Posts by chuckm

Scaling up Azure Service Fabric Linux Clusters using Ubuntu Xenial? Not so fast, friend

Re: Ubuntu -- PURE GARBAGE

OK I'll bite.

As long as we're talking about rubbish operating systems, how is it that w10 still utterly fails to do network time properly? GARBAGE operating systems like ubuntu have had this right for 20 years. Windows is still a toy and always will be it seems. I dunno, were you in space or something for the October (November December...) update?

And in any case, if you want linux, why not use people who actually know something about it and didn't have to be dragged there kicking and screaming? e.g. AWS or indeed anyone else.

I mean Linux on Azure, why would you f******* bother?

The internet is going to hell and its creators want your help fixing it

Same old same old

Like all the other fings humans make, the webinets can be and are used for goodness (e.g. cat videos) and evilness (e.g. breitbart. Or is that vice versa?). But whether you believe the internet will lead to utopia or hell on earth, you're likely to be disappointed. Humans are just not that thorough. It'll be a fucked-up something in between. As usual.

One year on after US repealed net neutrality, policymakers reflect soberly on the future

FTW

I reckon historians looking back at Trump's presidency will find it easily surpasses that of US Grant in corruption, incompetence and chaos, not to mention financial disaster probably (except for him and his mates). This is just one example. Fake government by a fake president and his fake appointees.

Wow, what a lovely early Christmas present for Australians: A crypto-busting super-snoop law passes just in time

Death spiral

This is pretty much the final act of a doomed government trying to play the National Security card against our very mildly leftish (but only Saturdays if the wind is from the Nor'Nor'East) opposition.

The puzzling thing about it, and what makes it completely pointless in my opinion, is that the technology and legislation for lawful interception is already in place (I know this to be true because I worked on it tangentially) as you would expect, and has been for quite a while.

So what this bloody thing is all about is domestic politics, not security, terrorism, or anything else of any significance whatever. And would this government chuck the Oz tech exporters under the bus for a few votes? You bet! You won't find a bigger bunch of anti-science, benighted twats anywhere except in the US, from whose Tea Party types they have cribbed their entire playbook.

To paraphrase the late, great Douglas Adams, 'Security is an illusion, National Security doubly so'.

Commbank data loss: Non-disclosure was pretty reasonable

Leave it out Arfur

Possibly if you had the right kind of hardware you could do a scan of the raw tape and piece some or all of the contents together. regardless of the all true things said in the article. I know this is possible because I've had to do it, as have many others faced with disasters of various types and falling back to the last line of defence which is that pile of tapes over there in the corner...

That said, isn't this really Fuji Xerox's fail and not the bank's?. Presumably the bank engaged FX in good faith to provide a service, which is this respect they botched, Add it to the list, outsourcing bah humbug.

Crypto-gurus: Which idiots told the FBI that Feds-only backdoors in encryption are possible?

don't forget,,,

...that given the revolving door between spookdom, private industry and the underworld, the odds on any 'exceptional access system' staying secret for more than about eight minutes are nil.

No hack needed: Anonymisation beaten with a dash of SQL

Mr. Metadata strikes again. What a complete boofhead. Our glorious PM is packing him off to London next year, you Brits can have him.

50th anniversary of the ATM opens debate about mobile payments

Re: Extinct in ten years?

Yeah, but since the US also has state and local taxes, invisible transactions can't incur them.

Anyway the black economy needs cash so if governments try to wish it away, something else will replace it. And the black economy has existed as long as civilisation. It isn't going anywhere because those in power need is as much as or more than anyone else.

Everything you need to know about the Petya, er, NotPetya nasty trashing PCs worldwide

Re: The real blame goes to..

It's worse than that. The boundaries between government, private and rogue in the security services are extremely fluid and always have been. Anyone having knowledge of these technologies can and probably will put them at the disposal of anyone if the price is right.

Blunder down under: self-driving Aussie cars still being thwarted by kangaroos

No surprises here

No-one and nothing can deal with kangas very well. In fact they owe me a ute,

They are about the most rock-bottom stupid critters out there, practically guaranteed to jump towards a vehicle rather than away given a choice.

For non-australians:

a ute or 'utlility' is more or less what the septics would call a pick-up

a septic is a septic tank, or Yank

Centrelink 'big data' system built without consulting taxman

Not data matching

Data matching is a powerful tool in all sorts of analytics, and this area is no exception. However, what the government has done--apparently wilfully, in the full knowledge that it was wrong--isn't data matching, it's making shit up and 'matching' it to another set of data that doesn't relate.

Since I used to raise social security overpayments myself for a living, I know exactly how this is supposed to work, and how you can effectively use ATO data and/or payroll records for the purpose, This system doesn't do it or anything close.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee refuses to be King Canute, approves DRM as Web standard

Pointless!

The DRM will be crap, It will be defeated. And the content will end up out there in the wild anyway.