Posts by JimmyPage

Reaping what you (don't) sow.

The problems associated with downtime due to rebooting (and in this day and age only kernel updates should need a reboot) could be offset by a decent business continuity framework with dual servers.

Upgrade one while the other carries the load, and then switch and upgrade the other.

Of course that requires a finance department that accepts the "cost" of such redundancy is the "price" of permanent uptime. Which IME, they rarely do. Although they CAN tell you - to the penny - how much it's costing the firm when 1,000 employees can't do their job because downtime is needed to patch a server.

Hard to believe

that as little as 10 years ago, Nokia were *the* mobile phone company of the world.

Everything else was an also-ran ... Moto(rola), Sony, Samsung. HTC weren't even in the top 10.

There has to be a documentary somewhere about what happened.

victims ... will be compensated in CoinDash tokens

er ?

Oh and female Timelords ...

Romana, anyone ?

Conjours up the image ...

of "Approved by HMG" on jazz mags and sites. A picture of Theresa May smiling beautifically.

Thanks to a "procedural defect" in the wording of the search order

Hmmmm

generally UK courts (or judges are pretty relaxed about faults in the prosecution evidence. Certainly illegally obtained evidence is quite often used in prosecutions with nary a mention.

Which makes me wonder who knows who in this particular case ?

If the government were serious ...

then all new build houses since (say) 2000 would have been FTTD as part of planning regulations.

What's that ? They weren't ?

I guess government isn't serious then. Certainly not worth listening to them when you can see the truth for yourself.

(And this is one area where you *need* state intervention).

Seems like BUPA wanted to outdo the NHS

at everything.

Is it my age ?

First off, the example shown is *not* "comparing a variable with itself", it's returning the result of comparing a variable with itself.

Second off, that's not as crazy as it seems ... I have memories of such tricks being used to stand in for "return 1;" or "return true;" - particularly if you want to obfuscate assembler.

Thirdly (although it is BAAAAAD) practice, bear in mind that in some situations/languages, referencing a variable can actually run code (which could change the value of something somewhere).

All of that said, part of writing good code is it should make intuitive sense, which doesn't really apply in those 3 situations

“legitimate interest”

Am I alone in finding this a tad worrying ?

“namely correcting what it deemed to be misleading news reports that were potentially damaging to its reputation and commercial interests”.

So it's OK to piss all over data protection to rebut a bad review ?

STOP this nonsense forthwith ...

I don't want a connected car in the same way I don't want a "Smart" TV.

TV: I want something that does a fantastic job of displaying the input *I* choose to send *how I wish*. No need for any "apps" or "features" to become outdated, no longer supported, or just ignored. (See also "Mobile phone updates").

Car: I want something which does a fantastic job of letting me drive somewhere. Anything else I WILL PROVIDE, by way of a tablet, mobile, or dedicated sat nav.

My first car with such gubbins (a Citroen) is going to be my last. FFS the sat nav alone is pants enough to send the whole thing back.

Elephant in the room ...

if one judge has be *caught* doing it, there stands a good chance there are a greater number who haven't been caught yet. (The iceberg view)

This leads on to the much more worrying suggestion that some judges might be communicating behind the court (or more precisely one party in the court)s back.

Or don't we care about justice being seen to be done anymore ?

Pages rule of life ...

*Anybody* can fuck up.

So it's not the "fucking up" which defines an organisation, it's how they handle it subsequently.

Which is why I have been happy to return to companies that have handled their fuck ups properly.

Meanwhile ...

how do you deal with terrorists who hang a blanket out of a window within view of a webcam ?

The "encryption" being: "When you see a red towel from that balcony, it's game on".

But how many people *really* benefit ?????

Sorry to be cynical, but I'd guess >90% of peoples twittering is done when they are on WiFi.

So this (very newshumgry, if not newsworthy) story is of marginal benefit.

In other news, Vehicle Excise Duty on TR6s to be zero-rated.

GDPR (as of May 2018)

would see these clowns having to recompense each affected customer.

Maybe *then* we'll see some serious data protection.

Incidentally, I had to sign up to HMRC online yesterday. I was impressed. True 2FA, via 2 channels - text or phone call. The only criticism I have is the "3rd way" to get 2FA was "to install the HMRC app".

I can't begin to describe how fucking sick and fucking tired I am of "just install our app" - especially when I have 3 2FA code generating apps on my phone already.

Surely HMRC could have used Google Authenticator ?

And these are the guys negotiating Brexit ?

@ LedSwinger

Evidence around the world indicates that you can't keep a lid on the democratic aspirations of an increasingly wealthy population in the longer term.

You can.

It's called "war". --->

I can start to see what's going to happen ...

Imagine the T&Cs of your ISP contract have a clause along the lines of:

...1) You shall not permit any communication using the service provided which is encrypted beyond the ability of the Service Provider to decrypt

...2) In order to ensure compliance with (...1) the Service Provider shall be permitted to undertake detailed inspection of all and any network traffic that enters or leaves the network at the instigation or behest of the customer

...3) Failure to adhere to these conditions may result in termination of the services provided. Additionally customers may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

Time to plug some pink noise into the internet I guess.

The "Yes Minister" explanation ...

fans of the ever-watchable "Yes Minister" will recall that in the first episode, the civil service were terrified that Jim Hacker - who had spent years in opposition for Agriculture - might get made minister for Agriculture where he would be able to call "bullshit" from a position of expertise.

Luckily the Cabinet Secretary advised the PM that Hackers thinking might have "got into a rut" and therefore the Agriculture appointee knew nothing about Agriculture (and as we know Hacker became SoS for Administrative Affairs).

Back in April the London mayor set up an "online hate crime" unit at a cost of £1.7m.

or just under one thousandth of a DUP.

Dry run ?

The whole episode has a vague feeling of being a dry run for something much nastier.

Who actually uses the router ?

I thought SOP was to disabled the POS and just use it as a modem with a real grown up router ?

Rule #1

Don't use your ISPs DNS.

Did I miss a law being passed

which mandates terrorists *must* used electronic devices to communicate ?

Just wait until we discover an atrocity planned via snail mail (preferably using a foreign language in a foreign script - e.g. Farsi).

Alternatively, just set up a public streaming webcam pointing at a bit of pavement, and just walk past with the message at a set date and time ....

And there are thousands of other non-encrypted ways to communicate in secret. Starting with learning Welsh ....

Reality Williams ??????

Is this a new trend in parents naming their offspring to be effectively "UnGoogleable" ????

New paradigm ?

Given how cloud computing can deliver a virtual desktop via RDP down an ADSL line, the only real need for local computing grunt is where latency is a problem and/or the loss of functionality due to a loss of connectivity would be problematic.

So a subset of a subset.

We *should* start to see a divergence between an OS intended for cloud-delivery, and an OS intended to manage a local machine.

Now I'm not (yet) sure what this will mean in the marketplace, but stories like this need to be read against that background.

It's hard not to feel sorry, somewhere ...

I actually quite liked Windows Phone. But the deafening silence of apps made it pretty much a novelty in any setting.

Is it keyword based ?

If so, it's shit before it's started.