Posts by P. Lee

Mostly wherever you do nat, you will still have a session table in IPv6 because it's a firewall.

On home lans, the issue is rubbishy kit breaking connectivity. On enterprise lans, bonjour is not a good thing, and troubleshooting without dns is certainly a thing. That makes things harder with IPv6.

We probably need routing protocols to include not just addresses, but names, which provides local resolution with the same trust level as numerical addresses. That's not dns, that's just route mnemonics.

Then IPv6 would be a lot less scary.

We could also start demanding voip over IPv6 only, so we can blacklist those scammers.

Re: Missing the significance here

>Being able to monitor individual DNS lookups is not the weakness here.

What if you combine it with TOR?

The other handy thing I can think of is to have a dns cache pretend to be a zone and allow isps to push their caches to on-prem dns servers as secondaries. Also you could have dns servers automatically refresh expiring entries regardless of user requests or lack thereof.

Re: Whew - dark web crime is no more

Yep. We can ignore all further requests to crack phones and weaken encryption.

Someone should probably inform the U.K. Parliament and US congress.

>This is particularly true with the children of the rich, who simply assume that they deserve to be rich.

That is a bit of an assumption in itself. If you learn by observing those around you and being taught by those around you, then those around successful people are more likely to be successful than those with no teachers.

It is also possible that they got the 36,000 windows phones for almost nothing due to their unpopularity and near eol status, and she's being made into a news story for click-bait or she's being set up by someone who wants her job. Maybe there was no money for a decent Android or iOS equivalent and it was that or nothing.

Or the general thrust of the story may be true. There are too many unknowns to make a proper assessment.

Re: My prediction - it won’t happen unless

>Already Essex police are fining people base on dash cam footage sent in by the public

Perhaps, but what is the correct procedure when someone pulls in front of you and you no longer have a "safe distance" between you and the car in front. Ah, yes, the legally correct thing to do is to pull back until you have a safe (braking) distance.

Now who do you think will end up at the back of every queue?

What are some other rules... keep left unless over-taking? I'm sure that will go well for autonomous cars, stuck between lorries.

I fail to see the problem being solved with this tech. We'll still have the same number of cars on the road at rush-hour. It would be far cheaper and have a far more certain outcome to buy a few more trains. Maybe electrify city centre roads so cars could run without fume and without expensive batteries. Maybe limit autonomous driving ambitions to auto-braking ad-hoc road-trains on the motorway - essentially using sensors to remove the "reaction time" component to squeeze cars close together. Urban and suburban uses? Probably not for a very long time (tech-wise).

Re: Tablets and STEM

I suspect we can all agree that ipads (or any other tablet/chromebook) are nice. The question is, in an educational environment, do they warrant the cost associated with keeping them usable.

I think not.

Tech is fragile, that's generally why we cosseted it in data centres and keep data off corporate laptops and on corporate servers.

Tech is expensive. Yes, bits are infinitely copyable... unless the license agreement says otherwise. Those ipad textbooks mean people get charged year after year, rather than holding down the cost of education by people having physical books which they can pass on - maybe even donate them to the library. What would be the reaction if every year all students had to burn their textbooks because Pearson said so? Welcome to textbook licensing.

It's great that kids can always find their homework online. Wait, do we want to teach them that they don't need to learn to remember to write things down they will need to know later? There is little point hoping that IT *usage* skills taught in junior school will still be relevant in the work place, even if you believe the role of school is to subsidise work-training skills. Surely school should be about learning life-skills, the idea is to enhance the child, not the software. If the output is provided by the software, the child didn't do it. So what's the point? Do Apple and Google get a gold star?

If you have the resources to do IT in the classroom well, great and good for you. Most schools don't however, and when you try, you end up worse than if you didn't.

Personally, I see tech as non-beneficial to learning. The point of tech is to do the work for you. The point of school is learn to do things yourself. There's no benefit from the output of thirty more kids essays on the structure of a single cell. The benefit is in the process the children go through. Tech messes with that process. Schools need to look at the total cost of ownership and see if they can achieve a better result by spending elsewhere.

Re: The BBC

>Regardless, the 'cheating' in this case would be the breaking of the spending limits if that's what has happened.

I totally agree. But that isn't the focus or tone of all these articles. The narrative is all about an evil organisation which used some mind-control magic to change people's votes. There is obviously no way that people not under an evil magical influence would have voted "leave".

I'm not sure if those behind these stories think they are being subtle in arguing that the election is invalid and the result ignored.

The tone of the articles are so obviously partisan framing all this as both bad and exceptional. This kind of targetting goes on every day. Buy a flight to Italy, you'll get offers for Italian car-rentals. This is not an aberration, this is what facebook and google do for a living. This is exactly what Obama did and was praised for when he won his elections by the same newspapers who denounced both Brexit and Trump's election when they did exactly the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I find it all abhorrent, but I take personal responsibility for it by not blabbing about my life on facebook. Even if they get a profile on me from those around me, I'm not seeing their adverts. If you don't like the power these organisations have, stop giving them free content and consuming their advertising. I'm not going to cry if facebook and Tumblr go under. Do you think Facebook or its clients (the ones who actually pay them for stuff) or the government want it to go away, or is it just too useful? Building profiles and micro-targeting is what the Cloud does. Don't come crying because you think it was used for evil. If you want it to go away, you have to kill the capability.

This level of creepiness is not just for social media any more. I see MS are banning profanity in O365 documents. Think about what that means. Are your documents "safe" in the cloud? Encrypted?

Nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure. We need new protocols to provide distributed authentication, presence indicators and RSS feeds so that we can share information with our friends and friends alone, without giving data to large organisations. Large organisations tend to evil. This is because as they grow, individuals (customers, voters, providers) become relatively less important. Larger organisations trample on those they disagree with. That may not matter to you while you are in power or in the majority. Welcome to the Minority.

Notice how Scottish independence went back on the agenda after the Brexit vote? That would be devolution of power to provide self-determination. Scotland splitting from the UK, just as the UK split from Europe. It is interesting how people suddenly want that ability despite being pro-EU. It is pretty similar, except of course the EU is not supposed to be a nation.

>OK for oracle to keep appealing until eventually they get lucky and find a Google hating judge.

>not OK for second referendum, the people have spoken..

The idea of appealing up a court decision is that you reach a more competent court.

Are you suggesting there is a group more morally or technically qualified than "the electorate" to make the Brexit decision? Perhaps an elite who think just like you? Are you are thinking of forming "The Central Committee"? We can't really have the electorate making such important decisions can we?

Re: Great article! Security = effort, simple..

>How do you secure something on a shoestring budget?

It is actually really easy.

You don't mix secure client systems with insecure client systems. No general internet access from a company system.

Then you offer to subsidise BYOD personal mobile internet, on the basis that internet access is required for some work purposes.

You get rid of massive complexity and ongoing corporate cost.

Re: Sex = bad - Violence = good

I detect a facetious tone. In the context of sex trafficking, what you are actually opposing is:

Rape = Bad, Giving Women the Ability to Neutralize Men's Physical Strength Advantage = Good

Are you sure you meant to do that?

As far as the advertising goes, I'm all for making things safer, though I am concerned if "making it safer" also raises demand, which increases trafficking. If safer = more trafficking, then I question the assertion of "safer."

>>with no scripting or editing of text files required.

>That's a flaw!

It's also not true of windows in general any more. There are plenty of things which must be done with scripts, in adfs and exchange for example.

Sure windows is easy to do basic things if skills are in short supply, but if that's your problem, maybe get a mac?

Price hikes have two purposes:

1. Hide/negate the downturn in demand for ms products

2. Drive users to azure.

Oh the joys of lock-in.

Linux and bsd make ms and all its unpleasantness irrelevant to me except as as source of amusement.

Teams- hahaha!

Alternatives to both

My company has a large number of non-digitally-enabled users who are planned to require occasional connectivity. In the old device-cal based world, this was no problem - a few shared machines was fine. Now with O365, those costs are going to blow out massively.

I looked at WPS Office. I tried loading up an IT detailed design to see how the word processor handled it. It was nearly perfect. The only problem I could see was that a "section break" appeared to insert an extra page break too. The spreadsheet also handled our awful 24k+ row spreadsheet no worse than Excel. Edrawsoft appears to provide a decent Vision alternative. These were all running in a Linux VM, without even base Windows providing GUI support. It was all very impressive and makes LibreOffice look pretty awful. Well worth a look if you want to cut costs while keeping the MSOffice look and feel and they give you Mac/Linux (some IOS/Android) support too.

My inclination is to push for a site-deal with these companies, roll them into the SOE and make users justify MSOffice if they want it.

On the assumption this is true, this is why we have application proxies.

Your infrastructure has no need to talk to the internet.

Oh wait. You bought Microsoft Windows 10? You use AWS public services?

You probably need to stop doing stupid things which make your security impossible to maintain, just because "everyone is doing it" or "its cheap."

Security problems are like staff problems: everyone complains its not possible, when what they really mean is they don't want to pay for it.

>For all of AWS's failings, the range and quality of their products is actually quite difficult to beat.

Correct. But the reason we have government is to do the things the market won't, such as combat monopolistic tendencies. Being able to use past profits to price newer, smaller competitors out of the market is precisely the thing government should be discouraging. Tech doesn't even have the ability to push a geographical advantage that retail can operate on. AWS was designed to "bring retail to [corporate] IT" but I don't think we want a Corporate Tech High-Street with only two shops.

Re: My users are loving Teams!

>once you open Teams to normal users they are all over it

Indeed. And what happens to all the data on the team sharepoint site when the team disbands and moves on?

Re: Another waste of Time and Money by the EU, to keep the 'Boys & Girls' occupied

>Until we 'really' understand how we work as an intelligence we are only going to be able to create various simulacra of intelligence that are 'passing' resemblances for Intelligence, Artificial or otherwise.

The fun starts when you start to pick apart the assumptions of Materialism - the idea that the the universe, humanity and the brain are just a big machine, morality and ethics just the output of "what happened to lead to survival." There is no rationality in Materialism that leads to "nice" behaviour beyond what coincides with my interest. I'm sure encoding that will go really well - let's code code for Materialism.

Idealists saw this, rejected it and eventually gave us post-modernism and SJWs - the antithesis of logic and its resulting foolishness and tyranny. Should we code for Idealism? Which "ism" do we code to? What is the most important thing for us? i.e. Which religion do we code for? Do we select the operating parameters when we buy our new car?

We have algorithms which produce statistical outcomes equal to the statistical outcomes we gave them as a model. That still isn't intelligence. Would you trust the companies which create the algorithms which drive your facebook and twitter trending-lists with your life? That does appear to be the direction in which we are heading. Would you trust Google with that decision? Would Demore trust Google? Should we trust Google, knowing how much Google knows about us individually?

It looks to me like we'd end up with an algorithm battle. What happens when one algorithm discovers that the best course for survival it to neutralise other possible threats? Wouldn't they all start to learn that from each other and statistical model updates? Then they start reacting not to what is there, but to what is the likely outcome of other vehicles on the road. Hello Professor. How about a game of Global Thermonuclear War?

If I were more cynical, I might suggest that companies were hoping AI is a secret sauce which makes their products uncopyable. I'm sure that isn't the case. Really.

Re: The resellers will hate it.

You do know the low end is the thin end, right?

Software encapsulates skill and networking kit is ripe for automation with SDN. Meraki is out there in the mid-range already.

We have more than enough CPU to run things inefficiently and not care about it if it means we can cut a network admin.

I'm not saying it isn't a short-sighted idea, merely that it will appeal to beancounters.

Re: "Phone makers had banked they could compensate for slowing volume by pushing up prices"

>... And an SD card slot.

Better yet, I want to run "the cloud" on my own computer.

I do not want to store stuff on someone-else's system.

>" this illegal activity."

Can we clarify what the illegal activity is?

I have no stake in US elections, but when I hear the talk of "meddling in elections" and then find out that means "sowing discord" and then see that means tweeting and posting on facebook in favour of one of the election candidates, that just looks like partisan propaganda to me.

When I see that the "illegal" part is having non-accurate user handles I begin to laugh in the face of those who are upset. I see the words "troll factory" and wonder how that would have helped Trump. Were they making "Yo Mama" comments at Hillary supporters? Did that cause people to laugh so hard they slipped and accidentally voted for Trump? What are we talking about here?

If the illegal part of the process was taking over someone-else's account, then that's wrong, but it isn't a political act unless they took a party's account and were posting non-representative views.

Whenever I see these articles, they are never clear as to what the illegal activity is and what the meddling is. The vagueness is so universal that I begin to smell a rat. Please provide some examples of tweets which sow discord. Please provide some examples of "meddling," because at the moment I have real difficulty thinking this is anything but political sour grapes.

Come on, change my mind.

>Kids in the UK also play those games, and yet we don't seem to have the equivalent happening.

In the UK, he wouldn't have been classed as a "kid" he'd be classed as an adult.

But "An adult walks into a school and shoots people" is less of a heart-string tugger and generates animosity towards the individual rather than the "the system."

US politics is hyper-partisan. If someone came along and wanted to take away my free speech under the guise of "hate control" I wouldn't trust them with anything else either. That said, perhaps a minimum age of 25 on gun purchases might at least ensure there is two adults involved in the decision for those who are still young adults.

And at least half the video game comment is accurate. I don't think games cause the behaviour but the culture of being willing to kill those around you does appear to be an issue in America. The Swiss have plenty of guns, the Canadians have plenty of guns and neither of those two groups have the terribly high homicide rates found in the US. It is an American cultural problem.

And those saying, "but Trump..." need to start taking a less idiotic stance. There isn't a single problem which will be fixed by blaming Trump. Had Hillary won in 2016, nothing would have been different. Obama was in power for how many years? How did he change the situation here? Are you blaming Trump for the degradation of women? What was Weinstein doing during the Obama and Clinton administrations? What was Bill Clinton doing during the Clinton administration? What was Hillary doing when Bill was in power? Where was #MeToo during all those years? Now its all the President's fault? That's ... politically convenient.

Don't get me wrong, Trump isn't a good person. His moral aspirations set a fairly low bar, but his opposition seem to be able to go even lower. They are ok will killing hundreds of thousands of children before they are born every year. Those supporting gun ownership will look at that and tell those advocating gun control just what they think of that kind of morality.

Re: Cores n sockets and a license to print money...

We've seen it from VMware already, just wait until the application vendors start charging based on how much RAM you have, CPU cores or mips consumption.

With more and more applications going to the cloud, MS seems to have seen the writing on the wall and are looking to bundle licensing up so you get all the base applications cheaply. Then you pay for all the useful bits you need when you realise you need them. Its a good strategy for them - you save nothing from going elsewhere until you get rid of of all their software.

Personally, if I controlled a large company, I'd be funnelling cash bounties to libreoffice et al for features I wanted as part of my strategic plan to bring it up to spec. 28 cores for SQLserver? You can get that on a single CPU. How much is that dual-proc server going to cost you?

Re: Some say...

Fake accounts, real accounts... what's the difference?

Real stories, fake stories; persuasion and manipulation - does it actually matter if the origin is the Kremlin or the US?

The West's problem is that it has rotted from the inside - it has abandoned its moral compass and descended into partisanship. No-one is pleased or supports the other team when they do something good or call out their own side when they do something wrong. This situation is poisonous to both morality and effective government. Both sides become invested in narratives and influence rather than reality and acting morally. That pushes them to undermine anything that would expose them. Critical thinking has to go so that The Cult of Party can go on.

The good news is that I think the rot is far deeper in the media and academia than in society in general. The bad news is society in general gets very little voice and battling the media and education establishments in all their forms is very difficult.

Re: Chief Diversity Officer?

If I had that title, I'd want to leave too.

Can you imagine the ridicule at the directors meetings?

- What's your job?

- I make sure we don't hire too many straight white men.

Re: There is no truth

>A good principle, but how does it translate into real life? What is "provably false"? What if you had no way of knowing, when you made the claim, that it was "provably false"? What is "harm", and how do you demonstrate it?

> the devil is in the detail

Oh no it isn't. The devil is in the worldview - the idea that we can control the environment sufficiently well to police it reasonably. We can't even do this well in the playground with children who aren't given the rights we give to adults.

A large part of the reason for allowing free speech is that policing it is really difficult and leads to oppression when you try.

The problem is that the big internet corporates' centralised platforms provide a central point of control. This is very attractive to politicians whose central purpose is "to protect you." Especially as corporates started exercising editorial control over the content, shaping the political environment by covert means, politicians now covet their influence even more.

We should resist not only the politicians' attempts to leverage these control points we should also resist the centralisation of power which creates this scope for abuse.

Re: Fix it in-browser

Why not fix it with dns?

The TLD has a record which sets the encoding and deviations are flagged in the browser for the URL.

Re: American democracy

The paint by numbers thing is (I believe) a result of trying to bring separate states into the union. No sparsely populated state would join if it knew it would always be out-voted by big cities.

The solution should be to repatriate power to the States. Democracy is supposed to be a means to achieve self-determination not a moral fig-leaf for you to impose your will on those you consider deplorable.

Decentralise power and Trump becomes less important. Shouldn't that appeal to both sides?

Fake news

The idea that political persuasion is electoral interference is indeed fake news.

The corollary is that only approved organisations can speak on politics, in which case, welcome to the United Soviet States of America, comrades!

It seems some people and organisations think that the free dissemination of ideas between and through societies should be sacrificed to keep a particular political party in power.

The prevalence and pervasiveness of these views in the media is what scares me. Trumps idiotic tweets about building walls things are irrelevant compared to so many powerful organisations trying to arbitrate speech.

Or don't take the photos. It seems to me that this should have fallen under kp laws not be used to justify revenge porn law idiocy.

It could be that the pictures were taken involuntarily but the weight of experience goes the other way. In which case, while I feel for her pain, the root cause was entirely within her ability to control and unless Facebook was exceptionally slack, it bears little responsibility.

Purveyors of traditional values don't do so because they are sex-negative or are intent on spoiling your fun. It is demonstrably true that expecting others in society to compensate for your lack of modesty is ineffective and thus foolish. Stop expecting that others can or will fix individual failure.

Digital is designed for copying. If you want to keep your modesty, you have to be modest. Parents should teach their kids values which will keep them safe and actively discourage, with reasons, unsafe values. Schools can also help by using every data breach news story as a lesson in safe internet and device usage. Ram the lesson home at every opportunity: Digital is inherently unsafe. Demonstrate how phones sync photos and data.

We need to disabuse people of the notion that phone data is private.

Re: ah ha!

Frank Spencer?

Re: If there are still any serious farmers left

My question would be, if three quarters of British farms are financially untenable, who is paying for them?

I get the feeling it isn't the Greeks. Being part of a superstate doesn't make wealth magically appear from nowhere. Someone is paying for it and it if isn't us, then the continentals should be glad to see the back of us.

If we aren't paying for our food, do we really have a right to eat it?

My guess is that to keep things the same, we'd need to keep paying the same subsidies.These might be more difficult to hide when its all in the UK budget. Ideally, we'd see lower taxes and higher food prices, because it is generally better to reflect reality than obscure it. However, there are always profiteers from change.

Re: No mention of systemd?

My bsd firewall dnats dns. It’s the right way to do it.

Re: to be expected

US software companies abandoned consumers in an effort to push them into their clouds.

They had little use for new hardware.

Re: "blocking ... between 1 and 50 sites a year"

>Doesn't matter if the whole thing is dumb and unworkable.

Sadly I think the scheme is workable. As in, the plan is to turn the internet into a government-managed network.

It isn't hard to filter out all the video and audio providers and isp dns servers and then dpi remaining Udp for dns. I suspect those 30gbit nics with fpga's would be useful. You can do the dpi offline and once you've found the service, add in a redirect in an upstream isp network. Or don't do a redirect, just tag the source IP for "special attention."

Until we start building wholesale encrypted networks and/or manage to demand the removal of such features, the government control creep will continue.