Posts by sprograms

You're on a Huawei to Hell, US Sec State Pompeo warns allies: Buy Beijing's boxes, no more intelligence for you

Re: Economic warfare

Given the characteristics of nations you cannot trust, China is obviously at the top of the list.

The tariffs have openly been scheduled as a means to motivate trade negotiations. With Mexico and Canada the treaty awaits only congressional approval. With China the list of necessary (not merely reasonable) demands is also public. With the EU autos and agriculture need (from the US perspective) re-negotiation.

Not trusting Huawei flows from pronouncements by the Party mandating corporate obedience, combined with the reality that Chinese hacking to steal IP, actual theft on-site by CCP agents, and onward, calls for a pointed response.

As for Germany's reluctance to use EU-sourced equipment (which is available from multiple firms), perhaps it has some connection to the convenience of the One rail-Road leading from east-coast China straight to the Duisburg inland port? Volvo cars, Huawei network gear, soon-to-be Chinese-made Kuka auto manufacturing robots, all from one Amazon-like industrial source. What could go wrong? Germany's only response will be, not whether Huawei, but how much and how soon. Eriksson et al must love it. EU solidarity at work.

Germany tells America to verpissen off over Huawei 5G cyber-Sicherheitsbedenken

Re: How about Apple's apparent deflation? The surgence of "cloud"?

"Who'd buy a Chinese car if they even knew a brand?" Exactly. People know little and inquire little, when cheaper products are on offer, and when they imagine they're employers will capture some huge piece of the Chinese retail market. They don't even know the other side of the thing.

And so, Europeans are buying those Volvo Car products they've known so well for years. And yet almost all Volvo cars are now manufactured in China buy Chinese owners, using Kuka (had been German) industrial robots...which robots will in fact be manufactured in China not Germany once the 2023 contractual freeze expires. They've already, shock of shocks, built the new Kuka factory in China. They just aren't allowed to operate it yet. Where will the IP go in 2023? To China, of course.

The Volvo cars are shipped by train complete to some eastern european markets, while most others are shipped in containers as complete car kits, for assembly in the EU. The trains arrive at the Chinese-controlled post in Duisberg, the largest inland port in the world. The train traffic had been "clothing and toys from China, German cars back to China." Well, that pleased Germans until the Volvos started arriving.

Now Chinese investors (who swear independence of the CCP when abroad, but plead Party loyalty when in China) now control 10+8% of Daimler (Mercedes), have become the largest single shareholder of Deutsche bank, own Germany's largest and best industrial robot manufacturer, Kuka, so why not add Huawei to the mix: 5G network code has been vetted by GCHQ? Oh, are the code and chipsets static over the life of the system? No. China has Germany over a barrel. It's either breakup time or surrender time.

Uncle Sam to its friends around the world: You can buy technology the easy way, or the Huawei

Re: Translation

I should think the winners will be Erikson and Seimens, not a US company.

Perhaps you think the prospect of the UK as a part of "one ring, one road" enchanting? You won't really have much time to change your mind. Germany is already getting stuck to it, allowed the Chinese to buy two too many Germany technology-leading firms.

Re: "out of security concerns"

Helicopters are definitely the new trees.

Re: "out of security concerns"

And, imagine this: What if the Indian subcontinent tried the same thing as those damned Yanks? Terrifying? No right whatever to throw off the benevolent yoke of Britannia. Next it'll be the Irish, eh?

The UK has a choice: build your own connections to the world, seeking to create a national specialty as the Swiss have, or as Ireland and Luxembourg have (at least for the moment....).

If you don't think the Chinese CP is waging full-on economic war against the West, you haven't been paying attention.

Re: @Yes Me Let's not beat around the bush

If you consider the rate at which Chinese nationals and mainland hacking groups have been breaking into US tech vendor networks and stealing specs, drawings, etc.....then the China bit is no big deal. In my book it's a huge deal. But no matter: Soon enough China will be buying up UK tech and manufacturing companies as fast as they've been buying up the Germans...which Germans have only lately become sufficiently rueful as to what they've allowed, especially in auto-factory robotics. UK parts supplier to Volvo Cars or Daimler Benz? You're now either a supplier to a Chinese company on the mainland, or you're supplying a 27% Chinese CP owned company on its way to 51%

Re: Does that mean...

No. Certainly not. Rooting you has nothing to do with sharing sensitive information with you. It's obviously the other way around....

Prez Trump orders Uncle Sam to step up AI efforts – we all know the White House knows a lot about artificial intelligence

Re: The view through Rose Lawn tinted glasses ....... Spectacular Monoculars :-)

While my candidate never makes it through the primary season, I can defend US AI. Google. MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, et al, suffice. It is easy for people to overlook what Trump has accomplished. After all, they've get a nicely woven narrative to make them comfortable hurling insults over the wall. If you read/listened to the BBC, NBC, ABC or read the major European papers over the last two years, over the last month, what you'll read today will fit harmoniously with what they tell you today. Conformation isn't just a Bias, but a favorite flavor.

Even Joe Biden's brother Frank recently said, "everybody in the family voted for Trump, because we can't stand Hilary." It's no wonder. And I laugh: We're going crazy in the US trying to tie Trump to Russia somehow. Yet, first, we know Hillary actually paid, through British former and not-so-former spied to employ Russian agents to hunt up ultra-salacious-sounding slurs on Trump. About Trump's hypothesized Russian connections, we have nothing of note to point to. I know, though "you may hate what I say, you'll risk your life to defend my right to say it." Not so much? Well, it was a nice concept while it lasted....

Re: I can never understand anything the guy says

How could you have got PTSD from a beautiful language?

Oddly enough, when a Tesla accelerates at a barrier, someone dies: Autopilot report lands

Re: Self Preservation mode

With the proper details entered into the system, a jetliner's autopilot does a lot more than simply fly straight-and-level. "Auto pilot" is a horrible name for "adaptive cruise control, plus "stays in a lane."

Grumble Pai: FCC boss told by House Dems to try the novel concept of putting US folks first, big biz second

Re: There is another system

The answer to the problem is to eliminate the practices of "the hops" along the way. Outlaw the change of the originating caller's number at any point before the intended destination number.

Apple: You can't sue us for slowing down your iPhones because you, er, invited us into, uh, your home... we can explain

Re: "Apple had no duty to disclose the facts regarding software capability and battery capacity."

Which Tim will Insanely Grate.

Data flows in a no-deal Brexit are a 'significant' concern – MPs

Re: Project Fear

Indeed, cooperating as equals. However, I have questions: How come Spain and Portugal have shiny new highways and trains, yet the UK doesn't? How come Germany has such a large trade surplus but the UK doesn't? How come Ireland, Nederlands, and Luxembourg have such clever tax shenanigans but the UK....barely almost does? And, when Germany forces corporate tax-rate equalization on the UK and Ireland, will they simultaneously and diligently correct their trade imbalaces? Peers indeed.

Re: Project Fear

Certainly it means ceding control when three of the four major powers in the "peer group" have repeatedly and predictably push for laws and policies antithetical to the wishes expressed by British people.

Re: Scaremongering

What makes you think May will have anything to do with post-Brexit government actions?

Re: UK to EU data flows

If they were actually good at that, my front page would look like the Sun. It doesn't.

Facebook didn't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills – lawsuit

Re: At Simon Hobson, re: authorization.

There was a person on the East Coast that, many years ago, got a call from a San Francisco producer of glass pot pipes and bongs. He answered. "Did you place an order for $900 worth of bongs?" "No." It was obvious what had occurred, the unapproved temporary removal of a credit card from a wallet.

The point? Glass Bong Makers in San Francisco had more conscience than Facebook, Zuckerberg, and Sandberg. Just stunning.

The Apple Mac is 35 years old. Behold the beige box of the future

Re: Typical el Reg @sprograms

MacOS (under this or any other previous sanctioned name...) was never submitted for UNIX 98 certification. I took a look to see if perhaps NeXT had applied. Nope. MacOS also hasn't been submitted for UNIX V7 certification. -Sorry about the gratuitous "System" term.

That wasn't pedantic grammar. I'm an attorney with an interest in IP, first and foremost. I write as I speak. Laugh. Your knowledge of UNIX history and variants is unquestionable far beyond mine. Thanks for your corrections.

Re: Typical el Reg

To quote Jerry Pournelle on the subject, that Apple had nothing to do with the democratization of personal computers, is to forget who Jerry Pournelle was. Apart from his brand of SciFi, he was a writer for PC magazines. And, he was simply wrong. The Apple 2 and Visicalc legitimized personal computers in business. MS and others saw the light and steered their app R&D into applications that could ride that wave. The large quantity of IBM PCs ("nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"), and then closes with MS DOS, sealed the deal. If you indeed worked in an office (accounting, law, clerks, etc.) you will recall the "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" which without doubt caused lock-in. To use a Mac with Word and Excel required essentially no training. Use of the character-based GUI DOS boxes generally did require training of staff.

Windows and MS didn't democratize computers. Oddly enough, businesses did. Purchasing agents counted cost above all else, and generally were not responsible for training expenses. Further, few executives were willing to risk betting with Apple against IBM, HP, et al. Done.

For years now Mac OS X (MacOS) has offered an accessible certified System 3 UNIX under the GUI. Few people need that access, but applications developers (including MS) have made good use of it.

US Department of Defense to fling $1.76bn at Microsoft

The DoD already paid to develop a "Highly Secure Linux" years ago. Perhaps they could just dump 100million into developing a more pleasant GUI and call it a day. There are Linux-compatible databases-a-plenty in use by serious industries. It is the most common operating system in AWS instances. I suspect it is the Video Game Players that form the MS Windows power constituency.

Dozens of .gov HTTPS certs expire, webpages offline, FBI on ice, IT security slows... Yup, it's day 20 of Trump's govt shutdown

Re: Operational Incompetence

It has nothing to do with "next year's budget." Appropriations aren't itemized down to the cert spending. Additionally, agencies frequently use current-year appropriations to make payments against multi-year commitments.

Re: Oh God

System administrators are essential staff, and payments for IT security are still permitted. This article tries to expand the Partial Shutdown into an excuse for careless agency IT administration. Failure to update certs is nothing new.

Marriott: Good news. Hackers only took 383 million booking records ... and 5.3m unencrypted passport numbers

It seems to be an all-Chinese buffet at Marriott. "Marriott now says the (allegedly Chinese) miscreants who broke into its Starwood guest database.."

It was only months ago that a Marriott employee made (on his own time, his own social media) a comment critical of CPRC's abuse of Tibet....upon which Marriott promptly fired the man upon complaint by the Chinese. What has become of Marriott? Bowing to the Peoples Republic by sacrificing an employee unfairly. Did Marriott call the Communist Party and insist that one hundred of their best hackers get canned? Interested people want to know....

PC makers: Intel CPU shortages are here to stay ... for six months

Re: Pah... when I was a kid...

I recall that upgrading my 1984 Mac to a Mac+ cost $1,000....to get the RAM up to 1MB!

I told my son last week that I currently had $32,000,000 worth of memory in a bag on the back seat of my car....at 1986 prices.

Millennials 'horrify' their neighbours with knob-shaped lights display

Re: Is it a penis or....

An erect phallus was also a religious item in the widespread cult of Hermes in ancient Athens. Athenians would very often have a statue of Hermes in such a state, placed by their front door to protect the boundary of their house, as was also done to mark the boundary between neighboring towns. The statue was called a Herm. See Wikipedia's entry for Hermes, sub-topic Herm.

Reverse Ferret! Forget what we told you – the iPad isn't really for work

Re: Oh FFS

Perhaps intentionally, you've left out one wonderfully au currant reason that management prefers to hand out laptops, not towers: An employee with a laptop doesn't need an office. They don't even require a set little cubical. Making them redundant happens at the speed of Executive Stock Option: Just grab their laptop, nullify their building entry code, and move on.

I should admit that I prefer having both a laptop and a very quiet but powerful desk-near Mac Mini or Intel equivalent. Using what's right for the task at hand, and in my own offices, just seems right.

Chuck this on expenses: £2k iPad paints Apple as the premium fondleslab specialist – as planned

I'm not in the target audience for a loaded 2018 iPad Pro, but they aren't silly for the money. The typical target user is doing design, architecture, or other graphics work. The OS suits them, as they know it already from their iPhone. The thing is actually fast. It has been targeted by first-tier app developers.

I have a friend that seems to code in C, Python, and a few other PLs. He uses a "good value" laptop and an Android phone. But I'll point out that he has a mega-expensive gaming machine, and burns electricity like mad, paying through the nose...but "it's entertainment, relaxing."

I find the compulsion to overlook the the aesthetics and ease-of-use of Apple products overdone. Some people feel they get value from having one set of preferences satisfied. Others pursue a different set. Also overlooked is the value of OS software updated for free for many cycles. Choice. It's good.

Super Cali goes ballistic, net neutrality hopeless? Even Ajit Pai's gloating is something quite atrocious

Re: States’ Rights....

Obama's penchant for side-stepping congress allowed him to avoid great labors, persuasion. He therefore built many castles of sand.

Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz

Does this mean Red Hat Linux coding will all be done in India hereafter? Does Red Hat have an exciting fleet of jets and helicopters? I can't see the draw for Mz. Rometti....

The Obama-era cyber détente with China was nice, wasn't it? Yeah well it's obviously over now

Re: China

Absurd. It is that sort of late-night political "humor" which allowed the perpetuation of the corporate sabotage of the US technology manufacturing sector, including the assembly business, to continue, allowing domestic corporate tech profits to sky-rocket at the cost of trade imbalance, employment reduction, and technology transfer (imposed openly or taken by theft) for so many years.

If you really equate the US to China, you wish to live under a totalitarian government, with your credit rating determined by your Facebook comments, a government with a leader-for-life, active Death Vans scooting from town to town, and re-education camps for religious minorities. But it's all a joke, right?

What could be more embarrassing for a Russian spy: Their info splashed online – or that they drive a Lada?

Komsomolsky 20 is also, apparently, the HQ of the "I wish I had an Aston Martin Society."

Yes, but residing in the EU under a false name?

Amid Trump-China tariff tiff, Cisco kit prices to resellers soar up to 25%

Tariffs have worked many times

US New England industry was built upon the first law ever passed after enactment of the US constitution. The Tariff Act of 1789 protected US manufactures and penalized consumer imports. Tariffs have been a mainstay of EU policy since the beginning. To many people have not got beyond their free trader econ 101 textbooks. China has loved tariffs, and gets special benefit, because, under the WTO, it is given preferences as a developing nation, even though the eastern 28% of it is a developed nation in most regards.

The nation the tariffs under discussion address is the People's Republic of China. Their customs go back only to the early 1950's, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. If you believe in customs before that era, especially political and religious customs, you're in big trouble.

The Overseas Chinese? They're different. They aren't the target.

Developer goes rogue, shoots four colleagues at ERP code maker

The total number of US soldiers in the war zone in any one year never topped 550,000. In most years the number was far smaller. The number of US persons with exposure to violence-by-gun each year is more than 320 million. In terms of deaths-per-100K the war was much more dangerous. But that's a technical matter. Every large US city has an area, often large,, in which the deaths-per-100K is greater that it was in Vietnam. Ask yourself why. And, in my suburban county bordering a major US city murder is exceedingly rare.

Re: Hardly News - A Daily Occurrence in the Land of the Second Amendment and Phallic Challenged Men

"more deer died than people." That certainly isn't true. A nation of 91 million people is likely to experience mortality of more than one million people per year. It is unlikely that there even exist one million deer in Vietnam.

"Home Invasion" is just the US term for "burglary of an occupied dwelling." If you look it up, you'll find that the percentage of burglaries that are of occupied dwellings... is much higher in the UK than in the US. Those of you who live in the UK have assuredly seen the news reports of such burglaries, and the abused, beaten, or worse, victims. Use of weapons to defend oneself in the UK case are banned....though that is slowly turning around.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

The CP of China murders many citizens year in and year out, and now places Uyghurs in "re-education camps," and you're worried about US homicides?y My Township (and county) are as safe as most of Europe. Gangs/drugs are involve in most murders. In my state they are occurring only miles away from us. Seriously intervene? Politically impossible.

Mexico. It's where the murder rate is truly high, and the techniques of murder especially gruesome. And Venezuela, Guatamla, etc. I think Europeans, and Brits, look at gross statistics, highlighted video about "mass" shootings, and have no idea of the distribution of crime in America by ethnicity and urban neighborhood. It reminds me of Americans who can't find Indonesia on a globe.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Personally, I love Switzerland, and travel there for various reasons. But it's full of....Swiss people. We have many millions of people who believe "taking care of business" with violence (fist, foot, knife, gun) is culturally acceptable. My township of ca.25,000 thousand has lots of guns in safes, and essentially no murders per decade. The population is educated, and they'll "rat" on each other at the least violent infraction. Three miles away, in the neighboring city, the culture is entirely different. They excuse themselves from our culture of law, convincing themselves that shifting their beliefs would be caving in to "the man." You have to see it, experience it, to believe it. And then there's East End London.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Among other usage variations (via the OED): a 1790 Adam Smith W.N. v. i. iii. i. (Bohn) II. 253 When those companies‥are obliged to admit any person, properly qualified,‥they are called regulated companies.

I have found, in life, that when people consider dangers and murderous societies, they usually turn to the safest target. Thus my German friends did, during the Cold War, constantly marched against and assailed the US: They were simply afraid of the Soviet East, knowing the soviets, one or two-hundred miles away, were hopelessly ruthless, unbelievers in the view that everyone deserves to feel safe, at liberty.

We had our civil war. Gruesome as it was, it didn't hold a candle to WWII in Europe, or the intentional murders by the Soviets of their own citizens, or the stunning numbers killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The world, everyone from Olaf Palme to the French Youth rebellion, were railing at us in 1971 because -Vietnam. Meanwhile, five hundred miles to the north, Mao was ordering murderous measures that had even less rationality, and killed many millions more. People are content with tunnel vision.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Most people in the world (i.e. the populations of India, China, Indonesia, and Sub-Saharan Africa) get very little, if any, free mental health and medical care at more than a primitive level. In all these areas mass murders (mass....not just four people) occur with some regularity. In the US arson in poor urban areas is not a bit rare. Remove those areas from the statistics and America, for all its guns, is as safe as France. The data for the US is available on the US Department of Justice website. For the referred-to regions, Nexis or Google suffices.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Three of the main causes seem to be: 1. Intense competition for money and status in very poor, crowded, uneducated neighborhoods; 2. Collapse into anger when stuck in a job-poor region when a job or family is lost, taken away, or driven away by oblivious behavior; 3. Blind rage when someone discovers they have been universally ostracized due to personal characteristics the perp can do nothing about, such as ethnicity, color, mental disability, etc. We have enough pro bono lawyers. It's time we had more pro bono friends/volunteers to help the unlovable or deeply scarred.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

The worst mass murder of the 20th century used arson as the weapon. It is still a popular way to exact a murderous toll, whether perceived as revenge, simple hate, or even, occasionally, a simple obsession with fire. Knives have been used for millenia to commit mass murder, up to recent years. Intentional infliction of carbon monoxide poisoning still occurs.

Mass murder, four or more victims including, often enough, the perp, is a TV News obsession, The deaths caused one or two at a time, especially in the toughest neighborhood of urban America, are vastly more numerous each year. They primarily involve minorities killing minorities. Sad. But there's usually no absorbing "film at 11," no crowd of politicians and hysterical grieving family and friends.

I personally would not prefer it if all these senseless killings were committed with swords, daggers, or flammable substances. The ugliness of violence is about weak dysfunctional families, and the vast armies-of-one sunk into loneliness and substance abuse. The schools should educate every young person, as they pass through the system, about these ills, and the possibility of pulling the disturbed, addicted, or hopeless and angry, back into community. It really isn't about guns, anymore than medieval England's murder rate was about swords.

The eyes don't have it! AI's 'deep-fake' vids surge ahead in realism

Re: Can we have....

The current trend is to replace Orange Man with the selection of Google's choice. You don't need to vote.

Dear America: Want secure elections? Stick to pen and paper for ballots, experts urge

Yes. And what good are observers from both parties, or video cameras, if the the process of actual individual voter identification is week?

Re: share of moonballs

The post on which you're commenting is about election technology. The issue of left versus right, moonbat count, and so forth, isn't relevant. Were it relevant, I would point out that many states in the US have their electoral votes wholly determined by the preference of their one or two largest cities. Those cities all vote majority dem, having their vote determined largely by union affiliation or social benefit dependence. But that doesn't clarify the tech problem. Even the machines can't fix the absence of voter ID. The left holds Scandinavia out as the model of democracy...but Sweden, Norway, et al, require one's "legitimation card" in order to vote, a card having a photo and ID number. In Sweden that number is your birthdate and your number in line of births reported that day. People don't find such ID offensive. Why does the US left?

The Death of the Gods: Not scared of tech yet? You haven't been paying attention

Banning all advertising is a pleasant thought. However, the actual result in today's world would simply mean that the companies and individuals with vast wealth and a wish to shape all conversations...would rule. They'd buy the space on blogs, sites, and the sites would yield because....no revenue.

The only other model that might work is "everybody pays for the access they seek, site by site. At present even that path does not lead to zero adverts. Such sights inevitable yield to paid editorializing.

Ignore the ads. Ban pop-up ads. Go to the good parts of the site, the core. Then leave the site. Go for a walk,Realize that we had nothing, thirty years ago, but magazines and newspapers that were 50%+ advertising, with content often warped by ad clients.

Alaskan borough dusts off the typewriters after ransomware crims pwn entire network

It seems that in our language and culture the definition of the word "victim" keeps receiving an ever greater inclusiveness. If blaming the victim is taboo, it becomes vitally important to qualify as a victim. In this way the negligent and foolish become immune to responsibility and critique.

Ecuador's Prez talking to UK about Assange's six-year London Embassy stay – reports

Re: Makes no sense

It was alleged, and may be true, that the re-filing was due to Assange refusing to take AIDS/STD tests in Sweden. After the use of a broken condom, that refusal would be a serious matter.