Posts by Doctor Syntax

End mass snooping and protect whistleblowers, MEPs yell at EU

Good news but...

...there's still 293 who haven't got the message.

Tech, telcos, and digital crusties gang up against the EU's Digital Single Market

Does not compute

"Ashworth pointed out that according to 2012 research by the EU, only 3.5 per cent of consumers wanted to access AV material across borders and only one per cent want to buy it across national borders."

If the demand is so low why go to the trouble of geoblocking? It must cost money to put in place. Is that a rat I can smell?

Roll up, roll up: Microsoft, those Irish emails and angry Feds

"I'm just surprised no one form the US Gov has stepped in to quietly talk in the ear of the court"

The ear of the court should be inappropriate. A word in the ear of the prosecution would be a different matter.

'This is the "Justice" Department, how ironic.'

Not necessarily ironic. It's just an example of the Yes Minister theory of govt. departments as tombstones.

Well, what d'you know: Raising e-book prices doesn't raise sales

Re: Sample of 1

"Personally I prefer the ebook as it takes much less physical space which means I can take a couple of hundred books with me on holiday"

I've never been on a holiday which prompted me to take even one hundred books.

Right, opt out everybody! Hated Care.data paused again

Re: Is it time to put down this terminally ill scheme?

"All staff with access need to attend privacy training and be aware it's a sackable offense to breach data protection."

There are a couple of prerequisites for this. One is that it has to be a sackable offence and the other is that the employers need the balls to do the sacking.

Laminate this: Inside Argos' ongoing online (r)evolution

"last time I was looking for something I could pick up *that day* and was checking the stores in reasonable travel distance they had really obfuscated whether they were actually carrying what I needed or not."

Same problem the other day with Screwfix - surely they can't all be on collect next day for a Dremel disk.

" We want to get to a point where we are adding to that range of products and making it more specific to customers.”

And we know what that means. Buy a camera, for instance, and every time you visit the site the muppets offer you more and more cameras ignoring the fact that that's the item you're least likely to be looking for this time.

US gov to Apple: COUGH UP iMessages or FEEL our FEDERAL FROWN

The strong encryption genie has been out of the bottle this last couple of decades.

Assuming we can be confident of at least some of the cipher schemes in the libraries (and there are a good many non-government eyeballs looking at them nowadays) it's not beyond the capabilities of any organised group whom TPTB consider bad actors to roll their own applications. It would have no effect making that illegal: you don't stop people who are already breaking laws by furnishing them with more laws to break. The only effect would be to piss off those people who wish to use encryption for legitimate purposes - the name for those people is spelled V O T E R S.

Microsoft

It's a pity their "telemetry" is eroding the kudos they've been getting from their stance on server sovereignty.

"And with a bit of clever redirection of lava floes they could probably get the island to resemble a giant Apple logo."

Oi!

British killer robot takes out two Britons in Syria strike

Re: OK, mixed feelings about this...

"Clearly, the simple reason for this operation is to show other half-wits with British passports that going to that dusty shithole and making a video about yourself killing infidels will eventually get you killed too."

It tends not to work that way. They see that fate as glorious martyrdom, as glamorous. Yes, we may view that attitude as irrational but that doesn't stop people thinking irrationally.

Re: Victims?

"And we made a formal declaration of war on ISIS when exactly?"

Maybe not legally a war but they were certainly in a battle-zone. As far as one can tell they were there of their own volition and it was a battle-zone created by themselves and their fellows. And in a battle-zone people get killed.

But why the announcement? Maybe it was intended as a deterrent for others but it doesn't work that way. Will politicians never learn?

ICANN descends into farce as bigwigs try to cling to power

Re: Shurely ...

'Pitching to who? The US Govt's claim that it owned control was weak enough in 1998 and is even weaker now. That's the wrong model. The correct model is "setting up their own nonprofit and DOING THE JOB themselves."'

From the sidebar of TFA: 'The US government contracts non-profit ICANN to run the so-called IANA functions' Whatever you may argue about the US government's claim the de facto situation is that it's the USG/ICANN contract that's the basis for the existing administration of IANA and it would need to be a USG/ANOther contract to replace that. What mechanism do you suggest for ANOther to simply shoulder ICANN out of the way (desirable though that may be) and take over?

Re: I am reminded of the words attributed to Cromwell dismissing the Rump Parliament

Maybe what prevents this is that at present lack of an alternative. But what's to stop ICANN's critics setting up their own non-profit and pitching for the contract themselves?

Broadband powered by home gateways? Whose bright idea was THIS?

Re: FttDP

I had the same problem with the terminology.

If distribution point is equivalent to cabinet, as in FTTC, then the amount of ventilation in the existing cabinets indicates a good deal more power is required than could reasonably be sucked down a few hundred yards of telephone copper and on the whole cabinets do seem to be located where power is readily available.

On that basis I assume they're thinking of something else. There's a BT manhole in the road opposite the end of my garden. My own phone line comes underground from that and the adjacent pole feeds about half a dozen neighbouring houses by overhead wires. Maybe that's what they mean by distribution point.

If the idea is to pull a single fibre to that they'll be pulling it through a duct which already contains a multi-pair cable which will be being made redundant so they could take as many pairs as necessary from that to feed power. Alternatively the fibre itself can be bundled with power lines.

And if they plan to run a bundle of fibres to that distribution point, one for each house then powering each house's box individually then power down the existing copper is probably feasible.

Grinning BBC boss blows raspberry at UK.gov, eyes up buffet

Re: The BBC threatening to help Osborne, sounds implausible

"Don't forget the Tories hate the BBC with a passion"

Actually any incumbent government hates the BBC with a passion.

"just heard him"

I assume you have a specific "him" in mind. Is this a "guess who?" competition?

Re: Replacement, not collaboration

"cutting staff, regionalising production, so that little things like knowledge of correctly spelled local place names is lost, as papers are subbed hundreds of miles away from where they are notionally based."

And in the case of my local paper not bothering to send a photographer out to the scene of the story - they just print screen-scrapes from Streetview.

Ofcom issues stern warning over fake caller number ID scam

"Needless to say, I spoke to MANY people at their customer services department that day"

Why didn't you mention the words "small claims court"?

Re: RBS simply use Unknown number

"Let them prove that they have the right information on YOU Not the other way round. Oh wait that won't work."

Of course it will work but only if they're obliged to do it which at the moment they're not.

One test, of course, is to offer them incorrect information. If the call is genuine they'll know it's wrong.

I never was a Barclays customer but when I was an HSBC business customer I used to get calls purporting to be from them wanting identification information. I always asked them to prove who they were. They never offered any proof. If a cold caller can't prove who they are before asking for any information always assume they're faking it.

SPACE WHISKY: Astro malt pongs of 'rubber and smoked fish'

Surprised

It didn't come back tasting of pee?

Files on Seagate wireless disks can be poisoned, purloined – thanks to hidden login

Re: That's it!

"There's no possible way in 2015 for someone with a fully functional brain to code this."

For development purposes there is. But there's no way for someone with a fully functional brain to release it to production with the development snapshot still in place. Blame marketing.

So Quantitative Easing in the eurozone is working, then?

"I saw IT providing great gains in productivity"

There is, of course, the argument that a lot of IT has reduced productivity, Powerpoint addiction being one such example.

BOFH: Power corrupts, uninterrupted power corrupts absolutely

"The generator for this place is on the roof and it came with the building. About the only thing that could get that off the roof is an earthquake – and then it would only travel vertically."

This is obviously untrue. It was sold for scrap months ago.

"the internet stopped working"

What? All of it?

You tried to hide your extramarital affair … by putting it on the web?

"otherwise my email would have ended up in some hacker’s exposure list"

Surely you know to use either a Hot/G/Livemail address kept for no other purpose or a one-off address, preferably one that you can eventually redirect to that of the CEO of the company concerned.

Hacker chancer looking for $500,000 after offering Clinton emails for auction

"I CAN see that working out well."

So you'd be prepared to hand out a large wodge of your own cash to someone who's declared himself a crook?

Let's work this one out.

He claims to have the emails.

He can't have got them legitimately.

Therefore he's claiming to be a crook.

So anybody trying to buy them would be offering half a meeelion to a self-advertised crook.

I can see that working out well.

They’re FAT. They’re ROUND. They’re worth almost a POUND. Smart waaatch, smart waaatch

"a solution looking for a problem to fix"

The one thing they seem to offer is fitness apps. Which seems to be a solution to an anti-problem as fas as I'm concerned.

Want your kids to learn coding? Train the darn teachers first

Same old same old

'The Register asked the Department for Education how confident it is that teachers are qualified in the curriculum, and what it is doing to ensure the right capabilities are in place.

A spokesman did not respond to the specific question, but said the government has provided £4.5m to "make sure teachers have the confidence and knowledge to teach this new curriculum and are engaging leading technology companies to support schools delivering it."'

Measuring inputs not outputs.

Bored Brazilian skiddie claims DDoS against Essex Police

Re: currently carries a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment in the UK

"high level appointment with the Foreign Office"

Send her as ambassador to Brazil and let her talk her way out of that.

Samsung’s consumer IoT vision – stupid, desperate, creepy

"What you have described is the old view of computing that computers are in control of people. The revolution of Silicon Valley, Doug Englebart and others was that people are in control of computers"

That's old hat. The new view is that the people who make the computers are in charge of the people who have them.

Re: Dumb ideas for IoT

"Or washing machine. Who knows what all the buttons do? Now, look at your calculator app - see Scientific, Programmer et al. Put that on your phone instead. Have a nice, clean UI customised to you, plus save £10 on the White goods front panel."

Or put that interface directly on the washing machine instead of the crap that's there. Who wants a washing machine that needs a phone to operate it? SWMBO would put it the other way round - why should she have to buy a smartphone she doesn't want to operate the washing machine? And then there's the problem that the app for last year's washing machine isn't compatible with this year's smartphone. So you have your new shiny, last year's shiny to work the washing machine and the year before that's to work the dishwasher...

Re: Why....just why?

" I spend enough time staring into it randomly anyway while I am tryng to remember what I came in the kitchen for."

You need the IoT brain link so when you get into the kitchen the fridge shouts out "Over here. You came to get the milk."

Stingray stung: FBI told 'get a warrant'

"“establish a higher ... legal standard"

That would be legitimate as opposed to illegitimate.

Pwn2Own Tokyo hacking contest trashed, export rules blamed

Making regulations without understanding the consequences is going really well.

HMRC breaches job applicants' privacy in mass email spaff

"If you would like to discuss your application further, please do not hesitate to contact me."

After all, the previous attempt to do so had such an encouraging outcome.

Websites aimed at kids are slurping too much info, finds report

Re: Shared personal information

"Why is this not considered as theft ?"

Because it isn't. Theft is taking something away in such a way as to permanently deprive the owner. For instance taking a car & then dumping it elsewhere isn't theft because the owner can recover it - the offence is taking and driving away. Acquiring data doesn't deprive the owner of it. And giving something away, even if misguidedly, isn't theft so it would be difficult to argue that although privacy cannot be restored it hasn't been stolen. Even if a court would consider something as intangible as something that could be stolen.

It's a situation which is novel in terms of the traditional legal framework of theft & maybe also of fraud & needs its own legislation. Possibly the DPA (or equivalent in other jurisdictions) will cover it; maybe there might be something under legislation relating to children. If not something new might be needed.

If sites do this to ourselves we know to invent stuff. It seems now we actually have to teach kids to lie as a matter of course.

At LAST: RC4 gets the stake through the heart

Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

"start complaining to manufacturers that their firmware is shit"

Manufacturers aren't going to be interested if the product is EOLed. And the manufacturers themselves may have been EOLed. Meanwhile, in the real world, the bean-counters aren't going to be impressed with arguments that a million quid piece of kit has to be replaced because Google, Mozilla & Microsoft stopped supporting RC4.

Xiaomi aims to knock Apple off its branch with move into computers

Re: oooooooh!

"something 'Completely Different'"

Not Metro & Not Slurping. Will those do for a start?

Microsoft backports data slurp to Windows 7 and 8 via patches

Re: I was just musing the other day that M$ might do this and low and behold!

"You're going to milk this for all it's worth, aren't you?"

Enough with the cheesy jokes!

Re: Hackintosh?

"Apple ... resale/residual values tend to be very high."

And about to get higher still I suspect.

Re: bend over...

" I wish Adobe CC worked on linux"

Have you checked whether it will run under Wine.

Re: Hard-coded?

"the mechanism for pushing security updates."

I think you meant insecurity updates.

Ecuador and Sweden in 'constructive talks' – just don't mention Assange™ by name

Re: @swineherd ...

"ut the interesting thing... it could explain why there are new talks between Sweden and Ecuador.

Seems they want to get rid of him too. ;-)"

Time for a fire drill at the Ecuadoran embassy.

Re: @AC ...

"IF he has to go to Sweden,THEN he goes to Sweden.

After that... back to the UK"

Not sure it'll work that way. The minute he shows outside the door he'll be arrested for bail offences and I can't see him being sent to Sweden until he's served any sentence for that. Of course he could argue that time spent in the Embassy counts towards any term of imprisonment in the same way that time on remand does.