Posts by Keith T

'Aurora' code circulated for years on English sites

The US Government is going to be using its own evidence

Obviously the USA's defence intelligence community tries to monitor internet traffic coming out of China. We know the USA monitors all internet traffic entering the USA.

With all that monitoring, and all that analysis, I think it is likely that the US government is determining its foreign policy primarily based on what it "thinks it knows" from what it has detected itself, as opposed to the theories of outsiders.

Of course the USA could be making a mistake. Personally, based on how China is known to treat people with differing opinions (what it calls dissidents and traitors), I think the Americans probably have this one right or partly right.

After all, make enough accusations and some are bound to be correct. It is just too bad Blair and Bush have destroyed the credibility of their respective homelands.

By the way, the article is incorrect on the level of proof required by US courts. In some civil cases a "balance of probabilities" is required, in other civil cases a "preponderance of evidence" is required. Only in criminal cases does a conviction requires "proof beyond reasonable doubt". Under international law, the level of evidence also varies depending on the kind of case.

And that one piece of evidence fails means nothing. The question is whether there is any good evidence.

Of course in this case the evidence will probably never be made public, because IF it exists it would embarrass China too much, and diplomats will see no point to doing that. Also because revealing the evidence would likely give insight into hour much privacy we all lost forever -- to what extent internet traffic is monitored by our governments -- because of decisions made and precedents set by US Republican President Bush and UK Labour PM Blair.

Canada quashes Yes Men hoax with phishing claim

The Yes Men certainly suckered the media

The Yes Men certainly suckered the media with their website spoofing.

Major US and European news networks couldn't tell the difference between the spoofed websites and the real ones.

How can anyone credibly claim a PM of a hung parliament has too much power?

Canadian Liberal Party supporters are like US Republican Party supporters.

They regard themselves as Canada's "natural governing party":

- When their guy wins the election, it proves democracy is working in our great land.

- When the other guy wins the election, it proves democracy is failing.

PM Harper leads an minority parliament (UK term, hung parliament).

How can anyone credibly claim a PM of a minority parliament has too much power?

(Party policy positions in Canada are way out of sync with party names. The Conservative Party, which PM Harper leads, is in policy terms what Europeans would call a social democrat, certainly more anti-US and more pro-individual freedom, and less law and order, than UK Labour. Our Liberal Party is currently headed by Michael Ignaitieff, who you would know more about than us, since he's spent his adult life living abroad. A smart guy, perhaps centrist in European terms but with his "Empire Lite" and "Lesser Evil" attitudes is right-wing in Canadian terms, and would likely make Canada a US lap dog if he came to power.)

But there is nothing parodying or funny about ec-gc.ca?

Yes parody is protected here in Canada.

But using the domain name ec-gc.ca isn't parody. I mean, do you see a joke in ec-gc.ca ? It is just a domain name, a bunch of letters. Nothing parody.

ec-gc.ca is just an imitation with the obvious intent to deceive someone expecting the real website ec.gc.ca.

So the domain name is an attempt to fool the international press. And it did make the international press look really stupid.

And some Canadian press look like complete and utter imbeciles (if I'm using correct UK English): That they believed for a half-second the fake press releases.

Of course it wasn't phishing. But press office officials and government lawyers seldom know correct IT terms.

It was impersonation with the intent to commit humour.

And the joke was on the press.

Police cuff citizens for videotaping arrests

We need to start putting the real criminals behind bars

And those real criminals are the police, police managers, and crown prosecution service members who facilitate, hide, condone, hide and and shelter from prosecution illegal threats, unlawful assaults, armed assaults, kidnapping of law abiding citizens.

Police who who kidnap citizens into unlawful custody should serve appropriate prison sentences for the crime they've committed: kidnapping.

Police who prevent citizens safely at a distance videotaping arrests should serve appropriate prison sentences for obstruction of justice.

How can we expect ordinary street criminals to obey the laws when our police forces are staffed with criminals?

Hacker rattles 21,000 iPhone unlockers

Do you suppose blackmail attempts were rebuffed?

Do you suppose blackmail attempts were rebuffed?

Secret code protecting cellphone calls set loose

Karsten Nohl, al Qada and the IRA thank you.

Yes, major intelligence agencies have been doing this for years.

But criminals, so-called "terrorist groups", and minor intelligence agencies could only do it with the charitable donation of intellectual property by hackers and security researchers.

Nuke-bunker-nobbling US megabomb delayed

Pearl Harbouring our enemies again?

It will be inexcusable if our leaders "Pearl Harbour" Iran on our behalf.

Which nuclear weapon owning country can claim a track record of not having invaded another country in over 200 years?

None. We are all war-mongers when compared with the Persians.

Which nuclear armed fanatic state?

It must be one of the two nuclear-armed countries with histories of being run by religious fanatics and engaging in unprovoked Pearl Harbour type pre-emptive attacks.

Mozilla shoots out fifth Firefox 3.6 beta

Firefox definitely needs to work on speed (and compatibility).

Firefox definitely needs to work on speed and compatibility.

Especially with the many Flash-based websites I frequent, I find Firefox 3.5.6 very slow compared to MSIE 8 and Google Chrome.

The only reason I haven't uninstalled Firefox is its superior password management.

Dell tech flashes woman with (her own) jubblies

"Coolie" is like "limey"

or the "N" word. It is not considered a slur when you use it regarding your own group.

Generally you can sue the company who sold you the product or service

Generally you can sue the company that sold you the product or service, you are not limited to suing the actual manufacturer or provider or sub-contractor.

It has been that way for almost 200 years now. (I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked in general insurance.)

And in this case, the service is presented to customers as a Dell service -- the outsourcing company is not mentioned to the customer before the sale. So I think that part of the case would be open and shut in most jurisdictions.

So she would have a very strong legal case for enough damages to be worth suing Dell -- if she lives in many parts of the USA.

If she lives in the UK or Canada, she can just do what she can do to report it and try to get the ball rolling on a process to ensure that this sort of sexual harassment by immature people doesn't continue. It sounds like that is her objective anyway.

it won't go to court, that doesn't mean nothing will happen

I reply to "Nope, nothing will happen. → #"

I'll just add to my earlier reply, what would happen is Dell would give her some money in return for signing an agreement to not talk about or discuss the matter with anyone in the future.

They give her a few thousand just to be quiet, and you think nothing has happened.

Also, this gives Dell ammunition to negotiate a lower price from the allegedly Indian call center company that botched this, when the contract comes up for renewal.

That might cause the call center company to discipline one of the three managers involved (Neo's manager; or the manager who said Neo was "one of our best techs"; or if they can't track Neo down, the manager who messed up by approving a system that let Neo do this kind of thing without being tracked down).

Unused phone lines to be taxed for rural broadband

Government should tax stupidity instead

Why tax telecommunications that make society at large more efficient to subsidize telecommunications to make rural society more efficient?

Why not tax something inefficient? Like MPs.

We should all be taxed 50p per MP, whether our MP works or not.

Headteachers slam 'disproportionate' vetting database

The British Government Must Think You're All A Bunch of ...

The British Government must think you're a nation of paedophiles to think this kind of policing is necessary.

Rambus soothes EC ire with lower prices

They should have struck down Rambus's patents

They should have struck down Rambus's patents.

Failing that, nationalize the company.

Maybe put its executives on the No-Fly List.

Facebook urges public exposure in 'privacy' revision

Facebook urged me to maintain my privacy

For me, Facebook recommended I keep my current settings.

Most of my settings are to "share with Friends, except Friends in one Friend List.

Probably if your current settings were to share only with a geographic network, then it would recommend sharing with everyone. It would do this because ( a) geographic networks have been discontinued, and ( b ) stuff you would comfortably share with everyone in Bristol you'd probably be comfortable sharing with anyone.

Webmasters fume as Google profiles signed-out searchers

SEOs make money wasting people's time

With all their optimization, often using techniques to trick google and other search engines into steering human searchers to irrelevant or less relevant commercial sites, instead of the sites most likely to answer their questions.

So I have little sympathy for the plight of Search Engine Optimizers.

Go go google!

British boffins talk up squeeze-to-control 3D mouse tech

Make it ergonomic

I want one button per finger and thumb.

And different size mice for different sized hands.

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

The real terrorists are our government

The real terrorists are our government, both the bureaucrats who found our freedom an insulting inconvenience, and parliamentarians who caved into New Labour's demands that our freedom be ended.

If we were to actually imprison those who terrorise Britain, who take away our way of life, who have toppled our unwritten constitution, we'd have put Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and various nameless faceless intelligence agency and police operatives behind bars.

Microsoft opens Windows 7 to advertisers

As long as it is optional and done openly it is okay

As long as it is done optional and done openly, and can be easily uninstalled or turned off, I have no problem.

I imagine a lot of people would like to have car-company themed desktops.

Microsoft in Bing jingle kiddie vid outrage

The worst commercials are the ones you watch, not the ones you do

Come on, TheRegister website is funded by advertising.

And why would kids, or anyone else, be brain washed by performing in an ad?

It is watching the ad that is the risk.

I trust the students or school were adequately compensated for their participation.

New Doctor Who is 'simply the best'

Typical entertainment industry hype

Typical entertainment industry hype.

How can he know if this doctors is the best, or worst, until the episodes have been produced?

Facebook enshrines dead people profiles

They should consider the geneology and historical aspects

It would be good to make "most" of the profile public after 100 years.

As with census data and official secrets, there comes a time when privacy is meaningless because nobody concerned is still around to have any privacy to be preserved.

What matters then is genealogy and history. And the most interesting part of history is the affairs and events of common people.

GCHQ outsources net snooping... to EDS

Maybe the Americans will outsource NSA to work to a UK company?

All we need: An alien controlled company with our own government's official permission to get involved in snooping on us.

Does anyone here imagine the Americans would outsource their NSA and FBI internal surveillance work to a UK company?

Of course not. Why not?

Not just national pride and national security, but also because of the chance of commercial secrets getting out into the hands of overly patriotic UK nationals, and then into the hands of UK competitors to UK companies.

Of course there are no overly patioritc Americans, so we needn't worry.

Obviously they do not consider spying on law abiding citizens to be a waste of money

"...what hope do they think they have against terrorists using encryption, onion routing, steganography, unsecured wifi points, etc?

"What a massive waste of money just to spy on law abiding citizens."

Yes, it will not be effective against the spy agencies of foreign governments, but it might work against weak terrorist networks. But then this is a horribly expensive and invasive approach to tackle weak networks that can be tackled more easily.

So what is the point?

Imagine your a senior civil servant working in national security, and this surveillance were to work. The possibilities I can imagine:

1. You'd never have to worry about a government being elected that is unfriendly to the interests of your agency.

2. It might be any government elected would be beholden to you for aid you provided it against opponents during elections.

3. It might provide you with the information you need to transform hostile prime minister into a hand puppet.

Startup makes thin clients look chubby

So basically it turns a monitor into a terminal, with the server being the mainframe.

So basically it turns a monitor into a terminal, with the server acting as mainframes used to.

Good idea.

Looking at the back it looks like all the USB ports are so crowed against other ports and wires that this device will only be good for people with tiny fingers.

So please make one of the USB ports easy to access.

'External force' fractured French iPhones, says Apple

more than 9 posters here reported personally seeing iPhones with shattered glass.

Just in response to this article and the above comments, more than 9 posters here reported personally seeing iPhones with shattered glass.

So either this is a common problem, but people blame themselves not Apple, or Apple is lying about how many reports they have.

Yes, a handheld phone designed for use in the street should be able to withstand a drop from waist level or it is not fit for purpose.

(That your original iPhone's glass did not shatter means nothing. Your iPhone would have a plastic screen.)

Mass web infection pinned on hardened crime gang

mass infections are a national security issue.

You would think with all the invasion of privacy by the defence intelligence community monitoring internet traffic, especially international internet traffic, that they could provide some assistance in tracking down the culprits.

After all, mass infections are a national security issue.

FSF launches Windows 7 anti-upgrade letter campaign

It must be nice to have a trust fund to live off of

It must be nice to have a trust fund to live off of. To bad my parents aren't so wealthy.

The rest of us must earn a living.

We do this by "working", producing a "useful product", and "selling it".

US likely to downgrade Euro missile-interceptor plans

Why always the expensive solution

It would be much cheaper for the USA to make friends with Iran, a country that has not invaded or made an unprovoked another country in over 300 years.

But I suppose the peaceful nature of Iranians makes them unbelievable and scary.

As for North Korea, that is a far tougher problem. They keep making agreements, getting aid or favours, and then breaking the agreements. Kind of like how France and Israel negotiate, except that North Korea is run by a family of sadistic despotic mad men.

Collar the lot of us! The biometric delusion

This guy doesn't seem to know about programming or the efficiency of algorithms

"Suppose that there were 60 million UK ID cardholders. To prove that each person is represented by a unique electronic identity on the population register, each biometric would have to be compared with all the rest. That would involve making 1.8 x 1015 comparisons."

There are algorithms that are far far more efficient than that. Here are two examples:

1. You could categorize the individual sample and only compare it with other samples in the same categories. For example, brown eyes wide nose. You'd only compare a face like that with other faces in the same categories.

2. Create a hash key from each sample and store the keys in sorted order. Compare the individual sample only to samples with the same hash key.

The question is whether biometric is better than what we've got

The question is not whether biometric identification is perfect or politicians and sales people make stupid claims. We know the answer to those questions are false and true.

The question is whether biometric is better than what we've got: (1) Security guards looking at tiny photos; (2) Bank clerks looking at signatures; (3) Typed in computer passwords; (4) ID cards with chips in wallets or on lanyards around necks.

We can add a second LED to the finger print scanner and collect the finger prints in 3D.

With faster CPU chips than we had in 2004, we can use more complex matching algorithms.

----

How were these techniques ever regarded as adequate?

(1) Security guards looking at tiny photos; (2) Bank clerks looking at signatures; (3) Typed in computer passwords; (4) ID cards with chips in wallets or on lanyards around necks.

They were adequate because we do not actually need 100% accuracy in ID.

A person may find a photo ID card, but will they look like the ID on the card they find? probably not. Signatures are not perfect, so banks just refund the money when an error occurs. ID cards can be lost, but they are seldom found by malicious people.

This 3 month ordeal in Kenya is why we need biometrics

This is why we need biometrics:

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/08/14/kenya-canadian-passport-mohamud857.html

"... Suaad Hagi Mohamud, 31, had been unable to leave Kenya since May, when authorities said her lips did not look the way they did in her four-year-old passport photo. ..."

The question is, who to make biometrics better than what we have now, which is a single 1 inch photo taken up to 10 years ago.

In the USA, the fact that their DHS uses names to filter terrorism suspects means thousands of people with similar names are pointlessly hassled for hours each year.

How many false positives do you get matching names in the UK? Probably tens of thousands in Wales alone.

@Richard 12: Take another look at page 2 of the article.

Julian is correct. The article is talking about the number of comparisons and using the worst possible algorithm to make the calculation..

If your premise were true that he was trying to calculate the minimum number of digits to hold unique values for each resident of the UK the article would be even more inaccurate. The size of number required to hold 65,000,000 distinct values is only 8 decimal digits.

@RichardB, MariaHelm makes valid points.

The article assumes technology never advances and it assumes if perfection cannot be attained there is no point in making an improvement.

What we need for now is something better than what we have now. Achieving perfection is always something for the future.

HP forces swingeing pay cuts on EDS staff

EDS Canada affected as well #

In Canada, when an employer cuts your salary it is legally considered "constructive dismissal".

You can sue for wrongful dismissal.

Sadly, while sales people, business analysts and clerks often sue for wrongful dismissal, programmers seldom do.

HP burns bridges with potential future clients

IBM has tried similar unfair tactics on employees in the past. It has come back to haunt them.

I'm sure most good technical and sales people (those with any self-respect and initiative) working for HP is working as hard as they can to find alternate employment.

I wonder what fraction of those people will have influence over purchasing 10 years from now.

I wonder what fraction of those people, having seen up close how HP treats contractual partners, will be willing to subject their employers to such an unethical contractual partner.

I think HP is doomed.

CIOs get £170k but helpdesk staffers settle for £6/hr

People don't get what they deserve. They get what they negotiate.

People don't get what they deserve. They get what they negotiate.

Security elite pwned on Black Hat eve

The lesson is that the key to computer security is prison

effective policing and punishment for computer criminals.

Careful coding and configuration on their own just cannot be effective enough on multipurpose computer systems, they are just too many lines of code, to many interfaces, and too many continuing changes, for coding and configuration to ever be 100% effective.

Computer criminals need to be tracked down and put in jail.

I was just looking over Kevin Mitnick's bio in Wikipedia. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword it seems.

Windows 7 finds home at Intel

Replace the thing, meaning the PC

If companies replace 3 year-old PCs with new ones running Windows 7, that is obviously good business for Intel, since they make most of the microprocessors and chipsets in them.

No sizable company is going to embark on a program to replace Windows XP SP3 with Windows 7 on all their computers that are 2 or more years old.

Feds suffer from 'serious' IT security talent shortage

Spending money on training is unacceptable.

Exactly, spending money on training is unacceptable. And the jobs will probably be outsourced to India next year anyways.

Mainstream IT security is too volatile to be an employee-paid or consultant paid career. The products are too varied. And the technology comes and goes.

You don't know what employers or customers have or will have.

And everything you know could become obsolete in 2 years.

Even a superficial knowledge of IT security reveals the root problem is criminals are allowed to organize and operate without inhibition by law enforcement.

Add some effective policing and prosecution for internet crimes, and 90% of security problems would dry up, along with the jobs.

Paris, because her future is far rosier than an IT professionals.

IT workers grumble about lack of career path

IT in Canada is a trade, not a profession.

Sadly, the top jobs in IT in Canada and the USA usually go to sales people.

The middle management jobs are split between sales people and accountants.

In business-based IT, the lower level management jobs usually go to female IT people.

Excellent male IT professionals, usually get sidelined into dead-end technical specialist jobs, no matter what their personality traits or interpersonal abilities.

Really IT in Canada is a trade, not a profession. It offers no career path. The careers belong to the professions that manage IT people.

The stereo types of IT are too powerful, our own managers re-enforce them

1. The stereo types of IT people are too powerful, and our managers, being accounting and sales continuously promote them.

As well as programming, technical analyst and project leading, I have done work in sales over the years. Sales people get regular training to develop their people skills. It occurs weekly in weekly sales meetings, and it occurs on courses they are sent off site for.

As well, most sales people are given similar frequent training in negotiations and goal setting.

I remember my first sales meeting at the last company I did sales for. Six of us started that day. The manager went around the table and asked us each what we were here for. It was all money. None of this "self-fulfilment", "self-actualization" or "to help the company" crap IT people are taught to parrot.

I have a brother who is an accountant, and even they get courses to develop their people and negotiation skills.

IT people lack people skills because they aren't sent on courses. And because that deficit makes it easy to keep them down.

2. IT people are often sent on technical courses as an alternative to giving them pay raises.

In my work as project leader, around review time, we would be told to offer courses, and to tell our staff that the new technology would allow them to advance their careers.

Of course what the technical courses typically let the IT people do is keep their existing job, but work in a different language or operating system. It sets them up for a lateral transfer at the same level.

It keeps them content for another year. It lets us have another year's grunt work out of them.

3. Remember the EDS "herding cats" commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

Supposedly programmers are as hard to herd as cats. EDS makes money off of how supposedly hard to manage programmers are. But really, programmers are easy to manage, if you don't mind manipulating, duping and cheating untrained people.

@OMG

People will always need *quality* IT Staff.

And they'll always need people to clean the toilets. Is toilet cleaning a career?

If you think non-IT people make good IT managers, look at all the failed projects

If you think non-IT people make good managers, look at all the failed large-scale IT projects they are responsible for.

Failure to understand the problem before giving an estimate for the construction phase. Immature technology chosen. Inappropriate technology chosen. Inability to select qualified technical staff. Inability to understand the implications of technical problems. Inability to understand when scope creep is occurring. Inability to detect when vendors are lying. Inability to know when the project is ready to implement.

Sales people and marketing people may have been taught the people skills and the negotiation skills, but they don't have the IT skills to lead IT projects.

The solution is to teach IT people people skills and negotiation skills.

Teaching IT people people skills and negotiation skills would also help at the level of small projects and tasks. Programmers focusing on what they need to do theri jobs, rather than what they think their bosses want to hear, means better estimates from programmers, which means more schedules met, which means more successful projects.

Programmers knowing how to negotiate with each other and with bosses means programmers coming forward with their dissatisfaction, rather than quitting suddenly in a huff.

Kent Police clamp down on tall photographers

If police want to protect the public ...

they can start by laying charges against their criminal colleagues for assault and kidnapping.

But that would require at least one honest police officer with the public interest foremost in his or her mind.

Microsoft offers Windows 7 early and cheap to volume customers

Windows 7 is primarily of interest to those with Vista

The few organizations that made the mistake of installing Vista on their computers will be interested in the upgrade to Windows 7. Dissatisfaction with Vista gives them a genuine reason to upgrade.

Most large organizations running XP will convert gradually beginning in late 2010, as they order new computers with Windows 7 installed.

For the next 2 years, the only existing company-owned computers likely to be converted from XP to Windows 7 will be a small number of existing high-end workstations running software that can benefit from Windows 7. Even those computers are unlikely to be converted in the next 9 months.

Congressman calls for 'cyber-reprisals' against North Korea

What is really needed is more potent defences

1. There needs to be an organization to co-ordinate ISP responses and isolate hacked computers from the internet.

2. The defence intelligence community is doing all the monitoring it needs to to locate the bot net controllers. If the defence intelligence community is going to actively violating our right to privacy, then please give us some value in return.

Let law enforcement use the digested results of that monitoring to track down the bot net controllers.

3. If a bot net is controlled by people in a totally non-cooperative country, disconnect that country from the internet.

Dubya surveillance exceeded warrantless wiretaps

Figures

The only thing more dangerous than a psychopath with a gun is a coward with a gun.

The Bush Whitehouse had both.

And the guns included nuclear weapons.

Most IT pros not planning on Windows 7 rollout

Upgrade from Vista yes

I can see upgrading from Vista. That would make sense like upgrading from Windows Me did.

But for other work stations, Windows 7 will get rolled out as the old XP machines are physically replaced.

Whining serial commentard bemoans Reg bullying

How about a Aaron Kempf contest?

There could be prizes for hardest put-down, best tracking, and most personal details.

Probably a lot could be learned about him, where he lives and works, from his posts and IP addresses.