Posts by Ex IBMer

Brit soldiers tune radio waves to fry drone swarms for pennies

Re: Some of you (drones) may die

In a tactical situation there may be no operator.

Make the drone autonomous. Configured to go to a location and drop a payload.

Sure, you could target DJI operators, but they are not the threat.

UK's attempt to keep details of Apple 'backdoor' case secret… denied

Re: Basic point here

And that is why you only travel with a burner phone, and never take a laptop anywhere - if you need a laptop, buy a cheap one when you get over the border.

Dept of Defense engineer took home top-secret docs, booked a fishing trip to Mexico – then the FBI showed up

Totally unfair.

I think he's being treated a little harshly.

If it's OK for the President (who has never gone through a more complex vetting process that winning a popularity content), then it should be totally ok :-).

Ex-NSA grandee says Trump's staff cuts will 'devastate' America's national security

Not an issue

Trump has clearly indicated that he wants the USA to stop actively working against the Russiens from a cyber perspective. All the chineese need to do is start working with the Russian cyber teams and they can slide straight on through, with full presidential endorsement.

Easy.

Signal will withdraw from Sweden if encryption-busting laws take effect

Malicious compliance to the rescue

Easy.

Provide a back door.

Make it clear that you are providing a back door.

Provide the back door facility on your home page, and tell everybody that the back door decryption key is C0mpl1@nce.

UK court says Chinese operation must sell Scottish chip biz stake without delay

Just take the fab to the dump.

If the Chineese own it, and the nrits don't want them to own it, then they should simply take all the fab equipment to the local council tip, smash it and drop it off for recycling.

That way the owners gen an appropriate tax break, the government gets what they want. It's win win..

Trump admin's purge of US cyber advisory boards was 'foolish,' says ex-Navy admiral

We ignore the true reason

We are ignoring the real reason why these boards were terminated.

Trump is the greatest.... asset that's the Russians and Chinese have ever cultivated.

They were both backing his campaign. Either monetarily or through social media manipulation.

He is singularly the most disruptive cyber asset that both countries could ever dream of. Single handedly, he is doing more to actively destroy US interests than all of the spies caught in the last 20 years... and he is still free to keep causing destruction...

And we can't talk about it...at least not is you're American.

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

Trivial. Simply remove content

You don't even have to employ additional staff.

Simply place a button on any user contact that allows people to flag it as illegal, and delete the comment instantly, no questions asked.

People will go to town on government pages. And it will be fun to watch. Especially if you blur the content and say that "A user in Stafordshire has taken objection to the content so it has been removed...."

Extra points for collating a list of removals monthly for people to see.

Almost worth creating a social media platform with that feature.

Oh, I forgot.... once removed... it's removed forever...don't want to not comply with the law...

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Anderson to the rescue

The UK mains plug is a worldwide leader in robustness. It is the definition of a robust connector - It is intrinsically safe. I believe that the UK standard charging plug should reflect this robustness. As solid as the British empire.

You should select the 30 amp Anderson plug as a suitable standard - it is good for 30 amps at 24volts - 720W - You can tread on it, drive over it - do anything to it and it survives. The phone may not, but the connector will survive.

USB C is far to delicate for the British consumer to even consider.

Everyone's suing AI over text and pics. But music? You ain't seen nothing yet

Yet, Taylor Swift recently simple re-recorded all of her old music catalogue and released them as 'Taylor Swift's versions' to take ownership of her music back when her recordings were sold.

I don't think anybody would be enthusiastic enough to sue her. And it sets a very nice precedent.

One day, a clever creator will mechanically develop millions of 'songs'

Each of these 'songs' will be 2 or 3 bars long or however long the most minimum successful lawsuit was (minus one note).

There will be an exhaustive set - and they will be released into the Public Domain. Others will be able to draw on them by combining song 1, 34211,34772, 43228 and 5511889 to create an entirely new derivative song.

Nobody sues people over two letter sets, or single word phrases.

Then this nonsense will stop.

Chinese balloon that US shot down was 'crammed' with American hardware

Pull on it - It's fun to watch

Since time began, nations have been spying on other nations. The reality is that we Just Don't Talk About It.

Because as soon as Bobby dobs Jill in, Jill then goes and spills the dirt on Bobby.

Go on -Pull the thread - Pull the threat - Pull the thread - Just wait till I have my comfy chair and popcorn. :-)

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

Re: ...and just how are people expected to log into a system?

It shouldn't be illegal - What do you think that your boss uses to identify you - Your boss saw you - their brain created a map for your face and voice, and that is used for recognition.

Re: ...and just how are people expected to log into a system?

Totally agree - Its just an access system.

What are people after - Do they want to push the laws so that every time your manager validates that its you by looking at your face, they are liable for a 'Facial Recognition' fine.

&^%*& Luddites.

Linus Torvalds to kernel devs: Grow up and stop pulling all-nighters just before deadline

Its easy to fix

Just treat this as you would your friends who are *always* late.

Tell everybody that the party starts at 5pm, and set the actual start of the party to 6pm. That way, when the late people turn up, they are actually on time.

Early people get rewarded by extra nibbles :-)

GitLab U-turns on deleting dormant projects after backlash

Nothing that a bash script can't solve

Simple - using cron, setup a bash script to go through the repo and insert a top comment saying - 'This text inserted because GITLAB are a bunch of clowns 0001'

Set the script to increment 0001 accordingly, and delete the previously inserted lines - And There you go.

You get the best of both worlds - 1 - You save your project from deletion, and 2 - You make GITLAB the most active repository on the planet! And nobody has to pay for it - it's all free - all of the storage and bandwidth!

Go Open Source.

Beware the techie who takes things literally

The last bit is the bottom line.

Employers who penny pinch are likely to be behind in their superannuation payments. They are also likely to be the kind that gets their employees to use a 'corporate' AMEX card.

Ask me about who is financially liable for the $6000 network switches that you put onto the card when the company goes bust because the employer was the kind that doesn't pay a $10 shareware fee....

I will give you a clue - It wasn't the company......

So I have a clear and simple approach to any financial disintegrity now - Just walk.

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

Winning a popularity contest does not make you an expert

It turns out that our elected leaders have simply won a popularity contest.

Nothing more, nothing less. In many cases, with preferential voting, they have not even done that.

The popular dude expressed his views. The task experts said "Yea.... Nah....."

Simple

Tech Bro CEO lays off 900 people in Zoom call and makes himself the victim

Re: What Garg did next

He he he he he he he he he he ah ah ha ha ha ha ha he he he eh he he he.

Said the ex IBM employee.....

Re: staying in contracting from now on.

As a long time contractor, I actively *choose* who I work for. If management is being a PITA, then I simply don't renew the contract. I am lucky in that my dance card is completely full all the time, so I have choice.

By the way, the downvote button is actually bottom right :-)

Schools email marketing company told us to go away when we told them of exposed database creds, say infoseccers

Compromise is such a ..... dirty.... word

Are we ***sure*** that there has been a compromise.....

I mean, all it takes on one little design specification saying that upon error the system is to blurt out all of the access credentials ever used for it, and its not compromised at all. It is operating by design :-)

Alternately, if the design specs didn't **explicitly** say that outputting passwords was disallowed, then again, the system is operating as designed.

It's not as if somebody actually hacked them :-P

Sigh

It's always DNS, especially when a sysadmin makes a hash of their semicolons

Re: @AC Back in th eday? Still!

I have always been fascinated that the DNS environment required multiple files to host really similar data, you have forward files, and reverse files, and they have to match.

Reminds me of the famous line in Ten Things I Hate About you:

"Chastity: I know you can be underwhelmed, and you can be overwhelmed, but can you ever just be, like, whelmed?

Bianca: I think you can in Europe."

Re: Back in the day? Still!

There is so much truth to that comment. Thank you!

There is nothing quite like that feeling of ..... desperation.... when you realise that the new widget is busted, and its *your* problem to fix it....... And you know that because of a recent upgrade, and because the developers are special, Everything Is Wrong And In A Different Place, and heck, even the *(&^(*&^ scripting language has been changed.......

Brit MP demands answers from Fujitsu about Horizon IT system after Post Office staff jailed over accounting errors

Sue the crap out of them.

How about a Gazillion pounds for every day in Gaol.

Repair store faces hefty legal bill after losing David and Goliath fight with Apple over replacement iPhone screens

Trademark infringement has fascinating history

Even from the article, it is clear that this is a simple trademark problem.

All but one of the screens had an apple logo - Apple claimed that they were counterfeit. That's a trademark issue right there, and you can't win.

I don';t believe that right to repair should be confused by trademark infringement issues.

""The core of the case is the right of repairers to access spare parts without Apple approval," wrote Maja van der Velden, informatics professor at the University of Oslo, in a blog post last year. "This right is under attack by Apple’s drive to control how and whom can repair the Apple products you own.""

I used to work in the Trademarks office here in Australia, and during boring nights doing tape backups in the 90's I used to read the physical bound historical Trademarks Journals. They had fascinating legal cases. Even if its repaired, its not genuine. A similar trademark case law comes from the early 1900's, when companies were 'repairing' tyres by stripping out the metal bead from the rim, and mounding a new tyre around that. The only original component was the metal tyre. That was also found to be infringement.

It would be much safer, for them to manufacture screens that were compatible, have no logos and then there would be no issues at all.

Is that Bullet for Me? Redundo clock is ticking for UK staff at both divisions of IBM's Services arm

IBM ... Bonus.... Shares.... ha ha ha ha.

I'm splitting my sides here.....

At IBM you're a completely replaceable seven digit employee number..

Shares..... Bonus..... HeHeHeHeHeHe