Posts by Christoph
3320 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2007
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Conviction by computer: Ministry of Justice wants defendants to plead guilty online
On the computerised form you will have to fill in if accused of not having a TV licence, in the list of reasons for not having a licence from which you are required to pick one, will it include "Because I don't have a television!" or will that be mysteriously absent?
I'm told that already happens with the printed notices they send you threatening to take you to court - I don't know myself, I bin them unread.
There are already far too many computerised interfaces where you have to pick the least-worst option from a list because none of the supplied options are relevant. Trying to force court cases into options the computer can handle is likely to produce occasional dire results.
National Cyber Security Centre to shift UK to 'active' defence
Come in HTTP, your time is up: Google Chrome to shame leaky non-HTTPS sites from January
Re: It's pretty minimal cost
"I just renewed my SSL cert and I think it cost me £20 to get it signed and maybe 30 mins of trying to remind myself how to drive openssl."
It's trivially easy for someone who knows what they are doing.
It is not trivially easy for a little old lady who wants to put up a couple of pages with pictures of her cats and her grandchildren.
Publishing military officers' names 'creates Islamic State hitlist'
"Historians and genealogists love them for tracing family members, and that's about the most you can do with them.
But they do have other uses!
Jack. His name would appear in the Army Lists of the period, I suppose, Aunt Augusta?
Lady Bracknell. The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life. But I have no doubt his name would appear in any military directory.
Jack. The Army Lists of the last forty years are here. These delightful records should have been my constant study. [Rushes to bookcase and tears the books out.] M. Generals . . . Mallam, Maxbohm, Magley, what ghastly names they have—Markby, Migsby, Mobbs, Moncrieff! Lieutenant 1840, Captain, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, General 1869, Christian names, Ernest John. [Puts book very quietly down and speaks quite calmly.] I always told you, Gwendolen, my name was Ernest, didn’t I? Well, it is Ernest after all. I mean it naturally is Ernest.
Second 'dimmer switch' star spotted
Obama says USA has world's biggest and best cyber arsenal
Google plots cop detection for auto autos
Fine if the light is on the roof
Some disguised police cars hang the light out at window level when they want to go emergency. I was in a mass of cars moving onto a big roundabout when a siren went off. Since modern sirens are carefully designed to make it impossible to tell which direction they are coming from, I had no way at all to tell where the emergency vehicle was or which way I should move until it wedged through a couple of cars away and I could finally see that low level light.
Hacker takes down CEO wire transfer scammers, sends their Win 10 creds to the cops
2fa is not difficult! On my personal bank account, if I want to send money to a new payee I haven't paid before, I have to produce an authorisation code from the 2fa gadget.
If I can do this for 10 quid, why can't large organisations do it for 10 million? If the CEO sends an email saying to pay a new account, that should be authorised with a one time code.
Hollywood offers Daniel Craig $150m to (slash wrists) play James Bond
It's OK to fine someone for repeating a historical fact, says Russian Supreme Court
Drama in orbit: Brazen UFO attacks Earth's Sentinel-1A satellite
FBI Director wants 'adult conversation' about backdooring encryption
Height of stupidity: Heathrow airliner buzzed by drone at 7,000ft
SpaceX Dragon capsule lands in Pacific carrying 12 moustronauts
Notting Hill Carnival spycams: Met Police rolls out real-time live face-spotting tech
Re: V
Stop and search more blacks than whites. Investigate blacks more than whites. Let white person off as 'having a bit of fun', but arrest and convict black person for the same behaviour.
Oh look, crime statistics prove blacks commit more crimes than whites.
Plus of course that blacks have more trouble getting good education and a good job.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -- Anatole France
That could mean that anyone resembling an image on that database gets stopped and asked to "verify their identity" every few minutes through the whole carnival.
And when they get decidedly stroppy about it after a couple of days of this, then obviously the police officer involved would have to nick them.
A USB stick as a file server? We've done it!
Re: More of this, please.
This 'ere WD My Passport Wireless Pro has 3 Tb capacity and a 10 hour battery life. It can charge a smartphone, and it can suck in files from a camera's SD card or a USB stick automatically.
Oh, and you can ssh to its Linux shell, and it runs PHP and SQLite under its Apache server - which presents some very interesting possibilities.
Boffins design security chip to spot hidden hardware trojans in processors
Privacy advocates rail against US Homeland Security's Twitter, Facebook snooping
Well that's me out then
If they check my account on El Reg they will find multiple postings which are less than grovellingly and slavishly in favour of every action of "The World's Greatest Democracy Yee Ha!".
Which presumably would lead to them blocking me from entry, as I might endanger their constitution (such as the first amendment).
Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.
'Flying Bum's' first flight was a gas, gas, gas
Still got a long way to go to match Castle Wulfenbach
Ford announces plans for mass production of self-driving cars by 2021
It's nowhere near ready yet
There was that recent crash where the automation missed seeing a white lorry turning across it. If it can't see that, there's all sorts of situations that could confuse it.
Some years back I was behind a bus that had a black and white photo-realistic advert painted all over the back. So lots of different greys in different blobs. I missed seeing that bus until I was very close to it. They had actually managed to camouflage a London Transport double-decker bus.
And then there's stealth cyclists. Not the usual ones who ride at night with no lights, but the ones who also wear dull colour clothing and remove the reflectors and anything else that might make them detectable. I came very very near to hitting one of those once on an unlighted road where I'd dipped my lights for oncoming traffic.
How are automated cars going to deal with those if they can miss a white lorry?
Demise of Angler, the world's worst exploit kit, still shrouded in mystery
Maybe they quit while they were ahead?
"generating some US$34 million annually."
Unless they had huge numbers of people that's plenty of money to retire on. They might have got sensible and decided there was no point in continuing the risks when they were all already rich. Some people can actually be satisfied without needing to have a bigger super-yacht than anyone else!
Baffled Scots cops call in priest to deal with unruly spirits
Violence, vandals and vomit: London's naughtiest tech Tube stations revealed
IT analyst: Oz census data processed as plain text
Dark scientists' LUX-ZEPLIN doubles down on WIMP hunt
"WIMP signals are unique as they interact with the nucleus of a xenon atom, whereas other background particles such as photons, neutrons, muons or beta particles interact with a xenon atom's electrons."
Why would a neutron interact with the electrons and not the nucleus? It certainly interacts with other nuclei - for instance that's how the atomic bomb works.
Floods hit India's IT hubs, wash away some credibility
The return of (drone) robot wars: Beware of low-flying freezers
Raving mad: Glow sticks are secret weapon in Facebook's 2.1Gbps laser internet drones
WhatsApp gets another Brazilian whack as magistrate blocks it again
Silently clicking on porn ads you can't even see – this could be you...
Software bug costs Citigroup $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years
Re: One of the simplest checks of all
No, you come at the grand total by a different route, checking at a different point.
For example, every time a transaction actually happens the stored procedure which implements it (and does all the security checks, and cannot be amended except with a *lot* of safeguards) also adds the amount to the grand total. There's various other possible ways.
Revolutionary Brit-made SABRE hybrid rocket engine to burn in 2020
HOTOL had to be redesigned as SABRE when they realised that putting the engines at the back was a bad idea due to the change of weight distribution as the fuel burned up. SABRE has the engines in the middle of the fuselage.
I fondly remember an official illustration of what HOTOL would look like - the artist had even included painting in the ship's name on the fuselage. It was, of course, Anastasia.
Trial to store benefits claimants' personal data on blockchain slammed
Re: Misdirection
"This should re-open the question of whether we should allow people living on the benevolence of the state should be allowed to spend other people's money on booze."
Benevolence of the state? No, the money paid as National Insurance against the possibility of various misfortunes. Other people's money? No, the money paid out from the common fund to those who suffer misfortune.
If someone's house burnt down, would you demand control over the exact details of what they are allowed to spend their insurance money on because it comes from other people who did not suffer fires?
If someone is earning money they are entirely free to spend that money on whatever legal thing they want, people would be horrified at attempts to control that . As adult members of society they are assumed to have the ability to handle their own affairs. If they want to spend the money on booze that is entirely their choice.
Yet the moment they have problems and need support it is assumed that they instantaneously loose all ability to handle their own affairs and to choose what to spend money on - that they must be looked after for their own good, and their spending controlled by people who have never been in that situation and have no experience of the problems they have to cope with. A one-size-fits-all solution that applies the same rules regardless of who they are, where they live, what their circumstances are, what resources they have available. Mummy knows best and they must grovel and obey while being sneered at.
Someone on benefits is just as competent as when they were earning, and has quite enough problems to cope with without officious intervention from do-gooders revelling in grinding them down further, and demanding that They Must Not Have Any Nice Things - anything that could possibly be considered a luxury or not absolutely necessary gets snatched away from them so they have no relief whatever from utter destitution.
For their own good? No, for the sadistic enjoyment of their self-appointed 'betters'.
Blighty will have a whopping 24 F-35B jets by 2023 – MoD minister
Project this capability around the world
“This will allow us, after the US, to be the only other nation to be able to project this capability around the world.”
Why the hell would we want to? We are a small ex-important island off the coast of one of the remaining great powers. What are we doing interfering in the affairs of countries thousands of miles away?
Bitcoin child abuse image pervs will be hunted down by the IWF
I was under the impression that Bitcoin can't be tracked. Presumably they use some pretty complex data analysis to track people down? And they say this provides 'actionable evidence'. Just how are they going to explain all this to a jury clearly enough for a conviction?
Or are they just going to say "The computer says he's guilty so that's it"? Like in Operation Ore. And in that case how many years and ruined lives before they admit to the bugs in the analysis (that they'd known about for ages but kept quiet)?
Rather problematic either way.
UK.gov wants to fine websites £250,000 if teens watch porn vids
Lindsay Lohan ‘happy’ to turn on Kettering
Have they not heard of the Kettering Group?
Kettering is internationally known as the home of the Kettering Group of satellite trackers.
Here's how police arrested Lauri Love – and what happened next
Re: Although the burden of proof lies with Love
You're thinking of several years ago when we had something called "The rule of law". This was designed to prevent citizens being oppressed by the government, so of course it had to go.
Innocent until proven guilty, open trials, being allowed to see the evidence against you and confront your accuser, having to have actually broken a law rather than just annoyed the government, all that has been chucked in the rubbish.