Posts by The Mole

Re: @ Rustident Spaceniak

> Raise taxes on the very rich and spend them on what? Well, if the whole point of the exercise is to reduce wealth inequality, then it would surely be politically toxic to spend them on anything other than wealth redistribution. So the result of that is to give more welfare to the people who, as you say, are essentially dependent on welfare. If their dependence on welfare is the problem, how does that solve it?

Training for the unemployed? Childcare vouchers for those in work. Tax breaks for low income earners. Low skill labour intensive projects that guarantee anybody who wants to work can get a job in a location they can get to.

These are just some ways (some better than others) that wealth distribution can be done whilst meaning people aren't percieved as scrounging on welfare, and hopefully give them the ability to gain skills and experience to get better jobs and require less welfare in the long run. The big challenges is structuring things in a way so that it is financially worthwhile to transition from being on welfare to just being off welfare - at the moment arbitary transition points means earning more can result in less takehome pay.

Public interest

The decision clearly makes is clear there is a valid public interest defense, hence google saying

"as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information - for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials."

Ultimately Google have the right to refuse to comply to the nicely committed request in the form for whatever reason they wish, the requester can then take them to court to get a judge to decide what is in the public interest. Of course that relies on the human (?) at google realizing that their might be a public interest and caring enough to reject the request - it would be interesting to see whether this happens or not in reality.

Re: Surprise!!!

That has (probably) already been found: http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Overview/AEhypothesis.html

Re: Platoooooo0n - HALT!

This is a prototype not an end product..

Re: great, back to the "same old same old"

"Innovate until the competition has not choice" only works if it is a competition. If the game is being rigged through bribes or law breaking then the choices are either to do your own bribery and law breaking, or attempt to expose the suspected bribery and law breaking to get back to a more even field where your innovation can beat the competitions innovation. I'm glad Musk appears to be trying to get the laws stuck too - even if the exposure is self serving.

I'm still confused as to how a letter from a government department saying we don't want to consider something as illegal is enough to get a judge to overturn a decision, surely the judge should judge based on the letter of the law whether it is legal (which presumably is what they did the first time?)

Re: no wonder bing sucks

Even if we give the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are refering to 20% of the components (dll/jar/whatever) changing rather than individual lines of code I still can't imagine what thousands of programmers could actually be doing on Bing. If there really were that many programmers working on it it would either be absolutely amazing and feature rich, or perhaps a complete and utter failing mess as no one could have an overview or architectural view of what was happening on it.

Yes.The audio identification service facebook are using may also be given access to it as well.

And what makes you think it hasn't been seen by anybody else before? It may not have been broadcast before (hence it being a premier) but its fairly normal for reviewers to be given pre-screening, as well as rating bodies, internal company executives, quality checkers, advertising placers (to ensure all the legal requirements of advert placement are met etc) etc. It isn't a live event so the audio is available for weeks or months before.

It will be in the programme producers and broadcasters interest to provide this to facebook as mentions on facebook are likely to encourage friends to remember it is on and tune in/watch the catchup, and is good evidence as to the value of advertising slots. In fact unlike most of the current marketing ideas (getting 'Likes' etc) there may actually be a small amount of benefit to them.

Of course a big flaw of it is the assumption that the person on facebook in the room is the person watching the TV, I can imagine that 'Peppa Pig' and other childrens programmes may get mentioned as much as real views.

I don't know why the Register article reported this in the context of just ATMs but reading the original post this appears to be a vulnerability of any Chip and Pin authenticated transaction.

Acquiring access to a remote chip and pin terminal in a restaurant, modifying it and intercepting the communication back to base is not likely to be beyond the means of many criminal gangs and frausters.

As for Mr Ross Anderson reading his blogs I believe his big problems is the fact that banks will routinely lie to customers and claim that chip and pin is infallible (and therefore it is up to the customer to prove that its not their fault) even though there is concrete proof that there are ways to defeat it and therefore the onus should be on the bank to prove that the customer is lying.

if the banks admitted that it isn't perfectly secure and took on the costs of refunding customers when the security is breached then that would be acceptable. At the moment they claim it is secure when they know it isn't, then pass on the costs to the customer who has been defrauded. Because the costs are being externalized to the customer the bank then don't have any benefit to improving the system - until research like this allows their statements to be challenged in court as effectively being fraudulent.

Re: On the other hand...

I don't have it so can't say for sure but I'd assume it would depend on how the service failed as to whether people were impacted.

Presumably the software attempts to connect every time it is started (to ensure you are always at the start of your 7 days no internet period). If it manages to connect to the authorization server but that server is sending a authorization denied for everybody then that would stop everybody from working. I'd further assume even if you then disconnect your network cable the software would have remembered that your last attempt was denied and still not let you log in.

You are probably right if it was unable to phone home for the entire period (or if the authorization server was actually non-responsive) it would have kept working, but for most people it would have been phoning home.and based on the outcry I assume it was returning a not authorized response.

Re: The problem is

My understanding of the judgement is that serving a page found by date in that newspaper article wouldn't count as processing the data on that page, you are merely presenting it. Providing search functionality to search for someones name in that newspaper archive would count as processing personal information and so come under the DPA.

If the newspaper archive were served with the request presumably to comply with it they would have to show the search engine no longer processes/indexes the personal information (the text in the search index has the persons name redacted) but could still display the archive record as long as it wasn't found through processing that persons information.

Whether this makes sense and is the correct balance I'm not sure. Whether lower courts will interpret this that way also is in debate.

Re: Hard to cope with?

I don't believe I said that Bangladeshis "just need to deal with it". What I said is that the world can easily deal with it (particularly if we put resources into mitigating the problems rather than wasting it on pointless counterproductive subsidies). However even the people of Bangladesh (with all its poverty) are in many ways less impoverished compared to the people 1000 years ago when dykes were first being constructed. They are significantly better able to cope, have access to better technology, skills and knowledge and could mitigate much of the problems at a local level if necessary even if the world fails to act (which realistically may be the case until after a few disasters). The high population density actually provides a benefit with regards to manpower per km of coastline.

More importantly we are currently spending billions on ineffectual methods to stop climate change which have a negative impact on world GDP (I accept some of the millions spent will be on useful programs as well). If we spent the next 50 years investing that money in impoverished nations instead the net benefits would almost certainly be vastly greater and we'd (and more importantly Bangladesh) would be in a far better position to cope with the changes in the climate (man made or not).

Re: Just wondering ...

For all we know the compromised server was storing the credit card numbers on an encrypted hard drive or encrypted database store. However if the data was extracted whilst the system was running this provides little protection against getting the unencypted view of that data. Afterall if the application needs access to the credit card numbers to function then encryption is only a minor hurdle - if the app has the key can decrypt them then so can attackers.

Re: I thought

Agreed, not least because SCOTUS is rather cryptic as to what it stands for particularly when the abbreviation isn't actually defined or the words used in that order!

Re: you may not starve as much as you think @Neil Barnes

But remember a portion of potatoes weighs far more than a portion of dry rice so comparing them gram to gram really isn't a good way to do it. (Which is why the IAMS cat food adverts really annoy me - of course gram for gram dry food is better, you aren't weighing the water or feeding the same weight in food).

It's also not clear if that means they are producing new builds every 16 seconds, or just that because they have so many servers deploying the latest build means every 16 seconds a new server is updated from the previous version.

Of course there is also a fact that Amazon doesn't have 'a software' it is a very large infrastructure of probably hundreds of different applications and components developed by thousands of engineers. Each component probably has its own independent cycles, if there were 200 components that would mean each one is deployed every 2 days or so. With continuous deployment and lots of resources for automation testing that is not quite such a fast rate - though still pretty scary in terms of reproducibility of issues.

Re: So what?

Yes the FBI encouraging people and giving support to people to commit a crime is morally wrong if the drug smugglers are currently only 'wanna-be' not actual criminals - if the FBI didn't give them advice in your scenario would those people ever actually break the law?

More importantly in this case the FBI are knowingly and deliberately acquiring and analysing information that has been obtained illegally, that again is morally, and probably legally wrong

Re: how much time did you give them to put their house in order?

Bank's really aren't much better. I recently had to call various of my banks for travelling but had forgotten half my password information but that wasn't a question as long as I answered a set of security questions, all of which could easily be answered by anybody who had got possession of my wallet (containing cards+drivers license), a couple of the slightly 'better' ones would also have required them to have stolen my Wife's purse at the same time. Given that often both wallets will be together (possibly in the same handbag) this really the sort of security to be comparing to.

Re: Home Automation - Security

You'll probably find on the web precise instructions of where to drill to disable the deadlock and/or how to pick the lock - potentially with little but a few scratch marks to detect someone has done it. You'll probably also find how easy it is to remove the glass from many type of double glazing units from the outside, and other ways for people to get into your house.

Just because you don't think about your deadlock doesn't mean it is inherently secure. That said home security does have the advantage that somebody actually has to be physically there to be breaking in which greatly increases the risk to them - which is the real deterrent not the actual lock.

Re: Article appears to be misleading

The part you have quoted is only about disabling the technology ("The rightful owner of an advanced mobile communications device may affirmatively elect to disable the technological solution after sale")

Ergo your ergo is bogus and you haven't proved your point at all.

Re: the change password dialogue

Hover over the cog on the right hand side | Settings | Change Password.

Just make sure you type it right - for some reason they don't make your confirm what you typed (though do let you show everybody your password if you want.

Teachers actually find the erasable green biro's very useful - it looks very bad when you've written in the wrong child's book and many school mandate that they have to write in green! (Pencil is too hard to distinguish from what the kid has written, and apparently red may harm the child's self confidence or something! But I agree for the general person a pencil is sufficient - if they are actually writing anything by hand anymore.

I'm not sure what the Americans have to do with it given that the legal case was all in the UK, it was up to Microsoft whether they just re-branded in the UK or worldwide (or indeed just remove the service from sale in the UK).

Given 'Sky' is the trading name of BSkyB and is the way all there advertising and customers refers to there TV service, Sky Broadband' is the name of the ISP service, and 'Sky Go' is the name for there web TV service, it is understandable that people would assume 'Sky Drive' would be the name of their online storage solution and doesn't seem dense at all. I imagine that 90% of the customers would take a while to remember that BSkyB is the actually company name.

As to your question regarding DirectTV, my guess is they don't own trademarks relating to general PC software, the markets aren't the same so any confusion doesn't matter and most importantly the general name people know DirectTV as is DirectTV and not 'Direct', BSkyB on the other hand has trademarks in providing Web based services, could sensibly launch an online storage solution (and may well in the future if they want to allow people to watch their recordings anywhere) and most importantly are generally known as 'Sky' by the general public.

Generally in UK law the last bill passed takes precedence and implicitly amends the previous bill - the basic principle is that parliament can't be bound by decisions of past parliaments.

There's a couple of exceptions such as the Human Rights Act which explicitly has wording in that says it can't be implicitly amended instead parliament have to explicitly state that they are amending it in the later passed legislation (which they can do - although that may then be violating treaty obligations which could cause other political but not actually legal issues).

Re: Mahatma Dolt At last

You obviously do not understand how English law is set.

Whilst it is politicians that set the laws, they are the Queen's government, it is the Queen who signs the decree placing the bill onto the statute book and thereby making it law and it is the courts who are nominally appointed and responsible to the Queen rather being under political control.

The fact her power in all of this is largely symbolic is irrelevant*, if the Queen made a public apology it would be a symbolic act apologizing for the past actions of her Government and in fact she is the most logical person to symbolically apologize for something that happened in her nation in the past (governments come and go but the monarchy stays pretty constant).

I'm not sure what difference a symbolic apology makes for something that happened in the past but apparently to many people these things provide closure and validation or something.

* In theory she could refuse to sign bills or appoint a prime minister she didn't like, in practice that would be the fastest way to get the country to transition to a republic and have public opinion turn swiftly against her.

Re: There is nothing evil about the military

I think you may be confusing the difference between the people who are working for the military (who generally do a very good jobs in impossible conditions with a distinct lack of good equipment) and the military bureaucracy and general military complex (which make at times absurd decisions, seem to be designed to funnel money to corporate partners, and so for whom war is a very profitable state of affairs to be in).

The opportunity cost of where much of all that money could have been spent instead on aid, development and bribing hostile populations (in a nice way) probably does tip the military machine towards the evil end of the spectrum -(but not the poor front line troops who as you say are a generally decent bunch of people).

Re: Sony does similar, but without any obvious filenames being sent

There certainly is personal information there, in fact in the UK I'd argue it would count as sensitive personal information. From the key presses it is relatively trivial to work out what channels you are tuning into. From the channels (for a subset of viewers) you may be able to deduce pretty accurate assessments of their religious beliefs (watching the God channel or Islam TV) or sexual life (watching porn channels gives clues in both interests and orientation).

Based on this it is just a matter whether the sensitive personal information is identifiable to a person, the IP address would be sufficient for this, particularly if the user also has a playstation account linked to a credit card.

This type of correlation isn't going to be 100% reliable or cover everybody but for a sizable minority sensitive personal information about a known individual can be deduced from the data if Sony so desired.

Re: So in the UK

Under UK law at least any freebies advertised and bundled with a purchase are part of the contract and subject to exactly the same levels of consumer protection - if my complementary car mats aren't fit for purpose legally I can get the same redress as the rest of the car.

Also the device isn't called a phone, it is called a smart phone and heavily advertised as being used for multiple purposes including mapping. In particular it is reasonable to expect the quality to be broadly equivalent to previous versions of the same product something which Apple failed to do when they replaced Google Maps

Re: It's only a matter of time. And money.

3D printing only requires a force ensuring that the plastic is deposited and stays where place. Having the 3d printer spinning at the end of a centrifugal arm (orientated so the forces are aligned correctly) would presumably work, alternatively suction/air pressure might also be sufficient?

Re: Self-Censorship

You may have an idea of what it means, but many company proxies and filters won't have a clue what is means and therefore won't flag the page up as inappropriate language and block the page (or site).

Re: Coding: 'suitable for exceptionally dull weirdos'

Well when I was in primary school in the 80s I remember using Logo and floor turtles which started with simple steps and then proceeded to loops and sub procedures, also using some electronics control systems to make traffic lights and light houses - again that had loops and conditionals in it, plus out of school I went to a club to learn BBC basic. That's at least three different programming languages creating algorithms before I knew much algebra. 20-30 years on the tools and resources will have got much better with things like Raspberry Pi, Scratch and youtube videos.

Re: Computer misue act ?

It's not much different to any other type of special forces being deployed. These also happen with minimal oversight or visibility of the public. I've a feeling that is also abused but the impact of this abuse is much more deadly.

Re: "they have no ability to procure a warrant"

The ability for private companies to gain warrants isn't particularly uncommon. Civil Bailiffs have had the ability in order to recover bad debt for hundreds of years - in fact if they can find an unlocked door or ground floor window they are allowed to make peaceful entry. Similarly electricity companies can gain warrants in order to gain entry to change an electricity meter.

"No, I mean thieves. If a book/film/whatever is on sale at £10 and you steal it; you just stopped the creators getting their cut of that £10. If you copy it - it's the same thing. (And I'll type this slowly so that you can keep up). THE. CREATOR. DOES. NOT. GET. PAID."

Actually if you steal a book on sale then the creator has already been paid, the shop selling it actually looses the £4 they paid the distributor (who pays the creator), they also fail to gain the £6 profit they were hoping to get (net loss £4 to shop) though in the extreme case you may have actually saved them the cost to store and eventually dispose of the item at the tip when nobody chooses to buy it even when reduced heavily.

In the second case the creator starts with nothing and gains nothing, but they also loose nothing (net loss £0).

Whether the two are morally equivalent or copy right infringement is morally less wrong is another debate.

Re: Please speak English (or Scots)...

The patient episode was bad enough, but 're-appointed' and 're-appointment'? If they all speak like that perhaps England should disown the entire country?

The patient hasn't been appointed to a position, they have been re-booked and given a new appointment.

Re: What has it got to do with

I imagine the reason SOCA are involved is the fact that many of these phones aren't used to call family at home but instead to continue running their organised crime empire whilst behind bars.

As for the key fobs, whilst the auto makers probably don't manufacture them, they are the people who commission and aprove the design and no doubt own exclusivity and probably the copyright for the design of their particular models.

Re: Retail Win 8

I'd guess it is OEM given they are distributing it with a new personal computing device...