Posts by Doctor Syntax

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

Surprised

It didn't come back tasting of pee?

Ofcom issues stern warning over fake caller number ID scam

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.

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.

According to that report the US want Norway to “effectuate the return of Mr Snowden". Perhaps they should tell the US they can't help as they don't understand what effectuate means.

Ex top judge admits he's incapable of reading email, doesn't own a PC

Re: Parties and judges

"The MAN is a frigging judge, he should have some semblance of intellect"

I assume that because you're hanging around here you work in IT & therefore should have some semblance of intellect. Would you care to give us your summary of the law of tort?

The Honor's a defo gamechanger, but good luck buying one

"making a phone today is much easier than making a car. Anyone can make one....For Sony and HTC and others, there are big manufacturing costs and high marketing and corporate overheads, for products that are harder and harder to differentiate."

If anyone can make one then it's difficult to see how Sony, HTC etc can have higher manufacturing costs. It must come down to marketing and corporate.

So, was it really the Commies that caused the early 20th Century inequality collapse?

Re: Not so much public ownership but public wealth creation

Antibiotics not significant to general medicine? You learn something everyday.

Re: Money has to go somewhere

"Broadband stuff is more complicated than that:"

And you can see how that would have gone. High density areas would have got done. But would there have been a big incentive to connect at that time? The whole thing would have stalled when the cost of passing premises and the preparedness of potential customers to pay for a new connection meant that there wasn't payback. BT would then have had to abandon roll-out or go asking for public money to finance free connections and as Warm Braw says, the Treasury wouldn't have forked out.

Yes, BT should have been allowed to compete with the cable TV companies but no, it wouldn't have resulted in a wider network than cable TV achieved, maybe less because competition would have lowered the return for any given network so the cherry picking would have been even more intense.

Re: where's the second part

You've just got to love the nostalgia for black phones with dials, three-day weeks, uncollected rubbish and unburied dead.

Re: Not so much public ownership but public wealth creation

NHS is more than hospital construction. The war brought on new treatments of all sorts. It would be interesting to see what the expenditure on pharmaceuticals was pre/post NHS.

Re: Manufacturing became less relevant

"This was massively helped by revolutions in communication. Suddenly the world moved into colour as colour printing became economic and colour TV started to gain traction - both leading to a massive explosion in marketing success.

...

This led to a 50s boom for cheaper UK regions, then a boom for lower wage regions of Europe and eventually, as transport improved, the growth moved away to lower cost regions of the world. End of boom."

I think you've got your chronology wrong.

"Maybe we should deliberately lower inequality with very high tax rates and all the rest in order to get us some of that lovely growth of the 1950s and '60s?"

And rationing. Don't forget the rationing.

Dropbox DROPS BOX as service GOES TITSUP worldwide

"Hang on, that's not the right metaphor..."

Any storm in a teacup? No...

Who's next?

Google makes it official: Chrome will freeze Flash ads on sight from Sept 1

Re: THIS

"bypassing the opaque/distorted layers some sites use to force collection of personal info/permission before granting access"

But that means you miss out on the opportunity to lie to them.

"non-important Flash files will be click-to-play in the browser by default"

Wrong way to do it. Make ALL Flash files click to play. And I don't mind Flash in ads because I don't get to see them anyway.

Company in shambles, marriages ruined. My work here is done, says Ashley Madison CEO

"proprietary member and business information"

No, the member stuff was their personal data, not your proprietary information. You might not think it but there is a difference.

Malvertising maniac messes MSN, serves corrupted creative

Re: And they are

" Whereas a Civil trial, the burden is on the defendant to prove that they are innocent beyond a reasonable doubt "

Actually, no. Civil cases are found on balance of probabilities. And I think even on that basis the plaintiff would have problems in proving that his loss stemmed from a particular site given that he would have visited many.

OTOH if the offence is to serve up - or participate in serving - malware then that would be provable by the sort of analysis in the article but without the need to prove which particular user was infected by which particular server. Several of the participants at the head of the chain could become liable to prosecution or, to put it another way, they would have good reason to put in place a vetting procedure. The chains which failed to apply vetting might have lower costs immediately but they might find themselves out of business a lttle later.

BACS Bank Holiday BALLS UP borks 275,000 payments

Re: THAT MOMENT

"Surely they should have anticipated problems (such as BACS f*cking up) and paid us earlier??"

Earlier than what? Last day of the month is Monday & they're paying you on the previous Friday. That's earlier. Or did you mean they should have paid a day earlier than that? And what happens if there'd been a problem on Thursday? Pay a day earlier?

Recursion: see recursion.

Re: Website Down Too

" I can login but I can't do anything useful before I get thrown out again."

Is this something new?

Re: The bank could close for a month and I'd be OK.

@Loyal Commenter

You seem to be taking a lot for granted there.

I don't know about Ole Juul's situation but I do know what mine was. And that the "reasonably well paid" & all that meant as far as I was concerned, that for years I arranged bank statements to be sent in the middle of the month so I could see how bad things were & what was left for the rest of the month. And very often the amount was negative by the end; maybe the only thing different back then was you seemed to be able to get away with that without penalty payments. I know it contributed a good deal to the stress I suffered at that time & from which I still suffer.

There seems to be an assumption by one generation that things were much easier for the previous one. I don't think it was.

Re: I feel sorry for

"HSBC have the paid agreement with the employer not the employee."

From the report it doesn't seem clear whether this is the case or not. If it's employees banking with HSBC then it's the other way around.

NCA arrests six Lizard Squad users after gaming firms, retailers targeted

I wonder if this is related to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/28/irate_security_posse_intel_spooks_in_ddos_hushed_hacker_hunt/

Re: Engage with them?

A good talking to probably works the same as an ASBO - it's a badge of honour.

New low for humanity: ONE BEELLION lost souls log on to Facebook in one day

Re: Not on Facebook and proud

"Think of it as a place where like minded people can discuss things of common interest."

Sort of like newsgroups but with being monetized as an added extra?