Posts by Graham Cobb

Re: For your safety and security

When can we all agree to give up on this fetish of identity? Within 3 years it will be gone anyway: everyone's passports and driving licences will have been stolen because some entity that thinks (or its regulator thinks) it is SO "important" or "critical" that it has to know its customers "real" identity will have leaked the documents necessary to prove identity.

Stop worrying about who people are! There is no problem with the same person having multiple identities if they wish. Or calling themselves whatever they want. That is a basic principle of UK law: your name is what you choose to call yourself. The only valid use of a passport should be to prove your birth identity to a foreign government to allow travel to countries still stuck in the 20th century notion of "identity".

Great work! But, surely, you were being made to fix the problem the wrong way. If you could do that, in that emergency, then someone else might have been able to do the same thing to hide fraud?

Surely an audit trail should have a documented, and highly visible, way to fix errors (with some special type of transaction or something) so that the fix is forever visible in the trail? Isn't that the point?

Re: Fushitesu

Downvoted for inappropriate comparison.

Re: it will run fine

No, we have a right to services where the providers are absolutely clear, open and explicit about what they do to monetise and that they get full permission from their users for it.

As I said above, if YouTube want to go behind a paywall instead that is absolutely fine by me.

Re: Compensation?

In most cases, it seems, it never got to court. The PO investigations team put so much pressure on the postmasters they don't seem to have generally bothered with a lawyer but ended up doing a "deal": either "admitting" it was their own error or even confessing their guilt, in exchange for avoiding court.

If the portrayal of the PO investigations staff in the TV drama (or even in the evidence given the other day) was accurate, you can understand why they felt intimidated.

But I am waiting to hear exactly what statements were made in court by PO/Fujitsu. I think I read earlier this week that someone was asking for immunity from prosecution for perjury before agreeing to appear in (one of) the inquiries?

Re: Most People In The World Still Refuse To Buy Apple Phones

I don't think many people refuse to buy Apple phones. I used to, but since the death of things like Maemo and, more recently, Jolla the only choice is Android or Apple. I use /e/ as a reasonable Android variant on tablets but reluctantly switched to Apple for a daily driver phone - at least Apple is a little better than Google from a privacy point of view.

I think the correct headline would be:

Most people in the world still buy cheap phones

Re: This happened to me

As I said, last time this came up:

HP has a history of serious abuses of the DMCA and other interference with the rights of owners of their devices. I have not done any business with HP since the Snosoft affair in 2002 and will not until they renounce abusing copyright/DRM laws. This latest action shows they still are not ready to acknowledge that if they sell me a product they cannot impose restrictions on how I use it.

I created a lasting power of attorney last year and I added a rule that my attorney cannot do business with either HP or Sony.

Re: What but not why...

the point being not the why, but an attempt to dictate how other people should behave

That is true for all Internet discussions - neither more or less relevant for software than for any other topic (model trains, home baking, legal systems, human rights, etc). Nothing to do with FOSS.

Buried? Buried???

You metropolitan types are so funny!

Anyway, who would want to get rid of their overhead lines (power and phone)? The free spring light shows when the trees cause complete surprise by growing into the wires with fireworks for all would be really missed - who wants to wait for November for fireworks? It mostly seems to be the Elms in the hedges - new ones still grow every year, and survive a few years before dying of Dutch Elm disease - but normally at just about the point they have reached the main electricity line running down the street. They then remain, dead, for another year or so wearing away the insulation, before going out in their glorious firework show!

And every couple of years some neighbour or other cuts the power line while trimming their hedge or trees. For some reason it is the power line more often than the phone line. One year the neighbour hired a tree surgeon who managed to not just bring down our power line but even rip off the bracket the wires were attached to on the eaves of our house! Oh, such fun!!

Re: Year End Reminiscing

The thing we learned, in the '90s, was that what matters is that seriously delayed traffic is dropped, not delivered late. Real-time systems (and people) found it much easier to fix lost traffic (which happens all the time, even in the best regulated environments) than delayed traffic (and high variability of latency).

For us, as router builders, it meant small buffer queues - that was the key factor in making the network layer more reliable overall.

Wow! How'd you do that? And how many things did you have to vandalise to make the point to her satisfaction??

Re: Same old

I assume the NCSC have the expertise and people to address this (I have never worked with them so I don't know). If so, then the proposal seems eminently sensible!

So, that's doomed then.

Re: Do we leave Microsoft in charge of Chrome development?

The parts would have their own advertising revenues. Just like these services do today when being offered by people other than Google.

It is the cross-subsidy that needs to be got rid of: reduce Google's revenues to the advertising available from search. Let them offer other services like Mail, Drive, etc on a level playing field - each one subsidised by its own advertising (just like the competitive services will be). But most importantly of all, prevent any of them from sharing and cross-referencing information (i.e. stop them creating profiles of users beyond what they see from each service itself).

Re: is this better for SK Broadband?

I have obviously not been clear. This reply (and most of those above it) have missed the point I was making.

Sure, the electricity company charges different rates for different services - depending on how much you use, how reliable you want it, what technology you want it delivered using (3-phase, etc), how much compensation you want in case of problems, etc, etc. But they don't charge you different amounts based on what you do with the electricity. They charge you the same whether you use it for keeping warm in the winter, or mining bitcoin.

Similarly, the roads operators charge differently for different types of vehicle, weights, etc (and could, for example, charge for the right to drive at a higher speed). But they don't get to ask the value of what you are carrying, or the value of the deal you are driving to sign.

Telcos are welcome to charge differently for different speeds, different QoS, different times of day, diverse routing, etc. But they don't get to charge differently for different combinations of bits sent down the line.

Re: Feedly

Yep. Time to take the opportunity to remind El Reg that some of us literally rely on RSS: I only ever visit the site based on the RSS ticker at the bottom of my screen (4 feeds: BBC News, El Reg, Sailing, Motor Racing).

Re: ORLY?

It's a moot point anyway, porn sites won't even bother promoting bypass solutions when a simple Google search will give you all you need in a few clicks.

And I'm sure the red-top newspapers will be very, very happy to receive the uptick in advertising revenues from the VPN providers.

I think this reflects exactly how FOSS is supposed to work - deliberately, by design - and it is working well.

Companies like Amazon have the right to decide whether to use any particular FOSS code, or switch at any time, and they have the right to decide whether to contribute financially to it or not. Exactly what I expect when I release code under a FOSS licence.

Sure, it might be nice to receive something in return (or maybe not - I may not wish to be associated with a political campaign which chooses to use my code, for example). But the real reason for me to release the code is that it is what I owe to the giants on who's shoulders I am standing. I am using their code and the deal is that I release my code in the same way.

If Amazon have a spat with Red Hat, that happens all the time. And they have a perfectly free moral right to shift to another distro, or a newer version of the same. Or choose to buy a commercial product - whatever they think is better in their situation. Just as I have that perfect right.

If they are dependent on something maintained by one developer they have the moral rights to decide what to do about that for themselves: they can fix bugs themselves, they can pay the developer or someone else to fix them, they can switch to another implementation (closed or open), they can redevelop it themselves. As long as they follow the licence rules (so, for GPL code, they must release their fixes/changes) that is perfectly morally OK.

If I am one of those who doesn't care at all about getting back any changes then I can release my code under a licence which doesn't require that. I do that occasionally. Mostly I want to release code under GPL (in many cases the code was based on something else under the GPL so I have no choice). I support the FOSS movement and the GPL in particular so I always release code I develop from scratch under GPL.

The result is that some important code gets supported financially by big companies, some other is not financially supported but their improvements get released for others to use, and some others allow big companies to make their own changes and lock them up - but only if that was the deliberate decision of the developers. I don't accept that there is any "moral right" involved - just whatever the previous developers chose to put in their licence terms.

The issue isn't military systems, it is non-military but authorized visitors and staff. As well as vehicles on public roads outside the base observing movements.

Re: My boss came back from Hong Kong last month

If I worked in the gig economy I would use a different number for each company I work with, just like I use a different email address for every single company I deal with in my life today. That way, when I terminate my relationship I never hear from them again, and if they violate my privacy by passing my number on, I know who not to do business with again.

Of course, I would need all those numbers to actually be usable from a single device. Again, just like I do with all my email addresses today. This is a ridiculous piece of legislation by someone completely out of touch with modern life. One phone, one number? Who's ridiculous idea is that?

The answer to cold calling is proper enforcement of fines - not banning multi-SIM devices. And with e-sims and VoIP farms, it will completely ineffective for its stated purpose.

So, what is the real purpose of the ban? For what, presumably secret, purpose do the government rely on MSISDNs for security, meaning they have to limit people having several?

Re: Zzzzzzzzzz

...which is very clever of them, and why LLM toys can appear to be AI, but are not.

And completely irrelevant for the copyright claims.

In this context, box ticking is inherently evil.

No, it isn't. But recruitment at board level is hard. In particular, the board do not manage the company so it is crucial not to fall into the trap of selecting board members based on how they might perform as CxO members. You need them to step back and focus on the world outside the company (investors/owners, governments, trends (local and global), best practices, futures, etc). Specific individuals are much less important at board level than at CxO level.

Diversity rules do not hamper that.

Re: Deeply suspicious

"EU-washing" of policies is nothing new - and is the main reason moderate UK governments didn't support leaving the EU until the idiots took over. It is so very, very convenient for any government to have someone to blame for policies unpopular with either the electorate or their own back-benchers.

The loss of it has caused the rise of the extremist and/or populist factions of all the parties we have seen in the last couple of years.

Re: For best results, use a password generator that can give you a long, random string"

Adequate salting helps the defence, but the real trick is to prevent the perp laying hands on your password database in the first place, and that's not a user responsibility

Errr... Adequate salting is absolutely critical: it makes rainbow tables useless. Preventing getting hold of the password database is also standard practice. Anyone who fails one of those doesn't get any more of my business once I find out.

The crucial user responsibility is to use different and completely unrelated passwords for each service they care about, and use a password manager to manage them. Of course, they can use their girlfriend's favourite colour or their dog's name for the hundreds of passwords they don't care about (like streaming services).

Re: He has my support

I admire his decision to resign over a point of principle. I did it only once in my career - about halfway through. It changed the direction of my career - probably for the best overall, although in a direction I would previously have never considered.

However, I disagree with his position absolutely completely! Copyright needs bringing under control and dramatically reducing - short and very narrow protection. It has completely turned its goals inside out by becoming a never-ending revenue stream that actively discourages the creation of new artistic works and rewards only the shareholders of large media companies.

Re: Where these blobs are now :)

Interesting thought that the Theia collision might have been even more significant in our history than previously understood. It could reduce the value of ne in the Drake Equation very significantly.

Of course, we have very little insight into any of those values - virtually the only data we have is that N >= 1.

Re: Remember too: it's impossible to not be "on Facebook".

Which is why *all* my web access is via a proxy - that runs on different cloud servers each day. Sure it took a few days to get it working but I have been using it for many years now.

Lambda-based http proxies also exist, which can make every individual http request appear to come from a different IP address, anywhere in the world. As does Tor, of course, but exit nodes are sometimes blocked.

Re: I do feel sorry for them

Just ask yourself... 'if I went to Amazon Turk and asked for someone to "draw me a cartoon in the style of Sarah Andersen about not wanting to get out of bed on a Sunday morning"' would it be copyright violation?' The answer is clearly: "it depends on whether the resulting cartoon is a copy of of an existing cartoon, or just in the same style".

And, like real-life copyright cases, in some cases the answer is no, others it is yes, and others "well, depends what you mean by a copy" - and a judge or a jury may go either way on it.

Re: 'No question' it will solve more crimes, Tory MP claims

And to the person who gets stopped on a daily basis because they resemble someone the police are looking for (e.g. they are both black).

This is the biggest issue by far. The whole premise of "Retrospective facial recognition" is not to work out who did the crime, but to find someone who looks a bit like the person who did the crime - if they were wearing a different hat - and it was sunny instead of raining like it was in the video - anyway, they're both black, that will do. And then hassle a random completely innocent person.

And then hassle the same person a week later when some other constable finds they look a bit like the CCTV picture of some other crime!

A system which deliberately creates a set of perfectly innocent people who get hassled every so often just because the computer says they look like some people who do crimes is completely intolerable.

Facial recognition which surveys the people walking down the street where the smash-and-grab-raid took place last week to look just for the one person who can been seen throwing the brick in the CCTV is one thing. Searching the national driving licence database for people who look a bit like that guy is clearly intolerable.

Nobody needs a licence to listen to music. Licences are to copy - clue's in the name.

Copyright is about making copies: the person providing the copy you listen to is the one who needs the licence.