Posts by SImon Hobson

Re: DR Testing Failure

but the UPS is connected to the server so when battery level = x it shuts down safely

I bet it isn't in any large datacentre - with tens of thousands of servers it's just going to be a big hassle and create problems of it's own (false alarms causing shutdowns). Instead, they work on the basis of having UPSs sized to cover the gap till the gennys start up - and gennys to take over before the batteries run out. In principle, there should never be a need for low UPS battery to shut down the servers. Apart from these loss of mains events, most other faults won't give you any warning before the server loses power.

A chemistry lecturer I know used to wander around the hall whilst mixing up black powder in a mortar and pestle. Cue nervous students trying not to be near him.

One of my teachers many years ago recalled how he "cured" a student of being over inquisitive and always fiddling with stuff. He deliberately left a pestle and mortar on a side bench with something unstable in it. Needless to say, when the over inquisitive student came in for the next lesson, he couldn't resist giving it a bit of a grind ...

Mind you, we found that most of the cupboards in our form room (a physics lab) weren't locked - oh what fun we had with the Wimshurst machine. Could get some real sparks off that one ! Then one day someone said "what happens if you put a polo mint between the balls ?", so we tried it - put a polo mint in the gap, held by the balls which were adjusted to grip it and wound it up. There was the usual crack as it sparked - and we could find no trace of polo mint, no bits, no dust, we had no idea what happened to it.

Re: Wind Turbines & Fibre

I have been told that windturbines ... have a fibre connection for control use.

Don't believe everything you have been told ! Newer ones may well have, as pointed out a large part of the cost of installation will be the same for copper or fibre. But I know (from having worked very briefly on trying to diagnose a comms problem for a client at my last job) that in one local windfarm there's an old Hayes 2400bps modem hooked up to a phone line. And the machine side of that is hooked up to a copper serial cable between the 5 windmills.

From the practical PoV, to put a copper line in will almost certainly have only needed a cable from the nearest joint box - probably half a mile at most - while fibre would have been a whole run all the way back to the exchange which is a good few miles (much of which won't be in ducts or even on poles - there's a lot of direct buried steel wire armoured phone cable out in the sticks).

There is indeed a requirement for connectivity to the windfarm, and to each windmill in it - the speed doesn't actually have to be that fast. How it's delivered will depend on a whole list of factors.

You do realise that in practice, there isn't all that much of the network that was built with public money ? And what was publicly funded was SOLD to BT's shareholders on privatisation (whether the price was right is a different discussion).

The network as it is now is a very different beast from what was flogged off 3 decades ago. Yes they had a head start in that there was an existing networks of ducts, poles etc - but that's been expanded a lot since then.

There really isn't a viable model for competing "last mile" networks. You don't have two different companies digging up your street to offer electricity, or gas, or water, or drainage - that would just be madness. Not to mention, if taken to extreme, you'd have a choice of two (or more) different road networks to get to your house !

That's the reason we don't (for the majority of us) have such end connection competition. It's costs thousands of pounds per mile to dig up roads to lay a network of ducts. You have to put that infrastructure in place before you can connect a single customer. And then you have to persuade enough customers to switch to your service to repay all those costs (and loan interest). Meanwhile, your upper price on the service is more or less set by BT who have the economy of scale from having a network that's been built of many decades.

When you look around, you tend to see that alternative networks fall into about 3 categories :

1) There's Virgin Media with it's cable network which stands no chance of being extended into lots of low density areas. But that wasn't built by VM, it was bought for pennies in the pound from the liquidators of the many cable companies that started up, incurred the cost of building out the network, but just couldn't get enough return to pay back their loans and investors.

2) There's small specialists that service places BT won't - often on a "if X sign up now, we'll come and service you".

3) And there's "community projects" like B4RN which rely a lot of donated labour (ie volunteers) and favourable treatment from landowners to keep the install costs down to something affordable. Something like that project doesn't work in even small urban areas as the costs go up very considerably when the network has to go into public roads rather than (mostly) under someone's field.

It's notable that B4RN found a number of cases where they announced a plan to extend coverage to somewhere BT had refused to service - only to find BT "suddenly finding that it was now economic" and would service that area as a spoiling tactic. Other altnets have also reported the same problem.

Re: He could have easily avoided being caught

what's to stop them from finding a hidden closet and sleeping all day

Story told by a mate who's been a sparky for many years, mostly on contract work for various large outfits. On one site there was a nice corner in the substation that was warm - but most importantly, impossible for the boss to find you without you hearing him coming first. I forget some of the details, but IIRC there was something about a paging system (aka Tannoy in the same way that vacuum cleaner are often called "hoovers") and being able to hear the announcements and call whoever wanted to speak to them using the phone conveniently located in the room - this was long before phone systems that told anyone the number that was calling !

One day someone got caught out. They answered a page and informed the boss that they were in a certain part of the site - only to have the boss walk in through the door brandishing one of the new fangled cordless phones that were just appearing.

Re: Typical backass governments

Downvote from me as we have some very strict privacy/date protection laws in the EU. Coming into force in a few months will be stronger rules under the EU GDPR. The US authorities might not GAS about privacy or fairness, but don't lump all countries in with them.

It will be "interesting" to follow this, and I strongly suspect Uber will find that the EU is "not as friendly" to their slapdash practices as their home country.

Re: The arrogance ..

I've read that sentence five times now, and still don't understand it myself

Yes, it's a corker isn't it. I've read it, and re-read it, and ... and I think that what it says is :

The medical experts can't state with 100% confidence that he will get worse, therefore you should not read their reports as saying that he will get worse.

The implication then being that as you are no longer reading the medical reports as saying that he will get worse, you should assume that he won't and ship him off for torture anyway.

Re: Gubmint investment

It's too important to leave in commercial hands. A world run entirely by business is not one in which I want to live.

I'm guessing you're too young to remember what Post Office Telephones were like. Just like the trains, when run by the government they were crap by today's standards. For all the faults in the current setup, it's far far better than before privatisation.

Yup, there's nothing so bad that government intervention (or ownership) can't make it worse !

Re: Uh, "provides ... to any app that wants to measure your emotional reactions"?

You don't have to use any Google products, and can thus avoid their tracking. You don't have to use Facebook, and can avoid sharing your deep dark secrets with the world.

And that sums up a big part of the problem - you have demonstrated that you don't realise how bad it's got.

You think that Google and Facebook don't have a profile on you ? Think again.

You can be very sure that both of them do whether you have ever visited any of their own sites. Unless you have been incredibly lucky to have never ever visited any website with Google or Facebook tracking code on it (disguised as things like analytics) then they do have a profile on you. And can you be 100% certain that no-one has given Facebook your contact details - they shouldn't without you permission, but so many see no problem complying with the nagging to "just upload your contacts so we can join them to your circle of friends".

I suggest you lookup Max Schrems. Facebook were found guilty of illegally building profiles of people who had not consented - but they have not stopped doing that. We're just waiting for Privacy Shield Figleaf to get the same treatment that Safe Harbour did when it was shown to be worthless. US law is fundamentally incompatible with EU privacy law, it's just that there are too many commercial interests for it to be dealt with ... yet.

... want to be able to leech off BT's investment

Surely you mean rent some of that investment ? It's not like they are saying BT has to provide it free, anyone wanting to use it will have to pay a market rate (however that ends up being determined) for it.

... and doesn't produce large tax revenues ...

Are you aware that a number of alt-nets closed down due to being taxed differently to BT[OR] ?

The basis of rates was changed, so the owners of any infrastructure paid rates on the notional value of the infrastructure IF IT WAS 100% UTILISED - vastly increasing their rates bill compared to what BT paid for any vaguely similar infrastructure. At my last job, we had a number of customers "cut off" when the alt-net they got their internet service through was shut down after this taxation change.

Some of them had real problems getting any alternative usable service - too far for decent ADSL, poor signal for 3G/4G.

Re: Get your ounce of flesh first

If you feel you must pay these robber barons, use the costly delay method.

Well in reality, there's not much scope for not paying them. SWMBO got caught when a local supermarket installed Parking Eye and she didn't see the signs (mounted high up, out of eyeline, in a place where a driver's concentration is on not hitting other cars, people, or the landscape !) The notice they sent was comprehensive: dates & times, photos in and out, all the required statutory information, etc, etc. They'll have had all the techniques you mention over the years, so they've developed a legally bulletproof notice.

As as previously mentioned, it's been all the way up to the supreme court, and three judges (London based, probably with significantly higher living standards than the average) decided that £85 was not "unreasonable" - hence any of these scumbags can charge £85 for such a breach of contract and it's all legal.

The best way to avoid having to pay is to take it up with the business owner. In this case, I emailed them and made it quite clear that neither myself nor any of my family would be spending any more of our money with them ever again - and as a result, they'd be losing far more than the parking "fine".

What was most annoying is that they'd been in the cafe (which is actually quite good - normally) for over an hour due to slow service.

Very quickly I got a reply back saying that the charge had been cancelled.

Mind you, I have had some ideas for how to screw around with them - knowing the angle/viewpoint of the cameras ...

Re: Attitude of banks

Moral of the story - the system cannot be wrong. Except it can and you have to prove it.

A good example is Chip and PIN which the banks will happily tell you is 100% secure, except that it's been proven to be "rather less than 100%" secure !

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/?s=chip%2Band%2Bpin

NB - it's well worth subscribing to their RSS feed, They do some very interesting stuff !

Correct, Plusnet don't make you use their router - they are quite happy for you to use your own. Unlike some other providers who insist on you using their crippled and probably bug ridden carp, with remote config and updates hardcoded to on so they can change your settings whenever they like.

And in business, there are very often good technical reasons for not using the ISPs router - mainly to do with full access to firewalls, VPN support, etc, etc. At my last job, I'd say that more of our business customers used a router we provided than used an ISP provided one.

Re: Just give Facebook the Finger

Part of the problem is that you don't have to agree to anything at all for FarceBork to build a profile on you. Web pages with a FarceBork logo on them allow them to track your browsing, other uploading your information illegally*, people mentioning you in their posts, etc, etc all go towards building up a detailed profile of you and your activities.

And all without any consent whatsoever, and then exported outside of the EU without any legal protection.

So a big part of the case is about FarceBork basically sticking one digit up to EU data protection laws as a matter of basic operations.

* When they pester users to "just upload your contacts - it'll make things easier" without spelling out in big clear print and simple words that this is a criminal activity in the EU unless you get consent from every person who's details you upload.

When the entire population of a large continent, or at least all who are sick, illegally enter your country ...

You do realise that almost "the entire population" of our nearest continent are entitled to enter the UK legally ? Once further afield than that, then I suspect the numbers are actually not that high that it's worth the damage that this idea will do.

Every car I have even owned has been a manual ... and I can say with certainty that I can do a hill start without rolling backwards AT ALL.. ... You really need to consider swapping your car.

I was thinking that there's probably nothing wrong with the car that can't be solved by installing a competent driver.

But sadly, many drivers seem to believe a hill start requires some sort of black art worthy of being taught at Hogwarts.

Re: Has anyone considered...

Given the requirement to have a telephone service that works during a power failure "completely" looks like a non - starter.

Actually that problem was solved many years ago. BT ran trails in a couple of villages where they completely removed copper and went all fibre. As far as telephony went, users really didn't notice anything other than a slightly larger NTE that needed a mains supply - but it had it's own battery to run a POTS phone for a day or two in the absence of power. The technology for making telephony all digital to the user premises has been around for a long time (c.f. ISDN-2) and effectively it's moving the digital-analogue conversion from a rack of cards in the exchange to a small NTE in the user premises.

It was claimed at the time (by BT) that an all-fibre network would be more reliable and cheaper to maintain. I wonder how long it took them to bury that fact when it didn't suit their needs !

Re: Advancing our civilization into less a democratic state...

The will of 37% of the electorate should be ...

So you are arguing instead that the 34.7% who voted to remain should have a larger say ? Ie, the classic argument by the losing side that the 27.8% who didn't vote would all actually have voted for the losing side. Put another way, sore losers are usually quick to abuse any stats they can to try and "prove" that they have been wronged.

It's more valid to suggest that those who didn't vote didn't care enough to express an opinion, or were simply happy to go with the majority result. Thus, up to 65.3% of the electorate wanted to leave - but not all of them got out and voted.

But since no-one can accurately know the opinions of all those who didn't express it, we have the tried and tested method of looking at the opinions of those who did - the highest turnout for an election/referendum in living history IIRC. Of those that did vote, a very clear majority wanted to leave.

If you have any complaint, and believe that the result should have been different with those missing votes - then your complaint should be against those who didn't get out and vote the way you wanted.

... required a regular oil refill. That was messy

I'll see your oil fill, and raise you ... a (IIRC) Ricoh duplicator that had a fault which meant that it couldn't automatically unload it's masters.

For those who have never seen such a device, it looks just like a photocopier - in theory, walk up, put your original on top, press the copy button, out comes a copy. But, this uses a sort of thin paper with plastic coating to make a master which then does the copy with ink - real ink, in paste form. Once the master is made, you can then rattle off hundreds or thousands of copies very cheaply compared to a photocopier. The one we had would do 130 copies/minute which was way way faster than any of the photocopiers we had as well - but fun when the output tray wasn't quite set up right :-)

With this machine, it was supposed to be able to remove the inky master from the drum and deposit it in a waste hopper when you made a new one. But as mentioned, this machine had a fault, so if you didn't manually remove the master first (a clean operation, as part of it never got inked) it would simply shred it and wrap bits of horrible inky paper/plastic round the mechanism.

No matter how many times I explained this to certain people, they would never accept it - and somehow it was my fault, and my responsibility to clean it out. Oh no, those dainty (well some of them were at least) ladies couldn't possibly get their hands dirty doing such a messy job.

Re: Landing spot?

IIRC the official term is "landing on water".

Re: "OSX for PC"...

Apple officially tried that a number of years ago, and it very nearly killed them

Indeed. What they hoped the other manufacturers would do is compete in the gaps Apple didn't cover - providing a fuller range of hardware. What actually happened was the two of them basically started a race to the bottom to produce "beige boxes" cheaper and with no new features - significantly cheapening the brand.

At work we were buying these other brands - because they made the bean counters happy. Bluntly, the hardware just wasn't as good or reliable as Apple's was at the time.

The US employee wouldn't be breaking any US law if they complied but might be breaking US law if they refused.

And here is the nub.

In the Google case, Google employees in the USA did have access as they controlled the servers and the data was moved purely for Google's convenience.

This case is very different. Microsoft have thought this through in advance, and setup a system which (it is claimed*) means that employees of Microsoft USA do not have access to the servers run by a legally separate company in Ireland. So the situation wasn't so much MS saying "we won't provide the data", it's more a case of "we cannot provide this data".

At best, MS USA can instruct MS in Ireland to send the data over - but that will get a fat rasperry in response because MS in Ireland will obey the local law.

Where it would get interesting is that if the DoJ win this case, a court could issue warrants for all the MS Ireland employees who have refused to hand over the data - effectively preventing them from ever travelling to the USA, or to any country "friendly" to the USA, on penalty of arrest and imprisonment.

* I have certain doubts that this is the case given that AIUI some of the authentication stuff can or is routed via US based servers (and certainly could be as it uses a domain name controlled from the US). Given that authentication can be routed via the US, it's hard to ignore the possibility of that being subverted to allow access.

Re: As far as VTech is concerned it's all your fault.

Would a shop take it back after you've opened it, found the instruction book, gone online to register and only then find that you can't or won't agree to the T&Cs? I suspect not ...

They might try to refuse to take it back, but after losing in the Small Claims Court (more technically, Fast Track Service of the County Court) they would !

If using the device to it's full potential means accepting contract terms which we NOT made clear before purchase then you have the right to not accept those changed contract terms and void the contract. Basic contract law - unless the initial contract allows for unilateral redefinition of the contract (which would be struck down under the Unfair terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations) then the contract can only be varied with the consent of all parties. Having to sign up with an online service and accept T&Cs that weren't on the outside of the package you bought would be a change in the terms of the contract you entered with the retailer and thus you are not required to accept them.

It's just the same with shrink wrapped software. Unless the EULA is clearly visible before you open it, the retailer cannot refuse to accept a return because you don't accept the terms of the agreement.

Re: I assume Thinkbroadband are using the "can pay extra for fibre" definition of ("has access to"?

The truth is that people who want the fastest possible connection are in the minority.

In the same way that people wanting to pay for the fastest possible car are also in the minority ! After all, for many people, some small, low powered car that would struggle to hit 90 is more than adequate to go to the shops in town where the highest speed limit between home and shop sis 30 or perhaps 40 mph.

Re: Airbus and autonomous cars

Air France flight 447 crashed into the sea because the pilots failed to "fly" the aircraft.

Not exactly.

They DID fly the aircraft, but due to a variety of factors flew it incorrectly. Somewhat oversimplifying ...

One pilot was a bit confused about the situation (IIRC the pitot tubes were iced over and they lost airspeed information) and held his stick back to "pull the nose up" and arrest what he thought was a dive. The other pilot identified that they were in fact in a stall and pushed his stick forward. Because the sticks aren't linked, he was unaware that his colleague still had the stick fully back - and because of this, he was unable to lower the nose and recover from the stall after which they could have levelled out and continued flying.

From memory, the design of the side control sticks (think in terms of having a control stick where the electric window switches are in most cars) and the fact that there is no cross linking (there's no mechanical feedback in either stick for what the other pilot is doing) came in for particular note in the accident report. In more traditional control designs, the primary controls are mechanically linked which means that both pilots have direct feedback of what the other pilot is doing.

Where they failed to fly the aircraft is in that loss of airspeed information shouldn't be a big deal - just set the engine power and attitude found from the charts in the manual and it'll fly level, that is part of basic flight training. What happened here was that the complexity of the systems isolated them from the basics, and that together with lack of practice at hand flying meant that they didn't grasp what was happening ... soon enough to fix it.

Re: I had BT Business Fibre...

Well that's interesting - and not a document that was findable when I was dealing with this. I can assure you that they were 110% adamant that you had to use their router - though I was at one point passed through to a techie who was able to provide the DSL login details. All they allowed was to put another router behind theirs and route some public IPs through to it.

Though TBH, we more or less gave up nagging them to fix it a few months ago as we'd already taken the decision to use another provider, and this was only being left "active" as they'd promised not to discontinue another service (leased line on a legacy network they were getting rid of) until it was up and running. Once we'd migrated everything off the other service the plan was to tell them where to stick it.

Dreadful to deal with, and not even a way to get through to business support - we had to phone residential support and get transferred.

Re: Defeating Draconian laws

Arrange for the password to be held by a third party ...

But how do you prove that you do not have/know the password yourself ? That's the problem, the only defence is that you don't have it, and that's something that is not provable - the prosecution don't have to prove that you do have it.

So yes, the absurdity of the law goes as far as you being found guilty because you can't prove that you don't know something which you don't know.

Hence, when this absurdity of a law came out, there were suggestions about emailing (or otherwise getting it onto their computer) an encrypted file to someone (any politician who voted for it would be a good start) and then tipping off the police that they had something to hide.

Perhaps the complaint is that Uber aren't too fussed about the drivers and only ask them to self-certify that they've got a private hire licence ?

Wasn't one of the longstanding complaints that while PH drivers need a PH licence and appropriate insurance, many hadn't bothered and Uber didn't appear to care ?

Re: Is Marc SERIOUS?

Trusted? Please tell me Marc, Just how may apps has Google pulled this year ...

We know that, but to the average punter, they are told by Google that "Play Store is the only safe place, use any other store and you are inviting the four horsemen onto your phone" - so the average punter will not consider any other source.

Actually that needs a correction, because the average punter doesn't even know that other sources are possible - if it isn't in Google's store then it doesn't exist. Only well above average punters actually realise there are alternative sources.

On that basis, I'd say that the suit has merit IF they can show that they weren't in violation of any T&Cs.

Analogies to "it's my party ..." etc are not really valid. It's more like one company owning just about every venue in a city/state/country and arbitrarily refusing bookings from an act that competes with one of it's regulars. Even that analogy is a bit weak.

Re: To be fair to HSBC.

Try reading CAREFULLY.

Would have HAD (past tense) a Chinese passport at some point, when becoming a naturalised UK citizen the person would only have a UK passport.

Re: Benefits - *cough* 1972 *cough*

But this Brexit vote was carried by a minority of the population who wanted to leave.

But en even smaller minority voted to remain.

For those that didn't vote, then the only sensible interpretation is that those people wanted to go with the majority - if they didn't want that interpretation then they should have voted. Put another way, less than 35% (roughly 1/3) of the voting population voted to remain - vs the roughy 2/3 who either voted to leave or "voted" (by abstaining) to go with the majority.

Re: What are lawmakers doing?

Patent trolling exists for long, and there's still no law to block the scam

OK smarty pants - write a definition of a patent troll ! it must be clear and unambiguous, able to stand up in court, and most importantly it must NOT prevent any legitimate patent holder from defending their rights.

Before you start, have a look at this Wikipedia article and see if you can see the parallels.

Imagine if the electricity board were allowed to supply you with "up to 240 volts" when in reality only supplying a degraded supply at 120V

Or how about, imagine if the electricity company were supplying you with an "up to 60/80/100A" service ? Well that's exactly what they do - your house (depending on the age, location, and local infrastructure) will have a 60A, 80A, or 100A fuse in the mains supply - ie the fuse that you can't get to, sealed inside the box on the end of the supplier's cable.

Can you use all 60/80/100A ? Well, sort of - as long as your neighbours don't also try it ! The supply industry works on an averaged demand of only 2kW (that's about 8A) per household - if every house decided to try and use it all at the same time then it would blow the fuses (possibly as small as 300A) at your local substation !

In our office building I happen to know that most of the offices have a 63A fuse protecting the submain from the meter room to the office. Down in the meter room, there are rows of meters (one per office), fed from a distribution box containing the suppliers fuses. There are 10 units fed from each phase in the box, and a 315A fuse upstream. So 10 units, if they all pulled 63A would be trying to pull 630A through a 315A fuse.

In general this isn't a problem - diversity of loads means that people don't all try and use all the supply capacity at the same time. There is massive variation in demand, and some correlation (eg most offices use power during 9-5 and little outside of that), but overall there is nothing like the capacity needed to be able to supply everyone with what they thing they are buying.

Elsewhere, there are some countries where your electricity supply has a much lower rated current - and you pay according to that limit which may be as low as 5A in some places, enforced by a circuit breaker provided by the lecky company. Mismanage your loads (eg forget that the washing machine is on when you try and boil the kettle) and the lights go out.

The internet is the same. There is massive diversity of demand (bandwidth usage), and no ISP could afford to buy enough bandwidth for the theoretical possibility of satisfying every user trying to use their "full amount" at the same time. The main difference is that (historically, it's changing these days) the electrical distribution system was designed by competent engineers, with a view to providing a reliable network. The internet is largely run under the control of beancounters with money the primary motive - ie not looking at "what bandwidth is needed to provide a decent service most of the time" but "how cheap can we go before the complaints get too bad".

Clearly different ISPs have a different view on what's acceptable.

meanwhile, in the UK lecky business, there's a lot of push now to cut costs - and that includes a significant shift from having spare distribution capacity to having disconnectable customers. ie if there's a major fault, instead of being able to route around it, they pick up the phone and tell some commercial customers to cut their demand - a facility for which the customer gets a discount on their bills, and a further discount when/if it's actually used.

And finally - "Smart Meters" are primarily about bringing this to the domestic market. Think 1970s style rolling blackouts when there's not enough lecky, but done on a house by house basis rather than block by block.

Re: Note to self

... If they had any EU outlets they'd be on a fairly solid collision course with EU data protection laws ...

No you raise an interesting point. Sonos may not have a European presence (I haven't looked, don't own any of their kit) but it is imported and sold by companies with an EU presence. So how does that work when you buy it from an EU based wholesaler/retailer chain - but the US only manufacturer imposes terms in breach of EU regulations ? I know they changed the rules on product descriptions so that when you buy something, you can take account not only of what the retailers says it does, but also what the manufacturer has on their website - ie if the manufacturer's website says it can so $something but it doesn't, then that's sufficient to have a claim against the retailer.

I suspect that is someone were to bring a test case, (some combination of) the importers/wholesalers/retailers might be found liable. Perhaps in cases like this, the importer is liable for compliance - like they are for things like electrical safety etc - that would open up a whole can of worms if the importer is legally liable for compliance with EU data protection laws for a product they have no control over the software in it.

Now I suspect that if the importers suddenly turned round to Sonos and told them that they are dropping the brand for legal compliance reasons, then Sonos might change it's tune. Yup, certainly sounds like a test case is needed - not just for Sonos, but for stuff generally.