* Posts by Christoph

3313 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2007

BlackBerry baffled by Dutch cops' phone encryption cracked brag

Christoph

They have not cracked PGP

If someone was able to crack well-implemented PGP, there is no possible way that they would let this capability become publicly known. It would destroy most of the use of the crack.

An extreme example, Churchill allowed some convoys to sail where he knew there were enemy submarines, because the losses would be far greater if the enemy realised he could read their communications.

Fortinet tries to explain weird SSH 'backdoor' discovered in firewalls

Christoph

When is a backdoor not a backdoor?

Whan it's a backjar management authentication issue

New US freedom of information law aimed at fixing 'broken' system

Christoph

Re: UK

But the people can't be trusted with all that information - they might start wanting more voice in decisions! How can mere citizens know what's best for themselves, rather than some anonymous bureaucrat?

Beware the terrorist drones! For they are coming! Pass new laws!

Christoph

"have drones automatically shut down if they approach such a space"

And have anyone who lives nearby subject to a rain of drones falling out of the sky.

Three-years-late fit-to-work IT tool will cost taxpayers £76m

Christoph

There are no mirrors in the House of Commons in case someone spots that most of the current cabinet are not visible in a mirror.

Christoph

Re: What they need to clear the paperwork backlog...

But they would have to be people who are prepared to cut other people off from benefits for the crime of being disabled, to starve other people into hopelessness and suicide for being unable to jump through impossible hoops.

Those who are already in that situation themselves might be less than willing to co-operate?

Cops stuff Mumbai thief with 48 bananas

Christoph

Re: Bananas ?

"Give the criminal Picolax

Icon: how this stuff feels"

And this is what it does. (Somewhat NSFW, especially if you are not allowed to roll on the floor laughing while at work.)

'OAuth please do grow up' say IETF boffins

Christoph

And another problem

Besides the tracking problem as described above, there's another.

Single point of failure.

It's like using the same password on multiple sites - any bug anywhere in the system lets an attacker onto every site that you use (and possibly other sites that you have never been near).

How hard can it be to kick terrorists off the web? Tech bosses, US govt bods thrash it out

Christoph

Re: Two issues here.

Define terrorism? Simple. Blowing up innocent people by planting or carrying bombs on the ground is vile cowardly terrorism. Blowing up vastly greater numbers of innocent people by dropping bombs from the safety of a plane far above them, or from a video game console thousands of miles away, is heroic defence of freedom.

UK energy minister rejects 'waste of money' smart meters claim

Christoph

Re: I asked my supplier how the data was encrypted...

Industry standard ROT13 encryption. Applied twice for extra security.

Christoph

The experts have given their considered professional opinion.

This opinion contradicts the political policy.

Therefore the experts are completely wrong.

Catalan town hall seriously downsizes monarch

Christoph
Devil

"the law obliges it to hang the king in the council chamber"

No comment

Tell us what's wrong with the DMCA, says US Copyright office

Christoph

"Repeat infringers" are penalized.

How about massive penalties for companies who repeatedly make invalid takedown demands for legitimate use, or for material that they do not even own.

Foetuses offered vaginal music streaming service

Christoph

Re: Cue baby's first words...

TURN THAT BLOODY MUZAK DOWN!

ISPs: UK.gov should pay full costs of Snooper's Charter hardware

Christoph

(f) obligations related to doing anything whatsoever the Home Secretary happens to feel like demanding, if it hasn't already been covered by the previous sections.

Periodic table enjoys elemental engorgement

Christoph

Re: eleventy

Not all scientists speak English. Latin was considered reasonably neutral.

Christoph

Name one after the scientist who developed the symmetry laws that underlie all of modern particle physics. Noetherium for Emmy Noether.

What did we learn today? Microsoft has patented the slider bar

Christoph

"the use of Help windows overlaying a document"

You mean like WordStar on CP/M?

Aroused Lycra-clad cyclist prompts Manchester cop dragnet

Christoph

I trust it will be equally illegal for women to have erect nipples? (With no regard for the temperature of course.)

UK digital minister asks for input on strategy, lauds 'sharing economy' biz success

Christoph

Re: Easy Peasy

Yes, it originated from the EU, and all the governments agreed to it. It was aimed at companies like Amazon, who can do the paperwork involved trivially. Nobody thought about the effect on small businesses for whom the paperwork is completely impossible, costing far more than their yearly takings.

When that was realised, everyone said "Oh dear. That's terrible. Something really ought to be done about it, shouldn't it?".

But a year later nothing has been done and thousands of small businesses have closed. None of the EU governments have actually pounded the table in meetings and said "FIX THIS NOW!"

So the claims that our government are trying to encourage the digital economy in general are ludicrous. They just want more money for their mates in big business - how they get the money is a mere detail, whether it's 'digital economy' or taxing the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Christoph
Facepalm

Easy Peasy

You want to boost the digital economy? Then scrap the imbecilic VAT regulations that killed off thousands of small digital businesses this year.

This should not be beyond the capabilities of a small child to figure out. It's obviously way beyond a Tory minister.

Google probes AVG Chrome widget after 9m users exposed by bugs

Christoph

Oh dear. Pissing off Google's techies is not a survival oriented action!

Boffins unwrap bargain-basement processor that talks light and current

Christoph

But can it use Fixions?

I have you now! Star Wars stocking fillers from another age

Christoph

When fighting AT-ATs, do you have to copy the film by attacking from the front an enemy which can only fire forwards? (When you have a much more manoeuvrable vehicle which could easily attack from any direction.)

Death Stars are a waste of time – here's the best way to take over the galaxy

Christoph

Re: All that...

And no mention of a Nicoll-Dyson Laser

There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches

Christoph

Re: Screen flashing

Well done that doctor. If he's no idea what has gone wrong, especially with a machine with very high voltages inside (as CRTs had), much better to call in an expert right away than to say "Well it was doing really weird things so I poked and prodded and twiddled everything I could find and eventually it went SPAT and let some smoke out and stopped working, so I thought I should ask for help."

I once had that happen with a fitter, who should know better. He just kept replacing the fuse, then when they ran out of 3 amp fuses tried a 5 amp, then finally called me in. Turns out that early, discrete component electronic counters don't work all that well when a separate fault means they are being handed 3-phase voltage. Several components and a few sections of track on the circuit board destroyed.

Microsoft mandates browser-extension defence to malvertising

Christoph

If this makes adverts easily identifiable by the browser it will be a gift to ad-blocking programs.

New HTTP error code 451 to signal censorship

Christoph

61613: Mail rejected as Spam

(61613 Dec = F0AD Hex)

Chicago cops under fire for astonishingly high dashcam, mic failures

Christoph

And yet lots of US police departments are able to buy military grade weaponry and equipment.

But then some of that money comes from highway robbery by the police.

USA doubles visa fees for migrant IT workers

Christoph

@Dan Paul

Read it again. I am doing no such thing. I am talking about the deliberate and completely unjustified link between letting in foreigners on this visa and the attack on the World Trade centre.

Oh, and I'd be quite happy not to comment on US policy and politics if the US stopped dictating to every other country what their policy and politics should be, and bombing anyone who doesn't knuckle under.

Christoph

Cute

Very neat subliminal linking of the 9/11 attacks to letting in those nasty sub-human foreigners. It nowhere actually says it was their fault of course.

North Wales Police outsourcing deal results in massive overspend

Christoph

But - but - the consultants told us it would be cheaper!

Hollywood given two months to get real about the price of piracy

Christoph

I see a need for a new law.

"Any case in which a private individual is sued for an obviously ludicrous amount of money shall be instantly dismissed with prejudice."

(i.e. the plaintiff is barred from filing another case on the same claim)

Big Brother is born. And we find out 15 years too late to stop him

Christoph

One of the buildings at the main BT research centre has one more row of windows than there are floors to which the lifts go. It's been there since way before the web or mobile phones. This stuff is not new.

Christoph

Re: So we *think* the legislation let's us do this but we won't ask anyone in case it doesn't.

"How do you know when a politician is lying?"

All together now: Their mouth is open.

Christoph

Re: Names?

As long as it isn't SCORPION STARE

Christoph

Re: Curious

"How is it that since 9/11 we have had a dramatic increase in the number of terrorist organisations, when prior to that there was only one?"

Because since 9/11 we have been bombing the shit out of various mostly or entirely innocent people with the glaringly obvious direct result of creating more terrorists.

The DoD doesn't need to directly create them. We give millions of people a burningly strong reason to hate us, we leave huge caches of weapons around, we even train people who are supposedly on our side before forcing them to turn against us.

It would be startlingly weird if there were not lots more terrorists.

Christoph

Re: modulated outrage...

"They collect scads of data but none of it means a thing until after something happens"

They insist that they must have this data because it will let them stop terrorist attacks and crimes.

But they already have this data. And they have not stopped terrorist attacks and crimes.

By their own word, they could have stopped the attacks using this data.

Therefore they are self admitted criminals who permitted attacks and crimes to take place although they had the information which they have stated would enable them to stop those attacks and crimes.

New gear needed to capture net connection records, say ISPs

Christoph

Re: Isn't this just duplication of work?

"Is it simply so it can be legally accessed by the police?"

Probably. There is no way whatever that the spooks will let mere plod have the slightest hint of what they can do or are doing.

Christoph

Plus the technical and administration costs of keeping that information secure but making it available when plod wants to snoop through it.

It is of course entirely coincidental that the costs will be proportionately far greater for small independent ISPs and far less for the big boys. Our wonderful government surely would not want to do that deliberately.

Brit 'naut Tim Peake thunders aloft

Christoph

Oh wow the UK has an official astronaut. Who wasn't even born until nearly 11 years after Gagarin's flight. Still we can now finally join the ranks of all the other third-world nations who got to send a token astronaut up.

HMRC aims for fully digital tax system by 2020. Yeah, whatever

Christoph

Your login and password for the new system will be sent to you securely via Flying Pig delivery services.

Social media snitching bill introduced into US Congress by intel bosses

Christoph

@ Kumar2012

I suggest you try reading what the drone pilots have to say about it.

Try this one too. Those kids are "fun-sized terrorists".

Christoph

Will this include people plotting to slaughter innocent civilians using remote controlled drones from thousands of miles away?

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Those are the brave heroes. It's the people willing to die themselves to kill innocent civilians who are the cowardly terrorists.

Hundreds of thousands of engine immobilisers hackable over the net

Christoph
Joke

Re: Wait... what?

Marvellous idea - if the kid is running around and screaming you can send a command to shut them down and put them to sleep.

US government pushing again on encryption bypass

Christoph

It's perfectly simple

Indiana showed the way to sort this a long time ago, but chickened out. If the mathematics makes it impossible to do what you want, just pass a law changing the mathematics. If you make Pi equal to three, the equations get much simpler.

Can someone suggest this to the Republicans? I'm sure at least some of their presidential candidates will be eager to endorse it.

Netherlands votes to splash cash on encryption projects

Christoph

No need to bomb the Netherlands. The sea level rise that we're already committed to will probably be enough to flood the lot.

Sued for using HTTPS: Big brands told to cough up in crypto patent fight

Christoph

They might just have bitten off more than they can chew

This kind of thing usually involves suing lots and lots of smaller firms who can't afford litigation.

If all the very big firms that they are suing get together to share legal expenses they can drown them in lawyers. They might even be able to push it to a higher court and get a precedent that goes some way to stopping trolling.

Sysadmin's former boss claims five years FREE support or off to court

Christoph

Yet another boss who is genuinely puzzled why "Beatings will continue until morale improves" doesn't seem to be producing the expected results.

Paris, jihadis, tech giants ... What is David Cameron's speechwriter banging on about now?

Christoph

They tried mandating back doors for luggage

The TSA mandated luggage locks with a master key that only the TSA had access too.

Then they made one single mistake, and now you can download files off the internet to 3D print your own set of master keys.