* Posts by SImon Hobson

2539 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Sep 2006

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

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Re: That reminds me...

When we arrived, the AC was iced up, literally, there was a block of ice hanging out the ventilation flap!

Common problem, and often caused by incorrect specification/selection of the cooling system - put another way, the air is too dry so it's iced up. I've had this conversation a few times, because it sounds crazy - how can the air being too dry cause ice formation ?

With a system designed for comfort cooling in a typical office environment, there will be a fair bit of water vapour in the air. As the air is cooled, the water will condense, and this takes a lot of energy extraction to do. As a result, for a given rate of heat extraction, the evaporator will run warmer than if it wasn't having to extract all that latent heat of evaporation from the water. If everything is within specs, then the evaporator will stay above freezing point (of water), and so the water will dribble out and go down the drain.

But put very dry air through that same system, and for the same (or less) energy extraction, the evaporator will now run a lot colder - and as a result, what water vapour does get condensed will freeze. As bits of ice will prevent airflow over/through localised bits of the evaporator, then those will get colder still as will the adjacent areas - thus the ice will get colder and harder. Left unchecked, this will continue until airflow is blocked completely by the ice, and the ice will be set "like concrete" in a now exceedingly cold evaporator. The best way to deal with this is by turning off the compressor but keeping the fan running - if that's possible. This will (unless things really are completely blocked) pull above-freezing air over the heat exchanger, warming it up and melting the ice. Better systems will detect such conditions and automatically defrost the heat exchanger - whether that's in the inside unit in cooling mode, or the outdoor unit in heating mode, many don't (I've seen a building with a whole wall full of "blocks of ice" !)

Apple's bright idea for CSAM scanning could start 'persecution on a global basis' – 90+ civil rights groups

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Stop

Re: Naked babies

So I am a loving father of two kids, and yes I have naked pics of them in the bath, in the pool etc

As will many, probably almost all, parents. It's normal and one could argue that not having such photos would be abnormal.

BUT in the UK it's illegal - and it's a strict liability offence meaning that there is no allowance for "but it's just being a normal parent" or any other similar defence. So technically, being a loving and normal parent could end up with you on the sex offender register, your life turned upside down, your family torn apart, etc, etc. Even the files not being accessible to you, or being files you don't knwo the existence of, isn't technically a defence.

Even if at some point the police of CPS decide not to pursue the case, you'll have had all your computers taken for examination (don't worry, you'll get them back ... sometime ... perhaps a few years later ... and maybe even still working), you'll have lost your job because no employer want to be seen employing a known paedophile, you'll never be able to go anywhere without the neighbours looking at you in a "funny way" because clearly there's no smoke without fire, and the kids will be traumatised by all that's going on. But that's OK, it's all done because "think about the kids".

And no-one can argue that such a situation is absurd - because to argue against any measure brought in to "think about the kids" must mean that you are thinking about the kids in the wrong way. That's how things like this happen - the wedge goes in, and bit by bit it's driven in harder and harder, and people argue "think about the kids" until it's too late to get the wedge out when they realise what a crazy situation they've created.

Zoom incompatible with GDPR, claims data protection watchdog for the German city of Hamburg

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Re: Great Data Purging Revolution

I couldn't decide whether to upvote you for the first bit. or downvote you for the second - so I've done neither.

I believe that GDPR has done something for privacy, just not as much and as fast as many had hoped. I believe it will come sooner or later.

The problem which you point out, that none of the big suspects such as FaecesBorg have been fined yet is that technically they haven't broken the law - because they've used mechanisms that have officially been endorsed by the authorities. First it was Safe Harbour until Shrems I killed that, then the hurriedly cobble together Privacy Figleaf until Shrems II killed that. But with the latter, there's still this "grey zone" while TPTB work out what to do. They can't ignore it, but equally there's a lot of pressure to avoid completely killing trans Atlantic trade - which would harm us as much as it would harm the US.

But in the interim, many services have improved their contractual terms and don't sell you without your permission - though that doesn't get round government snooping. Long term I think we'll see many more setting up the web of separate legal entities and technical barriers such that you'll be able to sign up for a service, and have some confidence in the data staying within the EU.

At the moment there isn't that confidence (at least amongst those with a memory longer than that of a goldfish), because Microsoft demonstrated the day after the CLOUD act was passed into law that people in the US could access and copy data from a server located in Ireland. Because of the complex way connections (especially for authentication) bounce around the globe, I'm not sure Microsoft can provide that guarantee with their current setup regardless of what they might claim publicly.

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Re: The fundamental problem

...it offered no real protection in the face of overriding federal law allowing government agencies access to personal data regardless of the terms of contracts between the parties to data transfers

Which is the key point.

We all knew Privacy Figleaf Shield was dead as soon as it was announced. But hey, it bought people another 5 years while Shrems II worked it's way through the system. No doubt TPTB will come up with another grand sounding scheme that everyone can sign up to - and it'll buy another 5 years while Shrems III grinds through the mill and that scheme gets tossed out.

But ultimately, there is a fundamental incompatibility between EU and US law - unless one or both change their law significantly then there will never be a system which withstands scrutiny. I don't believe the EU will change, let's face it, there's enough member countries that understand (thanks to events within living memory) the importance of privacy. And I can't see the US government upsetting the corporate sponsors that bankroll the elected members' ...

So I think we can look forward to "son of Privacy Figleaf" followed by Schrems III; then "son of son of Privacy Figleaf" followed by Schrems IIII; then ...

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So why they do seem to insist on using Zoom is unclear to me

It's there, it's reasonably priced, it's fairly easy to use - and also, I've found that it's fairly easy on system resources on my aging old laptop.

It's time to decentralize the internet, again: What was distributed is now centralized by Google, Facebook, etc

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Re: Bullshit article premise

You don't have to use them, use a non-conglomerate outlet.

And here we see another area where you have to admit that Amazon spotted an opportunity and went for it.

As a shopper, people are now used to going to the larger places, where there's parking, and lots of shops all together. Sure, they can still go to the high street - struggle to park miles from where they want to be, and trudge in the rain from one shop to another until they find what they want.

But many, much to the detriment of the high street, realised that they can drive a few miles out of town, park easily, and spend the day in the dry with everything they could want for sale.

So as a seller, you have a choice. You can stay on the high street and hope that enough people will brave the poor parking, and the weather, and ... and shop with you. Or you can go and open up in the shopping centre where many of your customers have gone. The reality now is that if you aren't on Amazon and eBay then it doesn't matter how good your (online) shop is, you will be missing out on a lot of potential customers.

So you have to pay to built your own systems to sell to fewer customers; or you can pay to use systems built by someone with massive economies of scale to sell to more customers. But apart from anything else, if you choose the latter, then your landlord is also your competitor and is helping himself to all your sales data to help them compete effectively with you.

Apart from prohibiting the combination of "being the landlord" and "competing with your tenants"; I'm not sure how anyone could put the "massive outfit outcompetes anything smaller" genie back in the bottle.

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: Bullshit article premise

This is why Amazon makes lots of money, because other people are incompetent at selling their stuff. They put all sorts of obstacles in the way of you giving them money.

That is only a small part of it.

If all Amazon did was act as a well oiled online market hall (or shopping centre, or mall for our US friends), then that would be OK. But it's more like Amazon being the owners of the only market hall in your town - if you want to sell in your town, then you have to be in the market hall that people in your town go to. So far, not a problem.

Where it becomes a problem is that they not only own the market hall, they have their own stall. Again, not automatically a problem.

But they also require that if you sell in their market hall, you must use exclusively their systems so that they can see who your customers are, what you sell, and how much you sell it for. No, is there anyone who can't see a problem with one vendor having access to all the sales information for all of it's competitors ?

So the situation with Amazon is that it has visibility of what everyone else sells, how much for, and to whom. They can let others bring new products to market, and based on real data (not having to do their own research) decide whether it's something they can profit from - and if they do decide they can profit, they immediately know who is buying it and for how much, so can set predatory pricing. And of course, they are in a position to push their own offerings up the search rankings and thsu ensure that their offerings are seen first.

In short, Amazon are in a position where they have an unfair advantage over all the independents using their site, and that allows them to use predatory tactics to ensure that no-one else can be "too successful". And this is brought about because they are both the market hall operator and a stall holder in their own right - and have no isolation to prevent the stall holder part having an unfair advantage from seeing all the data from the other stall holders.

Amazon's size would be of significantly less a problem if they didn't have this duality - if they either didn't have their own stall in the market, or if their stall holder operation was properly separate from the market hall operations. But properly ensuring such a separation is a difficult task at the best of times - when you have an organisation that's as happy to sail close to the wind (if not past it) regarding legal obligations, then it would be near impossible to enforce.

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Re: Bullshit article premise

You might think that, but if it all stopped working today, you'd find out how much of what you use regularly has that sort of stuff behind the scenes.

Beige Against the Machine: The IBM PC turns 40

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Re: "agile" or "faster"?

Indeed, OS/2 Warp was ahead of it's time - too far ahead and the hardware couldn't really do it justice. IIRC full multi-tasking and 32 bit at a time when Windows was some 32 bit extensions to some 16 bit graphics shell, running on an 8 bit OS from a 2 bit company :D

But that meant the hardware requirements were "hefty", and when run on the sort of setup most people could afford, it was "a bit slow". One can only imagine how it might have fared had it been released a year or two later and allowed hardware specs/prices to develop a bit.

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Re: Crime against humanity

Possibly, but more likely it would just have led to a different empire rising - based on DR-DOS. Just think if Gary Kildall had met with the IBM suits that day ...

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Re: expansion slots

Indeed, there were many systems with busses - the Apple ][ was well known, and in education circles the RM380Z was also well known (as were the rubber bands that kept it working !)

But what people forget is that IBM didn't actually design it. AIUI they basically took the data sheet for the processor, looked at the reference design given in that, and built it - and bought in the software to make it work. But for IBM where programmer productivity was measured in how many lines of code you could add to something, actually fitting working code into such a small footprint (i.e. persuading programmers to remove boat rather than add to it) must have been quite a culture shock.

But shortly after the PC came out, I started work in the stereotypical IBM shop. "Information Services" was god when it came to anything to do with processing information. So if you wanted to do that, you had to apply and justify having a terminal off their mainframe - for which you paid them rent as well as paying for all the storage and processing time you used. In our place, you could easily spend a year in the queue to get a terminal.

But this was also when I was getting into computers, and I was friends with the local Apple dealer. He told me that he kept a stock quote to hand for an Apple ][ - and told anyone from this big company who enquired that a) they'd not be allowed to buy it (they weren't), and b) they'd get their terminal within a week (they did). The moment anyone put in for permission to buy an Apple ][ to get their work done, on the basis that the IS dept. hadn't provided them with a terminal in [some long time measured in months], magically they've go right to the top of the list and the terminal would be on a desk within the week. It really was like that - the IS dept did it's utmost to block anyone buying anything without a blue badge on it.

And THAT is why the PC (which bluntly was rubbish compared to the Apple ][, Commodore PET, and even the TRS 80, took off - because of all those big corporates who would then buy it simply because of the badge.

Where I worked, our small development group got a Compaq 286. It took some effort and the question was basically "justify why you can't do it with an IBM" - not can you do it better/worse or anything like that, but could you do it at all. We fluffed about needing some feature for our programming and embedded systems development and managed to get it passed. But the Compaq, for less money, gave us more ram, bigger hard drive, bigger floppies (yeah, remember when you could get 1.2M on a 5 1/4" floppy !), ... but we still struggled to justify spending less money for more capability on something without a blue badge.

The history of those days is quite interesting to study. But for a mere quirk/misjudgement, we could have been running DR-DOC and Microsoft would have remained a small outfit selling compilers.

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

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Re: That's instant jail for whoever tries that in Switzerland

But didn't you read that gazzilion page long licence agreement before clicking "I've read and accept it" ? Somewhere it'll ask for permission, and you'll have explicitly given them permission to do this. So potentially completely legal under GDPR.

I say "potentially" because GDPR also prohibits burying stuff like this in long agreements, and also prohibits making such acceptance a requirement where it's not actually required for the product or service to work. Look up how long Max Schrems has been going at FaecesBorg for - and that's probably how long you can wait for any practical enforcement action.

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Re: "scanning individual users' iPhones"

They just have to put in in the "no-one has a couple of days spare to read it all" agreement you have to sign before any modern stuff works and it becomes legal - as in "we can do it, we asked for permission (on page 273 of 425 pages) and you said yes".

https://www.onelegal.com/blog/fantastic-clauses-hidden-in-contracts-and-eulas/

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

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Re: Perhaps a hybrid would be a better solution?

and is most difficult to restart if it does fail completely

Indeed, and they learned that lesson the hard way back in the 1940s - i.e. too long ago for most people, and definitely any engineers still working, to remember. I note that according to Wikipedia, Drax was opened in the late 70s, so it's no wonder the engineer writing that doesn't remember a "real" nationwide black start.

It's a tale my dad used to recall when a suitable subject prompted it.

When they built the grid, they'd worked on the assumption that "there'll always be power" - and most of the power stations were designed on that basis. As that article points out, power station need power in order to start up - to run control systems, pumps, fans, etc, etc. So when we had a nationwide blackout - it was " a bit of a problem" getting things going again.

AIUI they had to manually visit substations, disconnecting loads so that what power stations could start up could power up the grid without being overloaded by everyone wanting their lights back on. Thus, they could route power to the blacked out stations can get them online - finally reconnecting loads as power became available.

After that, they had a program of retrofitting small gas turbines at most power stations to provide power for a black start. As a bonus, these were later useful for peak lopping - this was when the bulk of generation was coal which is slow to respond, and TV was watched live so when the ad-breaks came, millions of kettles went on at once.

Sadly I can't find any references to this online - my searches either come up with modern events, or wartime stories.

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

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Headmaster

Re: I do wonder how much it would cost

A half penny, a.k.a. ha'penny, usually pronounced 'hay penny'.

For those of us with a few years under our belt, a ha'penny would be a token small amount of money - and when I were a lad, it was the smallest coin in circulation. A penny (pre-decimalisation) being one 240th of a pound, or a 12th of a shilling (a.k.a."a bob", equivalent to 5p in new money).

And there used to be a common phrase back in the day that someone would "spoil the ship for a ha'penneth of tar" - meaning that cheapskating on basics (tar being a material used in waterproofing ships) and spoiling something much more valuable than what has been saved.

Here endeth todays etimology lesson from a grumpy old git.

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Re: End user options

But the majority of users just don't get that. Until you get away from "new phone each year, subsidised by the network, throw (or give) the old ones away" attitude from many people, then things won't change.

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Re: There's another reason Apple is linking camera modules to phones

As cars go all electric I expect we will see the same linkages of parts to the car's serial number

I've got news for you, you're a decade or two behind the times there - some stuff has been like that for a long time. Modern (and some not so modern) cars are networks of many computers, and some manufacturers have gone down that very route - you can't (for example) just grab a replacement ECU from a crappy and drop it in, it needs coding to the rest of the ECUs so they'll talk to it.

Again, some of this is security - no (as a thief) overriding the "engine won't run because it's in securely locked mode" by simply swapping out the ECU and then driving away. But some of it is to drive business to authorised repairers.

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Re: A contrarian view

Have an upvote, because however unpopular the view, I agree with it.

Firstly, too many consumers are concerned with just two things - how many bells and whistles, and how cheap ? Building something that's easily and economically repairable, and which will last (say) 20 years does cost more than something that's designed to be cheap to manufacture - and when consumers will buy your competitors model for (say) 10% less if you do design it to be long lasting, then you are quickly into niche markets where the difference is a lot more than 10%.

And I agree on the reliability argument. People complain about how the British car manufacturing industry collapsed a few decades ago. You don't need to look hard to see why - "Friday afternoon" cars that did well to make it off the forecourt, "variable" build quality in general, unreliable (hence your dad carrying tools and spares with him), and lets not get into supply issues when the union guy shouted "all out" !

Then the Japanese arrived with what were pretty boring cars - but which didn't (mostly) fit the description of "if you listen carefully, that's the sound of it rotting away" (which seemed to fit some Italian marques very well), and which you could generally trust to get you from A to B when you wanted to go there and without adding a few hours roadside tinkering contingency time.

I inherited my late father's car a few years ago, It's a common Japanese model, not very exciting, but apart from the usual stuff (brake pads & disks, alternator, usual service stuff) it's still going reliably at 15 years old.

So yes, there's a flip side to this "hard to fix at the roadside" stuff - it's also far less likely to need fixing than it used to.

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Re: Alas

No, they'll reply that the sensor needs replacing, and once it's replaced then the machine will be perfectly fine. And the reason the machine stopped because of sensor failure - we'll that's to protect your investment by avoiding engine damage that could have occurred had the machine continued to operate when it was obviously overheating.

It's a perfectly valid response to a claim that "a part broke".

"Not fit for purpose" would come into it if parts kept breaking during reasonable use.

And the manufacturer not being able to cope with demand for repairs in a timely fashion is also not a valid cause for "not fit for purpose".

Now if there were (say) a wheel slip sensor and it stopped the machine because a wheel was slipping - then that would be a valid "not fit for purpose" reason given that agricultural tractors need to operate in a variety of conditions, many of which have restricted grip.

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Coat

Re: Americans throw away 416,000 cell phone

I didn't have kittens down as a typical Japanese menu item. OK, I'll get my coat ...

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Re: I do wonder how much it would cost

It would cost, therefore it won't be done - end of discussion. Mass production is all about shaving 1/2d off here, 1/2d off there - and over time all those 1/2ds add up.

That only changes if the manufacturer gets found out doing something that affects it's reputation badly enough to affect sales, or it gets caught out doing something illegal and gets fined, or it simply shaves a 1/2d too far and it's warranty costs explode (perm any one or more of those - bonus losses for a hat trick).

And don't forget that we also have to thank our governments for some of it. Taking just one aspect - emissions. Over the years governments have screwed down allowable emissions - past the point where anyone who understood reality was telling them that it was going to be either impossible or very expensive to meet them. Result, we've had several manufacturers caught designing systems to pass the tests without necessarily having the same emissions in real use. In practical terms, it was inevitable as the standards are (AIUI) virtually impossible to meet in any generic real-world way.

And speaking personally, I think it's hard to say any of the manufacturers (whether you include all those doing it, or just the ones who've been caught) have broken the law - because the law simply says "you must meet this spec which requires these emissions limits under these conditions". If the law doesn't say anything about limits under other conditions, then it's not breaking the law to not meet those non-existant limits. But I'm digressing.

Once over, a regular "tune up" was normal - either the owner or a mechanic would check and adjust the points, the timing, and the mixture, along with replacing some parts (points, plugs) as necessary. Then in teh name of emissions control, we started seeing seals on the adjusting points for carbs. and it's been downhill ever since in terms of sealing adjustments off from those who would tinker with them - and affect emissions. And of course, the modern electronically controlled engine needs lots of sensors to be working properly - so when a sensor fails (no matter how cheap or non-essential) then the control system needs to deal with that. If it puts on the MIL (malfunction indicator lamp, a.k.a. engine warning light) then that's one thing - but when it brings a harvest to a standstill then that's another.

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

That was my thought when I read "$10k" losses.

It would not take too many claims for that to "educate" manufacturers in the error of their ways.

In the UK we have the "Unfair terms in Consumer Contract Regulations" (UTCCR) which can make a variety of contract terms automatically void - basically anything which removes a consumer's rights under various other laws is automatically void. And useful they can be if you know your way around and are prepared to make a fuss.

Unfortunately, UTCCR only applies to consumers - businesses are assumed to know how to negotiate a contract. Unfortunately, if the choice is "own a tractor and be able to farm" vs "not own a tractor and not be able to farm" then negotiation over terms such as "if it breaks and you lose all your crop because we screwed you over, and you agree that we aren't in the least bit liable" is going to be a very short negotiation. We also have a legal principle that it's possible for a court to set aside some contract term if the court is satisfied that the contract wasn't arrived at by a "meeting of minds" because one side had all the "negotiating" power - but I suspect the threshold for that is fairly high.

Scam-baiting YouTube channel Tech Support Scams taken offline by tech support scam

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Facepalm

Deleted his own account ? That must have been a really REALLY good scammer.

Google promises its days as a cold-eyed API-killer are behind it

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Trust ?

Hmm, does anyone actually trust Google not to do whatever is best for Google at any time regardless of what it might do to the rest of the world ? It always seems to me that working with any of these big outfits is a bit like being a male Black Widow spider at mating time, it might be good while it lasts, but you're in trouble once your mate decides you are no longer useful.

There used to be a joke going around in the 90s : How many Microsoft people does it take to change a lightbulb ? None, they simply change the industry standard to dark ! This seems to apply very well to Google these days.

South Korea tables law to remove app stores' in-app purchase monopolies

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Re: I don't get how this works

Well the logical result if Google etc don't play ball is that they find the market in that country closed to them. S Korea might be a small country, but you can be sure that none of the big corporations want to see the precedent that they can be banned entirely - just think how many other countries would be thinking "well it worked there, perhaps we should do it too".

Not to mention, the possibility of the companies employees (especially senior execs) being forever unable to visit that country because of the risk of being arrested.

But if it does pass, you can be sure there'll be brinkmanship and a PR offensive.

LibreOffice 7.2 release candidate reveals effort to be Microsoft-compatible

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Re: "improve import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office"

Actually, I don't think it's as prescriptive as that. It;s entirely possible to allow for a standard to be extensible - and I vaguely recall the open standards support that. That's one of the beauties of properly structured standards and file formats - it's possible to support additional features which older versions of the software (or different packages) might not be able to understand, without making that file un-openable to the other version.

Unfortunately ISO would have been powerless to stop it. All MS had to do, and did do, was pay enough people to volunteer for the relevant national standards body committees and vote it through. In doing so they also crippled said standards bodies for a while as the paid shills then didn't take part and so many committees were left without a quorum to do other work.

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Joke

Re: "improve import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office"

More to the point, it is against MS's interests to have compatibility. They need incompatibility because if users had a choice of software, then MS would have lost it's grip. So it is vitally important to MS that no other package can import/export with high fidelity an MS document - and I'm sure that if anyone every achieves it, they'll change the standard to break it. it's what they've always done, and I can't see them changing.

Office Open XML is an example of the finest non-standard money can buy by stuffing national standards bodies. it really should have been rejected, and would have been had MS not stuffed the committees with paid shills to approve it. It's (as the article mentions) not implementable, and it not possible to build (an independent) compliance test for the same reason. Now, if only a few large governments had turned round and demanded MS subject their own products to an independent test of standard compliance - that would have been interesting, but I guess MS would simply have paid an "independent" to create a test that passed everything regardless.

Very old joke alert ! How many MS people does it take to change a light bulb ? None, they just change the industry standard to dark. That's always been their approach to standards, and I don't see the leopard changing it's spots.

Open-source dev and critic of Beijing claims Audacity owner Muse threatened him with deportation to China in row over copyright

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Re: Illegal bootleg of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' theme

But it's not theft. Theft is clearly defined (in the UK at least) as "intentionally depriving the rightful owner of their property". He hasn't done anything like that - the files are still there.

It's more akin to leaving your back door open, and someone pops in and takes photographs of your artwork hung on the wall. You still have your artwork, it's just that someone else now has photos of it.

As to the original article ...

I'm divided on this. Muse are in a difficult position - they are required to try and protect their own and others' intellectual property, amongst other reasons because otherwise copyright holders will rightly tell them where to go. But I think it's quite restrained in pointing out the error of Tang's ways to him without involving the law - and lets face it, many other businesses would have gone into "full on lawyer mode" for less. And I'm inclined to suggest that Tang needs to be careful given the situation he is in - whether anyone likes it or not, if he is found to have broken the law then he faces having to leave.

Poking a hornets nest in his home country (especially knowing what China is like with dissidents), and then poking a hornets nest in his current host country, doesn't seem like a good course of action to me.

Not picking sides, simply commenting on what I see.

Engineers' Laurel and Hardy moment caused British Airways 787 to take an accidental knee

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Lucky there weren't injuries. IIRC in a previous incident of that sort, the sudden change in attitude meant that a pallet rolled forward and caused significant injuries to the loadmaster.

Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

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Re: Privacy is free!

Few people are worried about someone recognising them in the street - we all grew up with that and the expectations that come with it

That's not people are bothered about. The current situation is more akin to having a vast army of people with clipboards following your every move, and I mean every move ... Went to loo, took 8 min 23 seconds, and it was a bit of a stinker. Had nooky with mistress, took ... I think you get the picture. If your neighbours were that nosy, I think that quite a few people would have a problem with it.

And even in a village, you have some control over what the neighbours see. On the internet, control is all but taken away even if you try and have nothing to do with the evil empires. For example, I have nowt to do with FaecesBorg - but I know that people I do know are using WhatsApp, and that WhatsApp will have illegally persuaded them that illegally handing over my details (home address, phone numbers, etc).

The thing is, had FaecesBorg "done the right thing" and offered a paid-for option without the nastiness then some of us would probably taken them up on it - yes, I can see the value of (some bits of) it's service. If they offered it now then it would be a case of "you expect anyone to trust you at all now ?". They could have built a good service legally - but they've actively done it the illegal and evil way so there's no way anyone would trust them now.

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I use ( and need) to synchronise my calendar between my phone and PC

NextCloud

A while ago I had to find alternatives when Apple removed Sync Services from OS X and my previous solution of Missing Sync for Android (and before that, Missing Sync for Palm) stopped working. Yes, it takes effort to install and run, but if you value privacy then it's worth it - your data, on your system, with your backup schedule, etc.

Still haven't found alternatives for some of the functions, but it got the basics (like Calendar) sorted - and far better than I had before.

The coming of Wi-Fi 6 does not mean it's time to ditch your cabled LAN. Here's why

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Re: This months of work from home showed too....

Powerline ethernet should be taken out the back and shot - it's illegal, the vendors know it, but for various reasons the various public bodies that should have stopped it in the first place have put a lot of effort into finding reasons why it's "not my problem". https://www.ban-plt.org.uk/fuss.php

OK if you don't care about you own use of radio, TV, internet* ... and you live at least 1/2 mile from anyone else. Otherwise it's the equivalent of putting the living room stereo up to 15 because you CBA to find a portable radio to take into the garden - but all the neighbours are stuck with your choice of noise regardless of what they might to listen to (which might be "quiet").

SImon Hobson Bronze badge
WTF?

Re: This months of work from home showed too....

... we struggled to find properties that had structured cabling, even with new builds

I would suggest that "especially with new builds" would be a more appropriate description. Until you get into "high end, custom fit" new build, then the rule is "can we save 1/2p ? Yes ? Then do it !" applied to all aspects - so insulation down to the minimum the architect could get past building control, the ground floor concrete slab is unheated to ensure that your feet will always be cold, electrics will be the minimum they think people will tolerate, and communications might be a token phone socket next to the TV point in the living room.

Had the conversation with the vendor of a new build my mother looked at a few years ago - and got the response "it's all wireless these days" - and when people did get phone lines installed, they'd have a washing line from a pole and down the side of the house because putting ducting in would have cost money. For good measure, everything in new builds is done to make maintenance (such as adding the stuff they CBA to fit) is as hard as possible - gone are the days of easily lifting a few floor boards to run cables.

Trouts on a plane: Utah drops fish into lakes from aircraft and circa 95% survive

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: wondering

I was wondering if any of them were thinking on the way down ... "so big and round ... I'll call it ground ... I wonder if it'll be friends with me ?"

Microsoft broke British and European competition laws, UK reseller tells High Court

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: Imagine if they did this with books

Hmm, I now have the Mission Impossible tune in my head ...

This book will self destruct in 2 weeks - read fast !

I suspect that if they thought they could get away with it, they would.

After 15 years and $500m, the US Navy decides it doesn't need shipboard railguns after all

SImon Hobson Bronze badge
Mushroom

Re: It’s not 15 years

Diesel is really, really hard to make go "BANG"

Hmm, actually there are some very easy ways to get a tankfull of liquid fuel to go bang in a very big way. Go and find some photo of a plane crash - the sort where it's gone into the ground at high speed, such as Lockerbie. The 'kin great big linear craters weren't created by something scooping the earth, they're the result of the big bang as however many tons of Jet A1 in the wing tanks came to a sudden stop, with the corresponding spike in pressure.

As the aircraft accident investigator who's talk I had the pleasure of attending a few years ago put it, when an aircraft dives into the ground it first concertina's in until the fuel tanks reach the ground. The fuel then goes bang, with the blast driving all the front end bits hard into the ground, and shreds all the tail end following it down and turns it into confetti.

Put a HE shell into a fuel tank and I rather doubt it's going to just go "pfft" like throwing a match onto a tray of diesel would. Not quite the same thing, as getting a big tank to do 500mph to standstill in 5 feet, but once that HE shell goes off there's going to be some very high pressures around, followed in very short order by a large quantity of now atomised fuel mixing with the air in the surrounding compartments/tanks/outside of the ship.

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: It’s not 15 years

Indeed, a mind numblingly high electrical power for a very short time, and at currents which even if handled carefully are likely to cause some electromagnetic issues to nearby systems and disturbances to power supplies. On this, I recall that at teh JET project at Culham, they had to install a couple of large flywheel generators to create the (relative to the railgun, moderate) power pulses needed to fire the system - otherwise they'd have causes massive power quality problems across the UK.

And of course, yet another demonstration that electrical power might be good for many things, but it's hard to compete with the energy density and "recharge speed" of chemical energy storage (a.k.a. chemical propellants).

Google has second thoughts about cutting cookies, so serves up CHIPs

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Mushroom

Does seem like another "lets break the internet and everyone else will fall into line because we're too big to fight with" idea from Google. I was going to rattle off a list of examples, but then realised I don't have time in the day for that !

You can hijack Google Cloud VMs using DHCP floods, says this guy, once the stars are aligned and...

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: It seems to me

You're missing how the server knows what position it is in. It can be done using ... ooh, some form of dynamic provisioning protocol like ... ooh, DHCP. But then you're back to the original problem of protecting systems from rogue DHCP.

But once you get to the size of network where management is "a thing", then it's not too hard to block & detect rogue DHCP packets - it's a common feature on switches once you get out of the mud at the bottom of the feature pond.

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Facepalm

"Oh look, new version of ancient and well known weakness 'invented'"

That's a summary of the article. It was known decades ago that things could be subverted by the simple act of running a rogue DHCP server on a network. There are ways of mitigating that risk - one being to filter DHCP packets at the switch level (why aren't Google doing this ?) so that the rogue server can't get packets to clients; another is to simply monitor the network and manually locate and "terminate with malice" any rogue server; and another is to use secured messages (but that requires pre-configuration of the client which partially defeats the object of DHCP). It's also been known for decades that you can substitute a DHCP packet flood for running an actual service.

So yes, it's a known and solved problem - the only "news" is that in the 21st century it's a problem on a service run by an outfit that you'd think was big enough to employ grown ups to run the networks. The fact that there's weak randomisation involved is pretty well irrelevant - that's really only a mild protection for "idiots didn't do any of the above well known network level defences" and hence allow DHCP "server" packets to come from a device that isn't an authorised DHCP server.

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: Not office hours? No contact

I agree, remote wipe of company data is a great idea. But remote wipe of my device and all MY data is a different thing altogether. Incidentally I once tried that with Outlook and my work account at my last place - same thing, needed to be an admin with the ability to wipe the device so didn't happen.

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: Not office hours? No contact

It really is that easy for a lot of people

And therein lies the problem. In a similar way to zero-hours contracts aren't a problem for a lot of people, there are those - usually more vulnerable - for whom it is a real problem.

For example, as the article points out, for some there is a real worry over job security. So if you are in a position where you suspect that next week/month/year there will be an announcement of redundancies - you want to do all you can not to be one of the ones selected.

So, for example, you'll want to be known as one who will step up and sort out the boss's presentation for tomorrow morning. Never mind that he could have asked you for the figures last week, you daren't tell him that when he asks you for them at 8pm the evening before the presentation. If you turn off and don't get the email, leaving the boss without the figures he didn't ask for in a timely manner, then you get labelled as a shirker and will be head of the queue when the axe is wielded. Doesn't matter that the boss is a useless idiot - he's still your boss and will be deciding who stays and who goes.

As the article mentions, there are employers - Amazon being on (in)famous example - who do expect more of their employees than most consider reasonable. But people work for them and you might ask why ? It comes down to that basic need to have a roof over your head and food on the table - so if the choice is working for someone like Amazon or never switching off the work email, or starving on a park bench, then you'll put up with whatever bad practices get thrown at you. If there weren't more people looking for jobs than there are jobs going, then such practices would stop - simple supply and demand would ensure that "rubbish employers" wouldn't get people to work for them. But that's not the situation, and post covid ((UK perspective) various government support for businesses will be winding down over the next few months or so) it's only going to get worse.

Why won't you copper-ate? Openreach offers capped fibre line rental to wholesalers in bid to shift all that FTTP

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: I really hate this

But none of that argument makes sense for Openretch's fibre network.

It makes sense for xDSl services as there's a direct tradeoff between frequencies used for downlink vs frequencies used for uplink. Before FTTC came along, we had customers (at my last job) on Annex M ADSL to get a higher uplink speed.

Given the inherent bandwidth capacity of fibre, and that I'd be really surprised if they weren't using pairs of fibres everywhere but the last drop, it's hard to see any reasonable technical reason for the asymmetry. So basically it comes back to the marketing people in "punters are used to it, most are gullible enough not to question it, so we'll artificially screw up residential connections just so we can charge more for non-screwed-up lines" mode.

Openreach to UK businesses: Switch is about to hit the fan. Prepare for withdrawal of the copper-based phone network now or risk disruption

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: "more reliable services " is a lie

People can only listen to your calls if they can see the packets - so as to be able to "tap" them. If the packets aren't going through your equipment (or at least, equipment you control) then you can't listen in.

But otherwise, yes - there are many problems. Not least of which is that without proper end-end QoS (which in practice means that Openretch provide a separate channel with dedicated bandwidth) then you are at the whimsy of network load as to whether you sound like a Dalek or a real person.

Hmmmmm, how to cool that overheating CPU, if only there was a solution...

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: Water and electricity don't mix well.

We need to know, what was the fate of the previous owner of the shoe ?

SImon Hobson Bronze badge
Go

Re: The first/only water cooled ICT 1301?

But it MUST be the right stuff and properly installed. It has to be closed cell so water laden air can't constantly meander in and out, and it must be installed with all joints sealed for the same reason. Ignore this, and sooner or later you'll be ripping off a load of waterlogged insulation and having the right stuff installed by someone with a 'kin clue.

SImon Hobson Bronze badge
Facepalm

Re: Who thought water and computers mixed?

Yeah, I recall one hot summer many years ago, someone had ordered a load of air conditioning units from a local hire place - and assured me they were the right sort. When the guy arrived to deliver them, I just told him to take them back. Stick a swamp cooler ina closed room (or at least, one with limited ventilation) and the only result is a temporary cooling before you quickly end up with the same temperature - just more humid and uncomfortable.

We did have a portable heat-pump type unit - and one day we went into a training course to find ... It was hot as hell, and the maintenance guy had wheeled it in and switched it on - oblivious to the need for somewhere for the heat to go (I think he thought it went back up the mains lead, like a fan heater in reverse !)

But, at my last place, when things got really hot in the server room, we did have a swamp cooler - and it was pretty effective. Though it made the metalwork at the front of the servers go rusty. First one in one hot days got to carry 10 gallons of water to fill it up.

Backbench Tory campaigner promises judicial review of data grab of English GP patients unless UK government changes tack

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

Re: Is it a real opt-out?

And the bit you've missed, there are actually TWO different opt outs you need to do. See medConfidential for details.

BMA warns NHS Digital's own confidentiality guardian could halt English GP data grab unless communication with public improves

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

At least the forms are online to download, not stored in a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory ... oh you all know the rest.

Ouch! When the IT equipment is sound, but the setup is hole-y inappropriate

SImon Hobson Bronze badge

At a previous job we were (at least for a while) a mostly Apple shop, so tended to have printers with those nice small 8 pin MCC connectors. But put a Localtalk card into a printer, and you now have two apparently identical sockets. After the electricians had been round doing portable appliance testing, some of the printers no longer worked - yup, they'd just worked on "this looks like it will fit there so ..." and put the Localtalk plug into the serial port which was the most visible of the two.

It hadn't occurred to them to look at where things were plugged in before unplugging them.