Posts by Peter2

No, he's got a fair point. The USA in it's early years didn't recognise patents from other countries, and got big by reverse engineering competitors technology and then producing unlicensed copies and derivatives.

Just in things owned directly by the US government then the Springfield Musket was a direct copy of the French Charville musket, and Mauser forced the US government into paying royalties for copying their bolt action being a direct copy of Mausers, and the bullet design also being a direct copy.

Of course, now other countries are doing it to the USA then it's a problem.

Re: Unfortunate but not unexpected

Spammers etc probably buy a lot of addresses as the old ones get blocked.

They will then be seen as "good" customers by companies supplying the commodities they buy as a large and frequent single customer. They are therefore economically encouraged to turn a blind eye to any "alleged" misconduct by their customers. No company willingly blacklists their biggest customers from buying from them unless not doing so has bigger consequences than keeping them as a customer.

Re: A fine piece of German engineering

Given enough sample data and probable plaintext sections the sole weakness, that a letter can't be encrypted to itself, allows you to crack it without exploring the full key space

But the real failure, like all security systems, is that it was mainly used by idiots

Apparently there was an unimaginative German post somewhere that always sent exactly the same status report every day saying basically "Outpost X; we're fine, no contact with the enemy etc etc etc".

Since as long as that German outpost could be relied upon to send exactly that message, it provided a massive shortcut to decode the days key. The German outpost in question was carefully identified and the occupants apparently enjoyed a very, very quiet war as a result, as the value to the war effort of keeping it transmitting the same message was much higher than the value of giving them any reason to change the message.

Doing the research costs money and the usual way of proceeding is that somebody produces something useful with the research and then licenses it to recoup the research costs. How do the costs get recouped if the research is stolen, and then sold on by the thieves?

That was my first thought honestly. If they were expecting to make a quick buck then they shouldn't have bought a company for twenty years worth of its yearly revenue and ~64 times it's current yearly profits.

I frequently question these days if a lot of these people have any better idea what they are doing and should be doing than I have. :/

Next mistake; sell off a profitable company that will eventually make back the money you put into it to raise "working capital" to throw more money into WeWork & Uber, neither of which have ever made a profit.

Nobody else is going to buy ARM for anything like what they've paid for it if they have any sense, which is going to leave them having lost so much money that they would have likely been better withdrawing it in low domination notes and then burning it to heat their offices.

Re: ARM will rule them all

AMD is not liked here simply because they aren't Chipzilla.

AMD is liked because they a very long history of creating innovative products and forcing competition on both speed and price going back to when Intel tried to wipe them out by refusing to license the 386, at which point they tinkered with the 286 design to the point it ended up with double the clockspeed of the original 386 while maintaining compatibility with the existing motherboards, meaning that one could simply swap the processor and have a "286" with double the speed of the early 386's. Somewhat handy if you were on a budget, given that computers back then cost rather more than they do now, especially if you take inflation into account.

This continued on to introducing the mixed 32/64 bit processors, and also multi core processors. None of these would be with us if not for AMD creating them. Intel is quite unlikely to have done on their own.

With no AMD competition we'd likely still be running single core processors in desktops and massively expensive Intel Itanium processors for servers. Companies only up their game through competition, and despite very well known anti competitive behavior AMD has provided that competition and repeatedly either pulled Intel forwards in terms of performance, or dragged their prices down.

Re: False Dawn

It is possible to stick your storage on OneDrive or whatever and then you don't need a VPN because your connecting to office.com via SSL and it's secured that way.

It wouldn't work for us and I can think of plenty of reasons why it's not worth doing, but it's certainly possible to do.

Firstly, old tech works just as well (or in some cases better) than modern tech. Just because something gets superseded doesn't necessarily mean that the newer product is actually better for getting a job done.

Also, I was diagnosed with being dyslexic back when that was in fashion. Knowing people who are dyslexic, I think i'm something else, but I certainly have had serious problems with handwriting.

And in perfect seriousness do try writing with an old fashioned dip pen. I started because I got into reenactment and wanted a bit of practice outside of using them at events. I ended up coming to the conclusion that Biros are evil things that encourage if not require poor handwriting. They allow people to hold the pen improperly. Holding the pen improperly largely causes bad handwriting. Did anybody tell you that at school? No? Me neither.

With a dip pen, if your holding the pen at the wrong angle it simply doesn't work. That forces you to hold the pen at the right angle, and that means an instant and significant improvement in the quality of your handwriting. As you get used to it, it gets steadily better, especially if you do a few sheets worth of copperplate calligraphy instruction pages then you'll discover that your handwriting suddenly goes from being abysmal to being somewhat better than most peoples.

Hence my desk at work now has several inkwells (you can get beautiful antiques for a pittance because your one of the the only people in the country interested in them) and a collection of dip pens with different nibs. (each gives a different effect when writing) If you have trouble remembering to take your hand off of the paper and move it, just put less ink on the pen. It'll run out and force you to move your hand to dip the pen in the ink again. You'll get used to moving your hand after a while, and fully dipped a fine tip can easily last a page of A4. IMO dip pens have a undeservedly bad reputation.

Lastly, if you do decide to go down this route, get yourself a mini hot glue gun and a wax seal from ebay. Wax sticks fit a hot glue gun, so if you are required to fill in forms then you can fill them in with a quill, fold the form and wax seal it shut and then snailmail it just to make a point to people that they are being overly archaic in not allowing you to email it, and that you can play too.

If you can act, you can also then quietly mock green types (who still use biros) when they ask why your using a quill by pointing out that the feather (or wood) holder is bio degradable, the nib is replaceable, the inkwells have an age greater than the combined total age of everybody in sight and unlike them you aren't using a single bit of single use plastic. (and did they realise that a biro has four bits of single use plastic that go in the bin when replaced? The outer case of the pen, the ink in the tube is in a plastic tube, the cover and the bit on the end of the pen; all of which go in the bin every time you get a new biro)

You can get near endless entertainment out of being slightly archaic.

As you say, as long as it's not on the network then it's not really a problem.

I decommissioned an NT4 box that was running the site voicemail at the beginning of this year. It's only external connectivity was communicating with the onsite PABX via a pair of 4 port modems imitating phone lines in a very, very old application. It ran 24/7 from ~1997 to 2020. In that time, it required one replacement PSU in (IIRC) 2007. After that, it had a yearly dust to keep it in good condition (I think a decades worth of dust did for the first PSU) and it ran pretty well.

My additions to the setup was configuring it to logon automatically after power failures (it wasn't on a UPS) and having a script that ran that automatically started the voicemail application if it rolled over and died, which it did usually one every few months in it's last few years due to the hardware having started getting somewhat defective.

In a funny note, the replacement VOIP system is universally considered to be a step down in functionality, usability and flexibility compared to the 23 year old system it replaced.

Re: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear

Yes. I'm sure lots of Journalists and Defense Lawyers were spending 3 grand a year on a contract for a phone.

Twit.

Spying on defense lawyers is illegal, and even it is done then no details gained via it could be revealed to the prosecution (they'd be obliged to tell the court or end up never, ever being able to practice law again anywhere in the western hemisphere) so that's pointless and won't happen. Working in legal IT I can say that it's not something we are concerned about given that discussions with clients happen in person, not over the phone because that sort of paranoia is cheaper, and evidently more effective.

Shall we ask if El Reg buys all of their journalists 3k per year phones? I doubt it, somehow since they'd only be good communicating with another person using the same comms channel and a £3k a year bill per user is going to put off pretty much everybody. Even if they did do that, it'd be pointless given that if I wanted to phone them instead of just emailing the tips address then it'd be no more secure than phoning another mobile.

Re: There is no price...

Just a ridiculously poor design. The firmware on the docks tends to match the quality of the connector too.

Are you assuming that the design goal was to produce something of high quality that would last a long time?

If you build something that breaks often then you sell lots of them.

There's no reason why these satellites can't provide navigation, comms (the British military currently buy commercial bandwidth I believe), and emergency location beacons.

The British military have their own satellites called SkyNet and so don't need to buy commercial bandwidth. Hollywood liked the name, but we had it first!

The last generation of SkyNet satellites was bought on a PFI scheme under Labour when that was in fashion, which the military has developed a particular loathing for and want ditched so the satellites are going to get ditched at the end of contract (~2022 IIRC) rather than at the end of operational life.

Frankly, buying this system outright and running it inhouse could deliver something useful and it's certainly worth considering if things can be done this way.

The traditional model has always held that launches cost billions and therefore satellites should be of an extremely high specification and lifetime to spread the launch cost over the operating lifetime. If you can cheaply throw a constellation of satellites up then the requirement for satellites to be built to a very, very high standard goes away because firstly you can launch fifty of them, and secondly instead of being in a geo orbit that takes 50k years to degrade you can simply design it to orbit at a low altitude and burn up in 10 years.

The build quality then only needs to be something like "90% will last ten years" rather than "99.9999999999999% chance of lasting 30 years", which one assumes is somewhat cheaper to engineer. 10% failed after 10 years? Meh, still 45 of that batch working up until their planned de orbit time which is probably "good enough".

Re: Some junior management grade messed up...

And one wonders how often somebody that got screwed on not getting paid by accounts the last time said "actually, nah" and just let things expire.

Re: RE: UPS generally shuts down in the time it takes to utter the first four words

The problem is that if you plug dual PSU servers into both the UPS and the mains they draw ~50% power from both. So if you load the UPS up to "capacity" as shown on the front of the UPS then as soon as the power goes then you get double the demand on the UPS.

These things of course come out in testing. Or in experience, if you don't bother to do the testing.

We have to stick to the 32 bit version because if we don't the program that everybody uses daily which generates the letters for them won't work.

It's also why we aren't using LibreOffice. Doing so an generating everything manually would cost more than the software licenses.

Re: The smartphone is not the problem...

I think the Smartphone is the main problem for the camera manufacturers.

Personally, I like photography and prefer carrying around a decent camera to a smartphone for better photos. However, undeniably the smartphone is "good enough" for most users which relegates "real" cameras to an increasingly high end niche. This scares people away from using them; many kids today have never actually owned or even handled a real camera and wouldn't consider buying one.

Re: This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm not. It's in fashion to have animals portrayed as people in animated films and stupid people (of which there are a lot) can't separate fiction and fantasy.

Personally i'd be quite happy with keeping some cute looking, but vicious (and non lethal!) animals around just to demonstrate the meaning behind the term "once bitten, twice shy". Removing the things that bite just perpetuates the problem of ignorant students that believe that wild animals are actually just like them.

Re: Is this an “American thing”?

That's only because most tech companies are American due to them having huge amounts of venture capital thrown at them, most of which is lost. I personally think that British companies are just as bad.

It's an aristocracy thing. Having destroyed the old bad aristocracy people who are exactly as bad are replacing them.

It's almost as if excessive amounts of money and power corrupt.

Re: There's several issues with sitting judges today

A point which historians are (or should be) quite grateful for.

Have you ever read the notes of a court case several hundred years ago? If not, then should you ever have cause to do any amateur history research then you'll find the court records perfectly comprehensible because such "common knowledge" is defined within the case so even if you don't know things that were common knowledge at the time of the trial the documents still make sense hundreds of years later.

Re: Body language

I have been "stop and searched". Actually, technically the officer said "Excuse me sir, could I have a look inside your bag?" inside a no alcohol zone that was being enforced, probably to check that our gate guards were actually enforcing the license conditions of hiring the place.

I was actually one of the event organisers, and the bag contained a bunch of high vis jackets and radios for the other committee members. The chap looked into it, realised it was nothing he cared about and then produced a stop and search pad and started writing out a thing that he was probably supposed to give me, I just asked if we were done, he said yep just need to give you... I wished him a good day and walked off.

Not sure if he bothered finishing writing out the stop and search ticket I was probably supposed to take (thereby potentially doing my part towards skewing the statistics) but it's not as if I wanted it for anything. But anyway, my point is that if i'd have hid the bag behind my back and told him that he couldn't look in it and screamed "fuck da police" to look tough to my mates then yes, he'd have nicked me because I would have created a situation requiring him to.

My personal experience with the police is that they are just human beings trying to do a job and if you let them do their job they will let you get on with your life without any trouble whatsoever.

My view is that there should be a "taking the piss act 2020".

Upon conviction by a jury for "taking the piss" by exploiting rules in what a jury feels is an unfair manner a company may be taxed an amount of revenue from 1% to 100% of it's turnover for up to ten years.

Sentencing guidelines: A company should end up paying at least 50% more tax as a result than they would otherwise have paid by following the rules. 100% taxes should only be applied to a "shell company" so judged by a jury.

/end problem. At the moment there is no real downside to not paying tax by employing an army of accountants. If you increase the penalty for playing games well beyond the benefits of playing those games then the problem would fairly immediately cease in order to avoid punitive taxation. If it bankrupts companies or forces them into being noncompetitive? Too fucking bad. It's not as if they hadn't done that themselves for years to companies that had been paying tax.

Far too many of our laws were written on the basis of fair play making assumptions that people running these companies are gentlemen and would never be dishonourable enough to engage in these games because doing so would tarnish their personal honour, ruining their personal reputation and leaving them a social pariah. This was undoubtedly effective two hundred years ago, probably still effective one hundred years ago questionably effective 50 years ago and utterly ineffective today.

Because this year, the USA is alone in the world running an attempt to see what happens when Covid 19 is allowed to spread unchecked, in a country where this happens if you get a survivable case of Covid19

From the perspective of the pleb worker, living in a country where you have a higher chance of getting Covid19 is bad. Running a chance of being financially ruined if you do survive it is worse. Canada has both a lower chance of getting Covid19 due to their lockdown, and a functional healthcare system which doesn't bankrupt you for using it.

Hence, this year taunting a Canadian with "are you packing your bags to go back to Canada" doesn't really work.

Re: Specification Snowball

And in the meantime, the existing equipment can remain in use as it works just fine.

20 years later: Are we still using those bloody pagers?

And don't forget the other point which is preventing justice being delivered by "I have the biggest and most violent mob, and might makes right so we're doing whatever we want".

Something that it appears going to have to relearn.

I know law is confusing for BNP types, but the laws take effect after they have passed. So if somebody had been granted british citizenship and moved to the UK in 1950 then they were a legal immigrant in 1950, and changes to the law since then that apply to new immigrants don't affect previous immigrants.

Re: Tempting...

“enforcement authority” means the OFT, every local weights and measures authority in Great Britain (within the meaning of section 69 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985(1)) and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland;

I think that the "local weights and measures authority" is a former trading name of "Trading Standards", so they'd certainly do.

Which? also claims that:-

"A claim can also be made if you have suffered alarm, distress or physical inconvenience or discomfort as a result of the trader's actions."

In which case you put the case into a civil court, and you get the money if a single magistrate decides that on the balance of probabilities you are right. (balance of probabilities means the magistrate is at least 51% sure your argument is right, which is a much better option than "beyond reasonable doubt", used in the magistrates or crown courts where they have to be >95% sure.)

Re: I have to admit...

The certain knowledge that their life would be absolutely destroyed by the police and criminal justice system as an example to other people is obviously enough to put off even the stupid.

And that before allowing for the fact that even if you accept that the scary sort of lunatics make up maybe one in ten thousand people when you shut down an airport then you've probably got a large enough sample size that those people might take to throwing bricks through your windows, sticking nails in your car tyres etc.

Sorry, how are the people at fault who clad the building with panels the building code said were safe?

Because IIRC the manufacturer was American, and their fire code said the stuff was for "single floor properties only" and it was marketed and sold on that basis where fire spreading to multiple floors wouldn't be a serious issue since the properties it would have been used on were tiny, and would have had easy access to being covered with lots of water from fire engines. They produced better stuff for multi floor properties.

IIRC they were horrified that it'd been used as it had because they knew that use would be lethal, and they withdrew that product to ensure that nobody would ever be able to use it like that again. Blatantly, somebody that bought it knew that it wasn't safe by US standards, which people never tire of telling us are more lax than our safety standards.

Re: Sooo....

Is it somehow illegal in France to simply offer people 4x their yearly wage to resign or accept redundancy?