cloud

" if it happened to Shoreditch no one would notice anyway apart from the slight increase in hot air rising from the area."

Don't you mean decrease?

Citrix wants a buyer, fast

If these activist investors are so good at managing other people's companies how come they haven't set up their own businesses to actually do stuff?

Malvertisers slam Forbes, Realtor with world's worst exploit kits

Re: In a related story, Advertising Age editor Ken Wheaton once said...

Is Basingstoke really that bad?

Re: responsibilities

@Don Dumb

I take your point about the sites' contractual arrangements being with the advertisers not the public who visit them. However, to continue with the restaurant...No, let's just say that the sites also have a duty of care to the public, as we all have. If, by negligence, they cause public harm then they must surely be liable.

Apart from that they must surely have concerns for their reputation. Are they really content that their sites are bait to be used by criminals?

11 MILLION VW cars used Dieselgate cheatware – what the clutch, Volkswagen?

Re: European testing

In the UK at least the test results determine the taxation class. If the upshot of this is that taxation classes get revised upwards there are going to be a lot of unhappy customers - and presumably a big prosecution under the Trades Description Act.

BTW so far the reports apply to diesel. Does anyone know if petrol-fuelled cars are also affected?

India's daft draft anti-encryption law torn up after world+dog points out its stupidity

Danger

Encryption policies can seriously damage your wealth. Other governments please copy.

Cambridge University Hospitals rated 'inadequate' due to £200m IT fail

Re: Bah!

" describe a rich and immutable API"

Can't do that because Agile.

Things you should know about the hard work of home working

Re: Terminology

"Working from home is, I believe, generally understood as working from one's own home."

Agreed. From. Not at. If you don't see the confusion it may be because you're confusing the two words.

There are a number of scenarios where the worker's normal base is home but little or no work is done there. The field service tech is one example, the travelling salesman is another. There may be a certain amount of paperwork done at home but it's certainly not the same as working there more or less full time which is what the article described. It's also not the same as working daily on a single customer site which you mentioned in another post; been there & done that myself, visiting my employer's office maybe 3 or 4 times in a couple of years.

The circumstances are different. Working from home isn't likely to cut down travel but increase it. It doesn't mean isolation except, maybe, for a tech servicing unmanned installations but at the same time one isn't dealing with the same people on a daily basis and communication with one's fellow employees is restricted.

Terminology

There's confusion here. Working FROM home isn't the same as working AT home. eg A maintenance tech going from home to one customer site to another and seldom visiting base might be said to be working from home but not at home.

Cisco shocker: Some network switches may ELECTROCUTE you

IT kit with built in cattleprod. Marvellous!

My parents don't know I'm in SEO. They think I play piano in a brothel

Re: Spam filter

My response is to ask them which site they're referring to. They never seem to be able to quote a URL. Odd that as I have a number of sites. Well, zero's a number isn't it?

Get all their email addresses & add them to every spam list known to man or beast. Especially beast.

India to cripple its tech sector with proposed encryption crackdown

Re: Bureaucrats not speaking to techies

" They won't stand for it since they get hit if there's any attack and data grab."

Sadly, data grabs are getting to be business as usual these days.

This could be interesting

If they go ahead and the Indian service sector's overseas customers start to drop them maybe a few other governments might get the message.

Microsoft starts to fix Start Menu in new Windows 10 preview

Re: Documents on desktop

'sensitive documents shouldn't appear on desktops in case a minion notices the file "Everybody to be sacked.xlsx".'

Sensitive documents shouldn't leak information in their filenames.

Re: Not curious

"STILL they haven't yet given users back the start menu that they've been asking for since 2011."

I suspect that the reason for that is that they're still stuck on the idea of having something that will sort of work on a small screen for phones as well as on a desktop. It might take a lot more iterations before they realise that "sort of work" will inevitably be crap one one or other and probably both.

Re: MS seems to be staning on the Poop Deck

Why the downvotes for the OP? Are these MS shills? If so the most useful thing they could do is report this is user feedback of what they've got wrong, otherwise they're reinforcing the truth of Steve's comment.

Police Scotland fingered for breaching RIPA code 'multiple' times

"Careful consideration has also had to be given to the fact that criminal investigations and legal proceedings are invariably active and we are not yet in a position to consider the impact or potential wider consequences of naming."

One of the consequences of naming might be that improperly obtained evidence might be disallowed. Another, wider, consequence might be that there would be a strong disincentive to bypass due process in the future.

MoJ admits to splashing out on 2.3 MILLION Oracle licences

"Why would Oracle offer a discount, UK publilc sector business is <1% of revenues"

And if the stuff gets moved to a cheaper platform why should the taxpayer care whether it's Oracle or something else? Go back & read Richard 12's comment again.

Techie finds 1.5 million US medical records exposed on Amazon's AWS

Re: Remember, this is REQUIRED.

So you're valuing your data more highly than your health. Good luck with that.

'I may be winning this ad-blocker game, but I hate it. I'm outta here (with $100k). Buh-bye'

Re: We do hope you've enjoyed this week of botched Apple updates

"The Register is supposed to be a tech web site, sadly its lost its way."

So why are you still reading it?

You want the poor to have more money? Well, doh! Splash the cash

Re: Tax and spend!

"this is a big ask if you're trying to justify adding a kitchen extension"

That depends on why you want the kitchen extension. Are you wanting it because to satisfy your desire to live in a house with a bigger kitchen or as an investment?

Re: Tax and spend!

"From which the lesson I take is that whatever we decide to spend the tax money on had better be worth more than the activity we've just destroyed by taxing in the first place."

Which puts us right back with the problem of computing utility, which is what you need to determine the "worth more" bit.

RFID wants to TRACK my TODGER, so I am going to CUT it OFF

Scope for harmless fun

Cut off the RFID tags, put in an envelope and post to the manager of the store you bought the stuff from, another branch, a rival store or whatever. It should screw up their tracking quite nicely.

Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux

Re: Tools for the Job @Peter Gathercole

I prefer the alternative version that it was developed so Ken Thompson could continue to run his space travel game after work on Multics was canned,

Re: Any comment from Steve Balmer?

"I remember that getting hold of Windows 2000 distros is difficult these days because of that.

(Mind you, why would you want to?)"

Because it won't try to update itself to 10?

Re: Windows 11

The systemd folk have been working on that one for some time.

"You don't use linux on the desktop unless you're a masochist"

I came to that conclusion about Windows a long time ago. There's something ironic about Windows being so opaque.

BBC Micro:bit delayed by power supply SNAFU

Re: Codebug works, shipped, in stock

"Small batteries and small children"

Target age range is 11ish so the kids can't be that small. It doesn't preclude being stupid but natural selection is a wonderful thing.

Ad-blocking super-weapon axed by maker for being TOO effective

Re: nuance

"The Register is showing me a couple of ads, the banner and a static side ad, along with the jobs listing.

The page is 'quiet'."

Lucky you.

I normally read el Reg on the laptop with sound off & blocker on. Occasionally I read it on the MythTV box with no blocker & sound on. Earlier today I dropped one page and hastily abandoned it when instantly a loud voice started lecturing me about something or other. On the laptop I will continue to make no exceptions. The ad industry simply can't get itself in order to stop pissing off those on whom it seeks to impose its brain farts. It doesn't deserve to exist.

Microsoft to splurge $75m on computer training for kids

Re: $75 M? Not so much a donation...

"there are not actually as many complete bastards on the opposing side as people believe"

There don't need to be. The few that are there are more than adequate for the job.

UK.gov mobile not-spot coverage project set to be completed in the year 2155AD

"there had been problems with site providers' willingness to allow a mast to be erected, local planning application"

"I want a signal but NIMBY"

FTFY

EU spaffs €131m on making gov digi services 'talk' to each other

Bid from Capita...

...arriving in 3..2..1..

Scotsman cools PC with IRN-BRU, dubs it the 'Aye Mac'

"girders"

girrrderrs

FTFY

Britain's FBI wants 'Five Eyes' cosy hookups with infosec outfits

Re: So what would you do to improve matters?

"HUMINT is a lot more valuable than SIGINT, but you need them both."

But whilst SIGINT spending increases the Met are cutting back on PCSOs who ought to be a major source of that HUMINT.

Re: So what would you do to improve matters?

"because I'm fairly sure that the bad guys (who do exist) are continuing to develop *their* networks?"

I'm sure they will be if they've any sense. So why take it out on the innocent who want to do things like use internet banking and buy stuff online?

SCREW YOU, FEDS! Dozen or more US libraries line up to run Tor exit nodes

"The C++ programming language."

So that puts Linus firmly in the anti-terror camp.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

"Normally we say please try to keep it SFW, but given the content.." Further comment superfluous.

Asus ZenBook UX305: With Windows 10, it suddenly makes perfect sense

Re: @Pompous Git - ?

"they are calling an emergency board meeting to devise a back out strategy, so concerned are they now about one retired bloke."

I doubt it. They're probably far too busy worrying about how to make 2016 the year of Windows on the phone.

Email reply-all cat-nado drenches Cisco inboxes with pics, memes

"Just because people work for a tech company doesn't mean they have any real understanding of how the IT systems work"

You're saying that as if you think it's to be expected.