Posts by Robert Carnegie

Re: Showrunner?

I think no. "Showrunner" is a type of showman, give or take gender. "Executive producer" is a type of executive. One of them makes shows, and one of them signs cheques, give or take 21st century fintech. A person can do both jobs, and in terms of credit usually does, but one you're supposed to put your soul into, and in the other, if you have one it's liable to get damaged. I'm romanticizing this a bit... a "showrunner" has overall "creative responsibility" but that doesn't guarantee that they personally do anything "creative". There's staff that that can be left to.

Re: Don't Touch My Shit

Miniature robot crab that runs around the conference plugging near-invisible Bluetooth adapters into anything that looks like a USB port.

Re: Not secure enough

Macros are just programs, like the rest of the software. They're not intrinsically less safe unless it's possible to replace a safe macro with a malicious one. You may need digital file signatures to prevent that.

I gather that this particular issue involves running arbitrary Python program code through LibreLogo by opening the document containing malicious code, which is regrettable.

Re: Password-related horror

This sentence has about one bit of randomness per key stroke. Memorable, ish, but you may as well be typing a binary number.

For me: alphanumeric with 1 initial capital - but all symbol values are random. Abcdefgh12 - or for a rare system that insists on a symbol, Abcdefgh12! (These aren't the random ones.) To avoid other stupid password filters (parse that carefully), I may exclude repeated letters and all vowels. Because they do.

Long long long ago, I tried and failed to set a UNIX password to "moscow". That's because SCO UNIX banned passwords containing string "SCO".

Not my field, but

"Correct design of plant" may include machinery with dangerous parts firmly sealed inside enclosures and cabinets. In many workplaces you may then find the enclosures and cabinets wedged open in inventive ways in order to get a better view or sound of what the dangerous parts are doing. Thus, protective eye and foot wear. There may be a cultural difference in Mercedes so that this doesn't apply, or possibly your engine plant is a studio set with imitation machines that don't do anything. Or... a workforce of robots doesn't need to wear safety spectacles. And probably has steel feet.

Re: MCAS???

It stands for a number of things, one of which makes Boeing 737 MAX aeroplanes crash ("Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System", sic).

Some others are:

Mast cell activation syndrome

My Child At School, "an online portal for parents that enables them to view their child's performance at school in real-time" (creepy?)

Re: What is overflowing?

The story says "exactly" 149 hours. If I'm following, it also says that if you've installed the software patch to fix the issue... well done but you still have to do the reboots every 149 hours.

Re: "disk drives the size of top-loading washing machines"

No newspaper the next day seems to be on the cards anyway.

I would suppose that the matter could have been raised tactfully and successfully with the chippies, but what do I know?

Given the story we're replying to, offer the editor's personal big chair, instead.

Dilbert, 1993, prior art?

https://dilbert.com/strip/1993-03-10

Sensors (or CPUs) on all of your fingernails.

Re: Scanner

I think that was the idea: a cheap copy of Windows that only ran for the software or hardware that it was accompanying. If you wanted to use Windows properly then you'd buy your own full copy and use the third-party item with that instead of with the runtime.

Re: Mozilla are only partly right

I'm a bit hazy on how DNS with privacy prevents blocking of access to illegal pornography. If the pornography is on the server with IP address 111.222.333.444 then you can just input that number to get there, no DNS involved. So, banning use of uncensored DNS doesn't stop the pornography...? Conversely, the government could just block the IP address...

Re: Only monarchy fans allowed, then ?

We've got an effectively powerless UK monarch, and I loyally approve. Keeps the career politicians away from the glory. And from the really expensive personal stuff. Imagine if any recent prime minister thought they had the status of national symbol, they would go mad. Or more mad than they actually did. As it is, they have to report in to her regularly, in person. Mind you, I bet she's dreading Boris Johnson.

I do wonder, however, whether HM The Queen visiting a university during term and exam time and causing this disruption in the first place was a good thing, compared to not doing it. But I wouldn't want her to feel unwelcome.

Re: Go and have a barBQ

Someone will do a "Reply to all" when that's not necessary. This is inevitable. I've learned more about my colleagues' private business that way than face-to-face. ;-)

Re: Jean Charles de Menezes wasn't a victim of facial recognition cameras.

British police have indeed killed lots of people since Menezes, usually by trying to. Usually, either they put across the story that it was unavoidable to kill the suspect, or they were black or on drugs or mentally ill and so there isn't much of a fuss.

https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-in-police-custody if I'm counting right is showing about 1 death in British police custody per week since 1990. That evidently does include the Westminster Bridge terrorists who it's difficult to dispute had it coming, but I think also it's about the rate of deaths at the hands of an abusive partner or a mentally ill person, quite roughly, which are considered to be undesirably many. Mind you, if your partner is a mentally ill police officer and does you in then you'll be counted as all of those.

Only now have they (I think) allowed home users without enterprise-managed PCs a straightforward way to choose not to have the latest semi-annual Windows reinstall at Microsoft's behest. So, yes, let it be optional from now on, at least the bleeding edge edition.

The non-straightforward way to block the new Windows push has been to label your internet connection as metered: then Windows won't download updates without your permission. This itself is a post Windows 10 feature, I think. I recommend it.

A possible other way is to use your PC only on battery power, since Windows also doesn't like to load a new edition when not on mains power. But this is inconvenient.

Re: So you're saying the Old Testament is worthless?

Some fundamental "facts" claimed in Judaeo-Christianity clearly are bollocks (I think I still need "salt that hath lost its savour" explained), and I have worried that someone will come along and invent a new religion which carefully avoids that while still ruining people's lives. But I have to admit that bollocksness in certain existing religions is not a very effective protection anyway.

Re: Cisco?

If only it was WannaCry; you can remove WannaCry (and all of your data, but you have a backup, yes? maybe?)

Re: Missing information - biased test method of Finite State?

A vulnerability that you know about in software, even if it isn't your software, can be treated as a backdoor. But I'd say that the true "backdoor" is one placed by the programmer on behalf of a specific community, for instance themselves, and usually with its own key, although maybe a hardcoded password or whatever. Including vulnerable third-party code means that anyone can break in, and you don't want a back door that everyone can use.

They also need, what's the current polite term for little people?

Mind you, I bet if you test human drivers then they also are more likely to miss (or not miss) a child on the road than a full sized adult.

That's not the word.

I was briefly intrigued but... "object lesson", please. A particular example that demonstrates a general principle, i.e. make sure that you have backups, undos, and other protections of the production estate from prestidigimistakemaking. Now THERE is a word (nearly).

UPDATE AGAIN

I think this is the highest I can place this: You now "need" version 67.0.4 or ESR 60.7.2.

Because,

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-19/

Although, this one is only an Orange problem, the one before it was Red.

Re: Use 7-zip .7z with AES256

You want two e-mails to send one zip file?

Re: Good old days

I'm quite capable of expressing my wishes in the wrong form box onscreen. I did enjoy an early-ish copy of Opera where the URL box would take (g hedgehog diet) as code to use Google (g) to look up The Hedgehog Diet. Otherwise its default was, and maybe still is, to autocomplete (iwantsomething) to iwantsomething.com, with a configuration choice if you preferred iwantsomething.co.uk instead.

Warning that these are all probably sex things except for the hedgehog one, on which anything I ever heard or will ever hear, or see, about it being a sex thing will be firmly forgotten as much as I possibly can.

Re: Those aren't business secrets

If you forbid your employees ever to talk about problems in their employment, then how would anyone else find out? (Reads the story again) Ah.

Re: gmail broken

I have an Excite.com account that seems to close doors in several places. A Google user can "white list" you by setting a "filter" which directs your messages somewhere other than the spam box. I found some instructions which look intelligible although still quite complicated:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-whitelist-a-sender-or-domain-in-gmail-1172106

Re: Can someone explain...

Should there be something about house prices, the Royal Family, and immigration, or is some of that for the Daily Express instead?

Re: Congratulations

I think it's either Ian or Duncan Smith?

Re: "Where's "here"?"

Ok, another alternative plan, legalise hacking to demand money... if the government does it. Try this: if the tax office can get malware onto your company computers and perform encryption and denial of service, then they're entitled to demand extra tax from the company in return for releasing the encryption. That will motivate the finance director to support keeping your systems secure and also well backed up, to not pay even when the government successfully breaks in. And this will keep out other bad guys as well.

Although I suppose there are quite a lot of foreseeable problems with this scheme...

Re: Ahh what is it with Crispin Blunt????

Most of the candidates for new Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister seem to have taken drugs at college and then tried to keep it quiet. Google for "Crispin Blunt" turned up a Daily Telegraph article (paywalled, and I haven't paid) on that topic - because he wrote it. "But at least they will be properly representative of the country they hope to lead," he said, in the free-view section (presumably it gets much more naughty later).

I can't readily think of drugs names (because I don't know many) for the rest of them apart from Jeremy Skunk and Andrea Hadsome (both... substantially... as alleged), but you get the idea.

Esther Wahey?

Matt Hand-Cut?

Re: Time

Does your navigation system have up-to-date mapping? An old box won't know about new roads, but you may be able to get an update to load into it.

I think that the most fancy systems get current information about road repairs and even accidents that obstruct your journey. That may be worth being told about.

Just speculating, but I should think that if a blind or visually impaired person wants to use voice control then it can be set "always on" in accessibility. Or... they can look at the screen, they just can't see it when they do that.

Re: Nice write up! Excellent fact checking!

I thought that - that the value of Audi.uk is not great if you're not Audi, and Audi probably can stop you. Especially if you're Honda.

On the other hand, a careful... blackmailer?... will take longer to trace and punish. And not every case of a domain name resembling yours will be pursuable. Look at the long weary story of s e x dot com.

Re: careful wording...

I think you don't ever know with more certainty than 99.99 percent.

I bet a fake pizza deliverer (or a real one) could go round asking customers for their password on the doorstep and would have a better than 0% success rate. Even if it's their Facebook password.