Posts by Intractable Potsherd

Re: Why would Belgacom not play ball?

I actually agree with Matt's original post (yep, that's my upvote there!), since his questions "Why didn't Belgacom play ball, and what has the Belgian government done about that?" are actually valid.

Matt is a difficult poster sometimes, but credit where credit is due - he does make some good points. However, do have some trouble with the mods blocking Eadon's account when he was far less rude than Matt, and one or two others. I'm really not advocating that anyone's account should be blocked, just that there was a lack of even-handedness there.

Re: Do you know which IT firm Lovell works for? Email me and spill the beans. ® @ Khaptain

Ewelet Pack-hard, shurely.

Since I don't know the area of Borisstan in question, can anyone tell me what the likelihood is of coming across finding sheep on the street? Maybe the brown suited, turquoise jumpered accused is the victim here ...

Re: It's always

Off topic, but how *do* pirates make out? Does Roger the Cabin Boy feature?

Re: The assumption here @ Jonathan Richards 1

Good points, but how many DP Compliance wonks think twice about sending data to the USA?

Safe haven agreements are easy to draft and comply with, so I don't see the major problem.

As I've always said with investments - if it will hurt if you lose it, you put too much in. Crowdsourcing to me is a nice idea whose time has come. The projects aren't big enough to attract the hugely risk-averse big-money vultures, and there is a real indicator for the producer of whatever the project is as to whether it has any chance at all of success.

Re: Why Pay Pal... ? @piloti

"I still don't see how PP helps me, the /buyer/..."

My take on it is that it reduces the attack surface on my accounts. I am not passing on the details of my cards to every entity I buy/book online with. Many small businesses do not have a nice secure payment option. For instance, if I had a choice of two bed and breakfasts equal in all other ways, I'd go for the one with a Paypal option because I'm not giving my card details to them - often over the phone when I don't know who might be listening - or in a plain-text email ...

Re: Blah blah blah

I'm in the middle on this one. JDX and Steve Todd are correct in saying that a proper fingerprint reader doesn't store an image of the actual fingerprint. It takes certain specific points and uses them as the basis for a hash (equivalent to a really complex password). The worry that people have about having to get new fingers if the reader is compromised is silly - delete the old file, re-enrol the finger(s), and all is back to good, just like setting a new password. In addition, it makes no more obvious sense that the iPhone sends its fingerprint data anywhere in "the cloud" than does my Lenovo X61, or anything with a password entered the old way.

However, given the recent confirmation of what bastards the security agencies and various companies, especially the USA-ican ones, are regarding personal data, the very specific comment about where things aren't sent raises flags. It is hard to trust anyone at the moment, especially those with past form for being secretive - which defines Apple to the core (pun intended).

Re: The bottom line *so* far.

"Trust me, the vast majority of you are of no interest to anyone."

You keep saying that, Matt, but how do *you* know what interests the NSA or other agencies? How do you know what will interest them tomorrow?

Re: @Don Jefe - Americans safe from... What? @crayon 19:16 Sunday

Whilst I have some sympathy with your characterisation of the WWI, I think your "revisionist" take on WWII is way off the mark. Either you have been subjected to recent history syllabi, or you have a chip on your shoulder that needs to be declared.

Re: @Rol - @Don Jefe - Americans safe from... What?@RobHib 02:58 Sunday

"Today it's difficult, even those who've initially good will and good intentions (and there's many of them) get corrupted with short-term-ism, party politics and election cycles etc. not to mention pragmatism. Essentially, they know they won't get anywhere in the modern political landscape unless they play the role expected of them, so they do.

I don't have an answer but I do know that it excludes many thousands of talented people who could make a world of difference."

I don't know about the USA (the mantra that a vote for anything but one of the two main parties is a wasted vote seems to run very deep), but in the UK we could make a dent in the existing parties' control of Parliament. If enough people stood as independents over the next three or four elections, we could get enough MPs to make some sort of difference. The fewer "professional" MPs (i.e. people that expect to make their entire career out of being in Parliament), the fewer people who have been indoctrinated into "how things are done". There does remain an issue of how to coordinate such a campaign without it being a "party", but I'm sure people with better skills at this sort of organising could come up with something.

Re: Americans safe from... What? @RoI 03:07 Saturday

"Come on, it's no longer a secret now, so lets use your resources for some greater good and fill the prisons to bursting with all the low life we'd prefer to be off the streets."

No, please, no! That would make it all much worse. It really would be the State against the people, because function-creep would once again take over, and there would be calls for anyone suspected of having done anything naughty due to these illegal and immoral intercepts being tried. Leaving aside the fact that the court system couldn't cope, the ultimate end would be that politicians would be able to say "Look how many people we have prosecuted! We are tough on crime!!". It would become impossible for any future government to dismantle the system, and we would be stuck with it forever.

Quite simply, I don't want to live in a zero-tolerance society in which any crime is detected and punished. Do you?

Re: Backdoors @AC

"No, I think he was saying they've weakened the standards themselves through their influence over the standardization process. Even if perfectly implemented, the resulting ciphers have weaknesses that the NSA can exploit."

That is my interpretation of what he says, too. The standards are broken from the point of view of the user, so it doesn't matter whether it is black-box or otherwise.

Re: @stuff and nonesense - While the Soviet Bloc was crumbling @RobHib

"And why with Britain's remarkable history—of Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, WWII defiance and all that stuff—haven't the British citizenry actually declared war on all that surveillance nonsense?"

Those were all fights against "the other"; Johnny Foreigner, you know. There has only been one genuine revolution in the entire history of the country - the English Revolution - but even that went back to "business as usual" after a short while. We have had a tendency to send the kind of people brave enough to stand by non-officially approved principles abroad over the years. We have no idea how to rebel effectively, and will tut at anyone that does.

Re: So which is it? @AC OP

"If it's not news, how does it help our enemies?"

I actually thought that disconnect would be the first comment on here. It sticks out like a sore thumb, because it really does show who these clowns think the enemy actually is - us!

Re: they are only doing their job

"... it is nice to finally have some solid confirmation, especially for the less technical folks who thought people that believed this was happening were just crazy."

My thoughts exactly, except it was not just the "less technical folks" on here who were trying to make us look like tin-foil-hatters (you know who you are, guys). Remember every time someone came on to say "Why would anyone want to look at you boring stuff?", or "Do you realise how big a system would be required to do this?"?

Sadly, not one of those people, who post here regularly, have said "Ooops, you were right! Sorry!!". They just come on and tell us that it was to be expected, why should we worry, and versions of "nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Re: Seems pretty hard to make back the price of a $100 phone

I'm not so sure about the "leave stuff out and make it cheap" aspect, at least initially. My thought on this is for Bezos to make a phone that has ~90% of what the best phones have, in a durable, changeable case (with at least some being waterproof), with capacity for easy upgrades (SD slot, possibly easily changeable camera module etc), and definitely replaceable battery, with new versions of the OS pushed out as soon as they become available. You don't have to give out new phones to a huge percentage of people every 1-2 years - people will *buy* bits to customise their camera when it starts to meet whatever criteria they have for "it doesn't suit me any more". If he can defeat the "upgrade entire unit every x months" cycle, he may well be on to a winner.

Re: Classified TV drama

When I saw the codename of the GCHQ program is "Edgehill" I got worried. It was the first pitched battle in the English Civil War ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Edgehill

@dan1980

Obviously, it isn't just Google that has "rogue engineers" ...

Re: GCHQ are doing their job @dephormation

It is becoming clear that the powers that be are very frightened of the population. We *are* "the adversary" from their point of view.

Re: Disinformation is their secret weapon @Charles 9

Yes, even in those cases. Without due process, the "good guys" are indistinguishable from the "bad" ones.

Besides, give me a non-movie-plot scenario (i.e. one that is actually likely) in which your case would apply.

Re: Really? No @ Richard Jones 1

"It said that 1 in 5 who raised a 'search eyebrow' had suspect connections so lets look at that ... [They] simply show that care is needed when reading statistics."

You are right - it is important to read exactly what is written, and what is missing. However, it is conceivable that the alphabet agencies intend that the figure will be read as "1 in 5 applications" so that the average punter will think "Gosh, look how many bad people there are threatening our safety! How can anyone question what they are doing?"

Re: "...even if not everyone knew where Finland was"

On a slightly different, but related, point my first mobile was a Phillips Savvy, because it was made by a European firm. I didn't even consider Nokia because I thought it was Japanese ... specifically, made by Nikon!

Re: Nothing lasts forever @AC12.15

"Hindsight is an amazing thing, so many armchair CEOs out there who make comments like "well, of course anyone could see that..." when in actual fact they have no knowledge of the upper workings of even the simplest corporation."

True, but when people who *do* claim to know the workings of corporations can run a company that anyone here would have regarded as unassailable much less than ten years ago onto the rocks, and without any outside assistance, one is forced to wonder whether the wrong people become upper management.

The article starts with the words "... Nokia has sold its mobile phones unit to Microsoft: a decision that weirdly seems both inevitable and shocking at the same time." It *is* shocking - this shouldn't be happening in a sane world - but, ever since Elop took over (which brings us back to questions over the actual abilities of upper management to find their own arses with a map and torch), this situation *was* inevitable, and not in a good way. The smartphone world needs more competition amongst platforms, not less. I hope the good folks at Jolla Oy can take over what should be Nokia's place in the world ...

Re: nothing wrong with digital watches

Interesting comments re: accuracy. I have a cheap quartz digital, and a more expensive quartz analogue with digital extras, such as a second time display. The cheap digital keeps very good (<1 second per month) time. The analogue drifts by 5-6 seconds per month on the fingers, and 3-4 seconds on the digital display.