* Posts by Alan Brown

15029 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008

Mr Angry pays taxman with five wheelbarrows worth of loose change

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Weigh the coins

"Interestingly, the subway booth attendants in NY could and would reject attempts to pay in large numbers of coins back in '84. Not sure how that worked"

In most countries there's a legal limit to the value of small change that a merchant is obligated to accept (it's usually something like $5 or £5 or local equivalent.) Above that, accepting it is discretionary.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"All banks have big machines that can count coins (and reject counterfeits) at high speed."

not many tax offices do.

And investigations have shown that UK banks routinely hand out counterfeit £1 coins, so either that filter isn't working or they choose to get rid of them rather than declare them to treasury.

Europe mulls treating robots legally as people ... but with kill switches

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Fucking stupid.

"they were not robots, they were "clones/purchased slaves"

Exactly. Deckard was a replicant and completely unaware of the fact.

Remember: Robot is taken from "rabota" (servitude, more or less as a slave)

Our definitions of self-awareness, intelligence and self-deterministic behaviour have broadened considerably in recent years and we really do need to get a handle on them as well as how to treat artficial intelligence. If someone proposed killing _you_, how would you react? (Skynet?)

Alan Brown Silver badge

I Robot

In Asimov's books, when the scientists realised Univac was about to take over, they looked at the competence of humans ruling the world and let it do so.

BT and Plusnet most moaned about broadband providers. Again

Alan Brown Silver badge

"BT is a group of companies"

Yes, but....

"and it is BT RETAIL that is complete crap; the proof is in the fact that small independent ISPs can get BT WHOLESALE and BT OPEN REACH to do things quickly and effectively."

There is no such company as "BT Retail" or "BT Wholesale" or "BT Openreach". They're all trading arms of the mothership without separate accounting structures, directors or company registrations.

There may be a "chinese wall" between the trading arms, but I'll believe they're separate companies when I see Openreach selling dark fibre to all comers, duct space access to Virgin and not forcing leased circuits from 3rd parties to use BT NTUs for the last mile.

There are a bunch of other companies (Such as BT inet) which _are_ separate companies but the three headed hydra _is_ a hydra.

Unless and until the Competition and Markets Authority (not Ofcom) make a determination that BT has engaged in sustained market abuse(*) and monopoly leverage to gain advantage in other markets, this situation will persist.

(*) This was what happened in New Zealand when the MoC there investigated Telecom NZ, with figures being provided as to the damage to GDP, and analysis of how BT was continuing to abuse the UK market was what shot down TCNZ's proposals to compromise with a BT/Openreach model.

Six charged for 'hacking' lottery terminals to spew only winning tickets

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Do the math ...

"Just buy out every combination of numbers and collect the jackpot."

Apart from the tactics used to ban computer generated slips, in most countries the prize pool is significantly smaller than what's paid in.

In the USA, prizewinners pay tax on their winnings and frequently are unable to collect it all at once (mostly they payout at something like $10k/month)

In most other countries, the tax department takes a cut off what's paid in (usually 30% of the gross(*)) and the prize is "tax free" (and usually paid out all at once). Either way, taxation has to be figured into the "play all combinations" tactic. (I understand that some US states allow gambling losses to be declared against tax liabilities. This isn't the case in most places)

(*) This is why "running an unlicensed lottery" can be a serious charge. The tax department doesn't like being diddled.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Idiots...

The thing that trips up most criminals is greed.

They took "too much" and told "too many" people - note that this was picked up after hearing a rumour, not ongoing statistical analysis of the machines.

It's on par with the guy who hit the repeat button when the computer was printing his paycheck and then tried to bank 20 of them at the same time.

If you want to con people into gladly handing over money for a nonexistent prize, setup a church.

Canada fines Amazon seven hours of profit for false advertising

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: List Price

"AFAIK in down in the States it is considered proper to compare prices with the list price. "

In several countries it is _illegal_ to have a manufacturer "list price" or "recommended retail price" for consumer products. The idea is that retailers must set their own price using their own policies and to discourage cartel behaviour.

What do you call a firm that leaves customer financials unencrypted on a hard drive? RSA

Alan Brown Silver badge

"One alternative is fine this company's in 50% of their gross profit for the last 2 years."

There are so many ways to fiddle the books to make profit look smaller that this is a nonstarter.

10% of TURNOVER on the other hand....

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: ICO Fail

> You need a way to ring-fence the financial hurt though, to stop innocent $FINANCIAL_INSTITUTION customers from suffering.

A number of fines have been levied on companies "to be taken from shareholder dividends"

IE: after tax and disbursements.

Seagate laying off 2,217 employees

Alan Brown Silver badge

"It died horribly in October taking with it years of music, video, software, etc."

You obviously didn't care enough.

Data you care about is backed up onto 3 separate devices (GFS) and they're in a separate physical location to the data in use when the backup process isn't being run.

"Backups" on attached storage are just more disks for an aggressive script kiddie to wipe (Seen it happen to more than one ISP) and backups on portable hard drives sitting on the shelf over your desk are just another couple of lumps in the swag bag when a burglar steals your laptop (staff here have lost their machines AND backups in burglaries because of this)

"Recovery" services for a dead 1TB drive start at £1500 and go up from there. It's much cheaper to keep backups than risk needing that service.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: HDD Market

"Will the price per TB start falling again? Or will large SSD more cost effective before it happens?"

In a number of ways, large SSD already is.

I'm not sure that SG/WD see how many feet high the writing is on the wall. Whilst mechanical drives are still more expensive than they were pre-2011 Thai floods (and with much worse warranties), SSD prices continue to tumble.

For consumer use it doesn't matter that a 2TB drive can only write at the same speed as a mechanical one or have an endurance of 100 full writes under real world conditions. Consumer drives seldom exceed that over their operational life anyway and as soon as large SSDs come down to less than 3 times the mechanical equivalent they'll start selling faster than the suppliers can keep up. (I used to say 5 times for small drives but the multiplier hurts more for large ones)

Right now 2TB drives start at about £450+VAT (Crucial MX300). £500 gets a samsung EVO and even "enterprise SATA" stuff like PM863 is only £650 (which is only about twice what a "enterprise" SATA mechanical drive costs) - and I'll happily buy a Samsung or Intel over a Seagate or WD even if it's a few percent cheaper.

Yes, the fast and high endurance stuff costs more, but most consumers simply use this kind of storage for write once, read occasionally and the power savings alone start factoring into the overall cost of ownership, making "slow" ssd worthwhile.

US Navy runs into snags with aircraft carrier's electric plane-slingshot

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: EMALS

" STOVL aircraft are much easier to land and take off, and you can do most of the training (and maintaining the qualifications) on land rather than tying up a ship. "

I've been to at least one airfield fitted with CATOBAR facilities for training. Doubtless the USA has many more. The training argument doesn't hold water because the most critical part (putting it all into practice) need a ship no matter what technology is used and you don't want to be doing that with your active-deployment boat.

WRT the cost of carriers, you're comparing applies with orange juice - nuclear powered ships have a lot more space aboard for facilities, fuel and accomodation, plus they don't need to refuel in potentially hostile areas or that space can be used to carry supplies for your support group.

Neither of those matter though: Carriers are obselete. Long-range Anti-shipping ballistic missiles are in the field and that makes them as vulnerable to attack as battleships turned out to be when aircraft carriers came along. No matter how many missiles an Aegis-class support boat can fire off against incoming, it loses its usefulness when it runs out of missiles and the land-based enemy pops off a few more waves.

The military has a bad habit of preparing to fight the next war with the last war's technology and tactics without bothering to pay attention to technology in play today. As with 1941, in all liklihood it will take a few sinkings before they admit it.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: We all need less stress...

"As for the maintenance problem, steam catapults took up a lot of room"

They also require a LOT of maintenance. I stumbled across a YT documentary covering this. The steam piston requires constant greasing and that grease goes "places", meaning that every so often the entire catapault system needs to be pulled out of the deck and "stuff" chipped out of the mounting channel to keep things from gumming up.

This takes a couple of weeks and requires 200 or so sailors. Not a problem if you're docked for a refit (which the ship was at the time) but you don't want to have to return to dock just to do heavy work on the catapault and although the ship has 2 launchers, you can't use one whilst the other is being worked on.

Assuming EMALS works properly it will be a lot cleaner and require a fraction of the heavy maintenance.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: We all need less stress...

I was going to ask the same thing.

FWIW "excess stress" was a major problem on early steam catapaults until they got it right. Pulling the nosewheel off doesn't help launches much.

The clue might be in the other part: EMALS could not "readily" be electrically isolated for maintenance,

Meaning that someone's skimped in the deployed design.

You have the right to be informed: Write to UK.gov, save El Reg

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Except the new regulator must be approved

"Almost as if someone wanted to give the appearance of independent regulation, while snuffing out small independent publishers."

Alternatively, almost as if someone noticed that nobody had been appointed, worked out what was needed to make it happen and then went ahead and set it up as a tickbox exercise.

The simple solution is for the non-tabloid rags to setup their own regulator. If Comrade Moseley did it then the point is unequivocally that it can be done.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Should it be two laws not one?

"Self regulation has failed every time in the past which is why we are where we are now."

Government regulation hasn't been much better, which is why BT is still able to get away with market abuse despite the existence of Ofcom (Hint: Anticompetitive activities should come under the competition and markets authority, not Ofcom)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Missing the point a bit

"In 1994, he successfully sued several news outlets, including Private Eye, for libel"

I do wonder if Private Eye and co can now recover those awards, plus interest?

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: But this will not have just the effect you wan

"When they do get it wrong it doesn't matter if they pick up the costs or not the damage is not really ever properly repaired."

The problem is that the UK versions of the National Enquirer(*) are widely read and widely believed. The Sun/Mail/etc mostly don't care about damages because they're either too big to sue (for small guys) or the awards are smaller than the sales boosts.

(*)OK, they're not _quite_ at "I tangoed with Elvis on a UFO" level, but they're not far off it.

Alan Brown Silver badge

> We all want a free press (I don't think there's a sane objection to this)

Nor do I, but with freedom comes responsibility and the red tops have been pretty irresponsible at times.

The issue of Impress vs IPSO and quite why there is only one approved arbitrator is quite separate to the legislation itself. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Max M spotted a way of getting his pet project approved by doing a checkbox exercise but that doesn't explain why IPSO is not yet approved.

Alan Brown Silver badge

misrepresentation much?

The proposed law ACTUALLY says that anyone who refuses binding arbitration and goes to court will be liable for the full costs, but the arbitration process itself is low cost compared to the current cost of dealing with court action.

I'm aware that there are concerns with the arbitration process but painting this as putting yourselves in the firing line for all parties' court costs if you are NOT the party escalating it to court is disingenuous at best.

Only the party which pushes it upward from arbitration to court will be liable.

Verizon is gonna axe its 'unlimited' data hogs

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: To all the wireless carriers...

> It's infantile - or maybe some other word - to advertise "unlimited" without having first worked out what that might mean

I believe the word you're looking for is "fraudulent"

The USA has laws against bait-and-switch advertising and I'm surprised the FTC hasn't said something.

Like stealing data from a kid: LA school pays web scum US$28,000 ransom

Alan Brown Silver badge

$28k will buy you

A relatively decent backup system.

The thing is, if the ransoms are set this high then there's traction in convincing people to invest in backups (plus the cost of not paying up for a school that lost all its data would be running in multiple 7 figures and insurers are likely to find reasons not to pay out due to negligence.)

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Seamen spread over California

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Great Minds Think A Like

"2010 - Micro satellites marketed as for weather, reality seem more likely for greater resolution disposable spy satellites (they were always disposable 30+ years ago because of the low orbit requirements)."

Microsats/cubesats aren't big enough to carry the optics for hi-res spying. Whilst pixel count is one thing and adaptive optics are another, being able to focus through 100 miles of murky atmosphere to read over someone's shoulder still requires big lenses.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Great Minds Think A Like

"a predator/ reaper directionally beams to a satellite so jamming's not easy. "

If you know what frequency it's using then you can swamp the signal the satellite sees - as long as you know which satellite it's using.

Asteroid nearly gave Earth a new feature, two days after its discovery

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Dang!

Dolph Lundgren is available - and he actually has a chemistry degree under his belt too (studied at MIT).

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What if it had hit?

"At that size meteors don't burn up, but disintegrate/explode midair."

If the angle is shallow, yes.

Chebalinsk skimmed through the atmosphere for several hundred miles before breaking up.

On a steeper angle the airburst can bring a supersonic shockwave of superheated air to the ground.

if you have a lot of rocks, this can result in a very bad day (hot enough to melt surface rocks, resulting in a volcanic appearance without any nearby vulcanism - and there are a few places on the planet like this) - one researcher by the handle of craterhunter has been advocating this as a possible cause for the sudden extinction of north american megafauna and the younger dryas periods. Some of the supporting evidence is quite compelling, in particular "recently" melted surface rocks in southern North America with no supporting igneous activity.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"You might not want to know"

Mostly we see them _after_ they've gone past.

This has a lot more to do with them coming from the direction of the sun (lit from behind, so virtually impossible to see) and being lit up as they go past us than their dimness.

The moon is about as black as a piece of coal. Most of these rocks are somewhat duller than that.

Corrupt NHS official jailed for £80k bribe over tech contract

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Having seen the latest NHS IT Software in action

"This being an IT rag, the first thing you learn when performing any diagnosis of a fault is never to trust what someone before you has written in the notes."

Yup and also never assume that what's been written in the notes as the initial complaint what the customer actually said or complained about.

Far too many people on helldesks write down any old shit, even if it's at odds with what the customer's saying, which is why I record nearly every call I make - they record calls so when customers get rude they can blame the customer. You should be recording to have the parts they'll edit out.

It's fun (as a customer) when you ask them to readback the fault, realise they've pulled that stunt, so ask them to write down exactly what you're about to tell them next and get them to read _that_ part back afterwards. Having a recording of them getting it wrong twice is useful ammunition.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: @ Vic

"You probably still wont get the contract, but at least the dirty scroat will be out of a job sharpish! "

You never know though, he might show up as head of the DVLA next.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Buyers are often shameless when demanding bribes from suppliers."

The only bribe I demand is that the product works as described.

Man jailed for 3 days after Texas cops confuse cat litter for meth

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Taking back some of what I said..

"However, I think that for the people behind this sort of thing, there should be an example made such that those who have profitted from innocent people going to prison"

This is happening in _some_ areas. In one case a judge was found to be getting kickbacks from a privately run prison for sending juveniles there - in most cases they turned out to be innocents on trumped up charges.

That particular judge is unlikely to ever be released.

Corruption in the USA is at least as bad as any west african country, just slightly less blatent in most cases.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"The more usual one that I use for my cats is diatomaceous clay (bentonite) "

After trying all those, I've recently switched to using "chick crumb" (Poultry food - effectively, dessicated kibbled wheat. Duck crumb works just as well)

It's absorbant, 1/4 the price of clay kitty litter, 100% biodegradeable, a 20kg bag lasts twice as long as other kitty litters and - important in a flat - flushable. (clumps when wet but clumps break up instantly when dropped in water)

Yes, it's poultry feed - Utterly bloody useless at absorbing moisture in a care compared to silica gel and at 2mm particle size probably useless if you need to put it under tyres, but frankly what we use as kitty litter isn't usually what cats prefer anyway. They love this stuff.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Only TRULY GIGANTIC lawsuits will stop this...

> Plod "What was in this foil?". Her "A KitKat officer". Plod "A likely tail - off to the cells with you". So a night in jail and an arrest record.

Any ambulance chaser would turn that into false arrest charges

Alan Brown Silver badge

"The police, in this instance, prioritised public self-congratulation over their responsibility to protect a private citizen."

The interesting thing about slander is that everyone who repeats it, is liable for it - and "I believed it was true because N told me" isn't a defence

This is the kind of case where not only the department, but _every single individual_ who made statements on the department's behalf to the press can be taken to court in a personal capacity, along with the media which repeated the claims.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"It's not using them that's the problem, it's relying on them."

Relying on them AND issuing press releases vilifying people based on the results before trial.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that kind of thing.

Many compensation claims are ambulance chasing, but in this case he really should be taking them for everything they have and then some.

Dodgy dealer on Amazon lures marks towards phishing site

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Consumers Could (Should) Do More

"The other trick is to look for "fulfilled by Amazon" near the price."

No, it isn't. I've had counterfeit stuff show up via this path.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Worrying

"Amazon appears to have a growing problem with policing dodgy sellers in general, and in particular counterfeiters which appear to be out of control. "

Counterfeiting on Amazon is a major problem and has been for a while.

The vast majority of counterfeit stuff for sale _isn't_ suspiciously cheap, which makes it a lot harder to identify. It most cases it's the same price as the real item or only a tiny amount cheaper.

Amazon are completely useless at taking action, and notifying trading standards might as well be a black hole.

Elon's SpaceX gets permission to blow up another satellite or two

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: " wonder why people latch on to the very rare failures of SpaceX"

"Because they are not that rare."

Nor were US/Russian/EU/Chinese/Brazilian government RUDs in the early stages of their development.

Let's not forget Apollo 1 either.

TV anchor says live on-air 'Alexa, order me a dollhouse' – guess what happens next

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right"

> They didn't have the biggest reseller of the planet telling them how a computer system should sell, ehm, work...

I used to think that Sirius Cybernetics Corporation was a description of MS, but these days it's clear that all of them want us to stick our heads in a pig.

Alan Brown Silver badge

> When they make more money off you without requesting confirmation and by enabling voice ordering by default, guess what happens?

Distance selling legislation for starters.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"I have met quite a few Americans who complain about having difficulties in understanding the English some Brits produce. "

I work with a lancastrian who complains about difficulties understanding the english of surrounding counties, let alone further afield.

Former car rental biz staff gave customers' details to phone pests

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Only yesterday

"Got to wonder if the staff in my local branch of Enterprise aren't doing a little light data skimming?"

Notify the ICO.

My experience of these kinds of scams is that it's seldom confined to one or two branches. The gangs will systematically attempt to subvert staff at as many locations as they can.

Alan Brown Silver badge

The calls aren't stopping

It explains where the scammers got some of their data from - and in one call where I decided to play with them to waste some time, it became clear that they have direct access into the DVLA's live database too.

What I don't understand is why the ICO seems unconcerned about this aspect of the scam operation.

San Francisco first US city to outlaw ISP lock-ins by landlords

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: For us in the UK...

"the US telecoms laws have seem like some dodgy cartel where each player has their own turf and God help anyone trying to muscle in."

It IS a dodgy cartel, where the players have legally mandated monopolies and it may well be a crminal matter for anyone trying to compete. The telcos generally have a 100% monopoly over DSL services and competitors get no look in. This has systematically put almost all smaller ISPs out of business because the telcos were generally also able to introduce charges for modem calls on the basis of "system load" (which is bullshit as an established PSTN connection generates no load - that only happens in setup/teardown phases).

You frequently have the situation where towns/cities trying to setup their own systems are being sued out of existence by the incumbents - with state backing.

The USA is a "free market" - a good example of what happens when the big companies are free to make up the rules as they go along and buy the rulemakers. The country is almost as corrupt as Nigeria or other countries floating around the "Most corrupt" index, with crumbling infrastructure due to decades of economic mismanagement, but inertia means that things haven't started collapsing - YET.

Being a major military power means the collapse may well be messy.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"In the US the concept of LLU does not exist."

In the US, the concept of LLU _did_ exist and got systematically legislated out of existence by sweetheart deals between the incumbents and state public utility commissions on condition of infrastructure investments (which also allowed mergers).

Those infrastructure projects usually never materialised or were aborted after a few months but the telcos kept going back to the PUCs for more deals - and getting them, no questions asked. Money or other considerations may have passed between PUC members and the telcos but if so, it's all off the books.

The result is that the AT&T Borg has been reassembled from all the baby Bells back into 2 parts (east and west of the Mississippi to avoid the antitrust action of the 1930s), all the LECs and competing ISPs are gone and that pesky "univerasl service" obligation from the 1930s antitrust settlement is gone.

It's known as the $10 trillion swindle and worth looking up.

British military laser death ray cannon contract still awarded, MoD confirms

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: operational in all weather

"Pigs do fly... Provided that you give them enough thrust..."

Manouvering and landing is still a bit of a problem.

Virgin America mid-flight panic after moron sets phone Wi-Fi hotspot to 'Samsung Galaxy Note 7'

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Some talk common sence, some talk shite

"The smoking ban was entirely driven by the desire by anti-smoking campaigners to have a tobacco free environment on flights. "

Ironically the smoking ban led to more fires, because of smokers stuffing butts in the toilet bins - which already had paper in them.

That said, I enjoy my tobacco free flights and remember what it was like before them. I also remember coming home from the pub in the days before the ban and having to have a shower plus toss all clothes in the laundry, or deal with an unholy reek of other people's stake smoke in the morning.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: InFlight Teammates

"Combined with lower pay, of course."

And a new corporate anthem suggesting passengers stick their head in a pig.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Reality check

"The MAC address is visible whether or not the WiFi network is encrypted."

The mac address is also capable of being changed by software.