* Posts by Kernel

766 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2011

High-freq trade biz sues transatlantic ISP for alleged spiteful cable cut

Kernel

Re: You're kidding?

Certainly sounds like somebody didn't do due diligence in a properly diligent manner - this should have been identified as a potential risk early in the acquisition process and an appropriate mitigation strategy developed.

Canadian! fella! admits! hacking! Gmail! inboxes! amid! Yahoo! megahack!

Kernel

Hey Brian, I have a fix for this .......

"“The illegal hacking of private communications is a global problem that transcends political boundaries,” said US Attorney Brian Stretch.

“Cybercrime is not only a grave threat to personal privacy and security, but causes great financial harm to individuals who are hacked and costs the world economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year."

I call it secure end-to-end encryption - why don't we: i) Implement more and stronger encryption and: ii) take some real steps to stop various TLAs from trying to break the concept with fuckwit requests for backdoors.

Someone told Google to nuke links to mean reviews of disgraced telco True Telecom

Kernel

Huh?

"claimed to be pensioners yet the emails were sent at 4am in the morning."

Am I missing something here - personally I would consider one of the advantages of being a pensioner would be that if I wanted to sit up until 4 am (probably 4 am in the morning, 4 am in the afternoon is just too much trouble) pissing around on my computer I could do so without having to worry about trudging off to work three hours later.

Why would being (presumably) old mean that you can't stay up all night if wanted to?

US govt to use software to finger immigrants as potential crims? That's really dumb – boffins

Kernel

Re: "generate a minimum of 10,000 investigative leads annually"

"So instead of actually looking for terrorists they're going to 'create' 10,000 of them each year ?"

Having spent the early part of my career in a public service role, I can tell you exactly what is happening here.

Someone has had a rush of blood to the head and has subsequently managed to create a cushy job, probably a couple of grades above where they were, to manage the new department of "Terrorism Pre-Convictions*".

In order to maintain the grade (and salary) in their new position they need to have a certain number of "investigators" working under them, which in turn means they need to have about 10,000 leads a year to investigate in order to justify the budget - but, and this is the important bit, the instigator of all this doesn't want 15,000 or more leads each year, as that would require significantly more staff and push the 'in-charge' role up another grade - and this would be a bad thing, because while you could swing a two grade jump in status, three grades is almost certainly going to attract the attention of someone who's already higher than you and you'll miss out.

Don't miss next season's exciting new top rated shows, 'T.P.C' and 'T.P.C Miami'.

Remember CompuServe forums? They're still around! Also they're about to die

Kernel

Re: No idea what my username was...

"And yet the more polite set still throw around that tired old Internet Slur at the expense of those allegedly with more "robust" language."

Diamonds last forever, and some things last even longer - at this point you may as well gracefully accept the fact that you are going to be collectively known as "Merkins" until well beyond the end of the universe and get on with life.

Protesting about it certainly won't encourage the rest of us forget it.

Pastry in a manger: We're soz, Greggs man said

Kernel

Re: Grammar!

"Does nobody know how to write English anymore? What you wrote above means that you replaced a sausage roll with Baby Jesus."

Could've been worse - they could've replaced the sausage roll with baby jesus inna bun.

How can airlines stop hackers pwning planes over the air? And don't say 'regular patches'

Kernel

Here's a thought

Keep the the control and management network physically separate from the WiFi/entertainment network - the latter needs wireless access, but the former has no requirement to ever be accessed wirelessly - any access to this network for day-to-day aircraft operations should be done by the in-built displays and controls, any maintenance access should be via a cable that can only be connected when the aircraft is safely on the ground and in a maintenance facility.

Working on aircraft already has plenty of complications and detailed processes to follow - the additional burden of having to find and connect a cable over clicking on a WiFi connection is not that significant in the scheme of things.

Edit: Hmm, obviously two minds thinking alike (and simultaneously).

Shiver me timbers! 67cm Playmobil pirate ship sets sail for Caribbean

Kernel

Re: From a maritime safety perspective...

"Power gives way to sail,"

Not quite that simple, unfortunately - I think there's some caveats that apply if the powered vessel is more than 500 tonnes and/or in a waterway with restricted manouvering options for large vessels.

Or, as my son puts it, plastic gives way to steel, especially very large steel that could crush you and not leave a trace.

You know what's coming next: FBI is upset it can't get into Texas church gunman's smartphone

Kernel

Re: FBI can't unlock smartphone

"He was disgracefully discharged from the Military, and as a matter of policy such people are meant to be added to the "no guns" list. Clearly the "no guns" list is an effective gun control..."

So maybe a change of list type from negative vetting (there's nothing to say this person shouldn't have a gun) to positive vetting (this person has applied to their appropriate local authority, who have checked out their background and decided they are a fit person to own a lethal weapon?

It works in a number of other countries, it just means that the purchaser has to plan ahead and get the clearance to own the gun before heading for the nearest gun shop.

Londoners: Ready to swap your GP for an NHS vid doc app?

Kernel

Re: Can't come soon enough

"I actually have an appointment to see my GP soon. He's almost certainly going to need to do a rectal examination. How, exactly, is that going to work over a video link?"

Please don't tempt me with statements like this first thing in the morning while the mind is still firing on all cylinders - you may, however, wish to consider the purchase of one of the smaller smart phones as opposed to one with a "phablet" form factor.

Facebook, Amazon fund new trans-Pacific submarine cable

Kernel

I am well aware they will be using standard DWDM kit - in fact, I'm typing this while waiting for a firmware upgrade process to complete in one of the controller cards in a Nokia 1830PSS node, which by most definitions counts as standard DWDM kit, so I am quite familiar with DWDM and similar technologies.

I am also well aware that there are specific video optimized transponder cards for such standard DWDM kit which you might use instead of other transponders if you wished to transmit a lot of video rather than primarily data - little details like tighter jitter and timing specs, which can be a bit more relaxed if you're only wishing to send data

Kernel

"Showing of which: is there really such as a thing as a cable "made for video"? Or do they just mean that they expect to mostly use it to transmit videos?"

I would guess that what they are referring to is that the terminal equipment will be optimized for for easy interfacing to video feeds, as opposed to optimization for voice or data - most vendors of such equipment supply specialized video transponder cards for such purposes, rather than working through the kludge of converting the video to data in a separate box and then transmitting the result over a data optimized link.

Google's phone woes: The Pixel and the damage done

Kernel

Re: Pixel was impressive - Pixel 2 is an abortion

"I would never buy a phone with a SD card slot. It means the manufacturer has skimped on internal storage and left you to buy it, and left you to deal with forever juggling stuff around on you phone forever more."

My Nokia 8 came with 16G of RAM, 64G internal storage and I can add up to another 256G with a microSD card - 64G is a new definition of skimping on phone memory by my standards.

Yes, I did go out and buy a memory card myself, but at the moment I'm struggling to think of a realistic use case where I would need to be "forever juggling stuff around" on the phone even with the 128G card I installed, much less if I got a 256G one - even recording video in 4000HD that's more than a couple of minutes of filming

Vietnam bans Bitcoin as payment for anything

Kernel

Re: Please enlighten me.

"One good example is you don't want that big christmas gift you brought for your wife mistress to appear on your bank statement as she's your wife is more likely to read the statement than you are!"

FTFY - maybe not quite a good basis for a lasting marriage, but certainly not illegal in most countries.

Chinese whispers: China shows off magnetic propulsion engine for ultra-silent subs, ships

Kernel

Re: Whale, whale, whale, let's sea

"Not going down well is the goal of shipbuilders everywhere."

Very possibly - but I'm sure submarine builders would take the opposite view of the matter.

Tezos crypto and $232m initial coin offering risks implosion – reports

Kernel

Re: Variant on a theme....

"In the early days it was get some investors, start a website find a mosquito infested swamp in South America or a couple of sacks of tulip bulbs and sit back to wait for the pile of money to come it."

The theme pre-dates the intertubes by a few years.

Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Ogg didn't once acquire an excessive number of colourful pebbles by involving Zogg and his neighbours in a pyramid marketing scheme for 'direct-to-you' dinosaur steaks.

Europol cops lean on phone networks, ISPs to dump CGNAT walls that 'hide' cyber-crooks

Kernel

Re: Fishing

"While I agree with you, I would hope that you (or I) never get drug dragged into a police investigation because they can't follow the true path and end up going after someone innocent which is bound to happen. "

FTTFY - I'm not normally a grammar nazi, but the use of 'drug' as a verb is one thing that really grates!

Deloitte to wind up Plutus Payroll, promises contact with contractors 'within 20 biz days'

Kernel

The elephant in the room

The large grey animal in the room is, of course, that in most countries the priority order for being paid out will be:

i) Inland revenue, or whatever they call it in Australia

ii) Employees who are owed wages, etc.

iii) The aforesaid contractors, who, along with miscellaneous suppliers and landlords, probably rank as unsecured creditors.

I hope it works out for everyone, but my very limited experience of being paid out by liquidators is not encouraging - and it wasn't even a lot of money (to them, but it was for me at the time).

Super Cali goes ballistic, small-cell law is bogus. School IT outsourcing is also... quite atrocious

Kernel

"the city council, in all their glorious wisdom, caps the number of meeting rooms a building's owner may choose to put inside it."

So, not being a resident of California, or even the US, I'm going to extent an invitation to any and all officials of that particular city to provide me with a rational explanation of why they even care about how many meeting rooms there are.

Oz military megahack: When crappy defence contractor cybersecurity 'isn't uncommon', surely alarm bells ring?

Kernel

Re: Relax ..

"It should be remembered that Australia and South Korea sent troops to Vietnam to support the US."

As did New Zealand - and both ourselves and the Australians (and probably the South Koreans as well) had to dodge bullets not only from the Vietcong, whom at least were expected to be firing at our troops, but from our US allies as well on occasion - presumably as a result of general incompetence and crappy map reading skills..

Dear America, best not share that password with your pals. Lots of love, the US Supremes

Kernel

Re: What happens if...

"The is the Nine Seniles do not grasp there is a difference between unauthorized access and data theft and sharing Netflix passwords"

Actually, in this specific case of sharing passwords to services with friends and family I would argue that the "Nine Seniles" have in fact got the correct grasp - when a service such as Netflix puts in its T&Cs that you are not allowed to share your access with other people they, as owners of the service, are being pretty specific about the fact that you don't have any right or authority to delegate your access to anyone else - anyone who then uses your access password or codes is very definitely illegally accessing the system. I suspect Netflix (and similar services) will have a very definite opinion on whether or not sharing passwords is akin to data theft.

I haven't studied FB's T&Cs, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have a similar restriction, if nothing else to try and build their user numbers. As for a personal email account, well, people have ended up in the poo for just this before today - if the person who's account it is doesn't authorize you to access it then doing so is, at the very least, an indication that you're a bit of an arsehole and from there it's not too much further to being a stalker and/or divorced.

I just don't see what's complicated about this - either you have been granted legitimate access by a person with the authority to do so, or you haven't - one is legal, the other isn't. If the person giving you the access information is not authorized to delegate their access, then potentially you're both in trouble.

Kernel

Re: What happens if...

It seems pretty simple to me.

If you are authorized to access a given system the owner (or their authorized agent for such purposes) of it will have provided you with a userid and password of your own to facilitate that access, if they haven't, or won't, then guessing someone else's account details or persuading them to give them to you is the same as any other form of hacking in - it's illegal because you have not been granted authorized access and you quite rightly run the risk of being done for it. Where I work corporate policy is also very clear that you'll also be invited to seek exciting opportunities outside the company.

Using a spouse's or friend's account details to access their computer should also be fairly straight forward - if they own the computer/system, have given you their account info and told you you can access the system using those details then they've authorized you to log in using those details - if they didn't want you to do that they should have created a separate account for you or told you you can't have access. If you then log in using their account without them authorizing you to do so, then once again you're on the dodgy side of the law (not to mention the relationship). I have a separate account on my wife's personal laptop and I also know her login and password - but I still check with her every time if I need to log in as her to look at a problem - just because I know more about computers than she does doesn't reduce her right to whatever level of privacy she desires.

Even giving a family member the details to your bank cards is covered - the T&Cs for these (and any of the numerous company ID/access cards or tokens I've ever held) invariably make it clear that the card or token remains the property of the issuer - in other words, you as the user are not the owner and therefor do not have the authority to delegate use of that item.

Simples, really.

MH370 final report: Aussies still don’t know where it crashed or why

Kernel

Re: If you found the plane it wouldn't bring the people back.

"But I still think it is a disgrace that the airline and governments concerned will not continue to fund the search for the wreckage, to allay all doubt."

You do realise that airlines and governments don't have access to a magic money tree, don't you?

The searching that has been done has been paid for by us working stiffs through taxes and, to a lesser extent (I suspect most of the search costs have been borne by the unfortunate Australian taxpayer) those who purchase tickets from Malaysia Airlines.

While it would be nice to see the matter resolved one way or another, I am, as a taxpayer, grateful to $deity that this didn't happen in New Zealand's extensive search area.

Thomas the Tank Engine lobotomised by fat (remote) controller

Kernel

"I know in the US some trains are already controlled by remote in the yards."

'Shunting robots' have been in use in New Zealand for some years now.

HPE coughed up source code for Pentagon's IT defenses to ... Russia

Kernel

So, not like the NSA then.

"but always told vendors about any discovered bugs first."

If this is true then it puts them somewhat ahead of the TLAs of the freedom loving Western nations, doesn't it?

BYOD might be a hipster honeypot but it's rarely worth the extra hassle

Kernel

Re: Never saw the Attraction

" you want me to have a work mobile then you can give me one and I will turn it off when I'm not at work."

Exactly this!

I have a mobile and laptop for work (both provided by my employer) and a laptop and phone for personal use (provided by me, obviously) .

The weeks that I am not on call the work phone gets turned off as I leave the building and stays that way until I start work the next morning. My employer doesn't know my personal mobile number in general terms - my line manager can go into the HR systems and pull my personal phone numbers, but that has never been done yet and they'd need to have a very good reason for doing so, eg., I'm a support engineer with a major vendor of carrier level telecommunications infrastructure, so a significant failure of a product I support, which was having a national level impact on the country's communications, would qualify - in other words, extremely rare and unlikely.

Musk: Come ride my Big F**king Rocket to Mars

Kernel

Re: Economy price flight = NONSENSE

"Musk is full of crap:"

Ah, that'll be why he's a multi-zillionaire making videos about space flight and you're writing comments on el Reg, then.

It's a real FAQ to ex-EDS staffers: You'll do what with our pensions, DXC?

Kernel

"You spend your life from age 20 getting to a figure, slowly raising and raising from minimum-wage (or better) to the highest you're ever likely to earn. Then you retire at 65. That's 45 years of salary earned. And at that point you expect that probably-maximum salary to continue for free until you're... what... 90?"

Yes - although in my case the payments from the pension started when I turned 50, the payment is adjusted for inflation every year and the taxpayer backs the fund, although the fund managers are fairly good in their investment choices.

Oh, and in addition, 13 years later I'm still in the same job as I was when I turned 50 and still earning the salary from that as well, part of which has been put into a second pension scheme - when I do finally retire I'm looking forward to enjoying the benefits of three separate pensions, even though there were times when I was younger when I could have really used the extra money in the bank..

Smartphone SatNavs to get centimetre-perfect GNSS receivers in 2018

Kernel

Re: Not quite

To quote from the somewhat light-weight website you included the URL of:

"there are four unknowns in the pseudo-range equations: the three components of the receiver’s position, and the offset in the receiver’s clock. To determine its location it then must solve the four equations for the four unknowns."

and

"If the receiver “knows” one of the three position components, then measurements from only three satellites are required to solve for the other two components and the receiver clock offset (3 equations and 3 unknowns). If, for example, the altitude is known perfectly, this is equivalent to tracking a satellite directly above (or below) the user, and having a perfect pseudo-range measurement to it. Since a real fourth satellite will never provide a perfect pseudo-range, the three-satellite solution will be better than the four-satellite solution (assuming similar geometry quality, i.e., PDOP). If on the other hand the assumed altitude is in error, then the two sides of the equations will be equal only if a compensating error is added to the horizontal position components and clock offset. "

or. to put it another way, the receiver can only calculate an accurate position from three satellites if it accurately knows its position or its clock offset already - and if it already knows (ie., has been told) its position accurately, then why bother at all?

Kernel

Not quite

"The BCM47755 achieves its extra accuracy by locking on to three satellites using the L1-band transmission (the GPS broadcast of satellite location, time, and signature)."

Actually, any GPS receiver needs a minimum of four satellites to lock on to, otherwise it has no way of determining how inaccurate its internal clock is and making appropriate corrections.

Four satellites allows the calculation of three potential positions - since you're obviously not actually in three places at once, adjusting the clock to minimize the difference between the three calculated positions provides the feedback loop to ensure the cheap internal clock chip is running as close as possible to the rate of the very expensive (and comparatively large) Cesium clocks in the satellites.

Boffins sling around entangled photons at telco wavelengths

Kernel

Re: So what is it good for?

" So just short range entanglement in real comms terms"

You do realise that 1550nm is the long-haul wavelength range used by telcos, don't you - so we're looking at distances in the order of 1000s of kms without having to decode or otherwise interfere with the photon. This sort of range is currently available off-the-shelf with existing DWDM systems, so no great break through required there.

Hence the push to get it working at 1550nm - there's no commercial advantage to using this technology within a data centre or even across campus, but trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic is a different story altogether. I doubt that the cryogenic requirement would be too much of an issue either - it used to be a requirement for the low noise amplifiers in satellite antennas, but it didn't stop that technology being widely deployed.

If there's a significant economic advantage to this technology for long-haul carriers (and I suspect there is, capacity-wise) it will be developed into a stable and reliable commercial product surprisingly quickly.

Driverless cars will make more traffic, say transport boffins

Kernel

Re: Asking people if they're willing to share

"Or they'll leave their half eaten McDonalds breakfast under the seat and it'll still be pretty ripe just as edible after a few days years."

FTFY.

Linus Torvalds' lifestyle tips for hackers: Be like me, work in a bathrobe, no showers before noon

Kernel

Re: Last time I tried to work in a bathrobe...

"pour it and nuke it for 30 seconds or so to get the temperature back up."

I don't know what you're making there, but it sure as hell doesn't qualify as coffee!

Totally uncool California bureaucrats shoot down drone weed delivery

Kernel

Re: Safety?

So why don't the same rules apply to alcohol or tobacco?

Kernel

Safety?

"Much of the reasoning behind the rules appears to be safety-related."

My thinking might be wrong here, but it seems to me that one of the big advantages of legalizing pot is that it becomes just another product, like alcohol or tobacco, and with readily availability I would expect the price and risk to supply chain participants to drop to similar levels, thus eliminating most of the motive for criminal involvement.

Please, pleeeease let me ban Kaspersky Lab from US govt PCs – senator

Kernel

Re: Makes some sense

"There's no evidence that the NSA has ever used Windows Update to distribute malware, "

Windows 10?

There's no shortage of evidence that the NSA has encouraged the distribution of malware by hiding information about vulnerabilities they've found.

Kernel

I wonder ........

what it's like to live in a country which is constantly in a state of fear?

Yahoo! must! face! the! music! over! data! breaches! judge! rules!

Kernel

Re: Now for the Vultures

"Time to pick the bones clean... I hope Verizon put some cash aside in a high yield account "

Verizon is probably not be liable for any damages awarded - they weren't the owner of Yahoo! when the breach happened and I suspect any damages would lie with the original Yahoo! legal entity.

This may, of course, not have much in the way of assets anymore, so the plaintiffs may well end up with nothing.

Police deny Notting Hill Carnival face recog tech led to wrongful arrest

Kernel

Re: Nothing wrong with being "wrongfully" arrested

"or have their image and biometrics (illegally?) stored in a leaky police cloud server until the sun explodes,"

Of course that won't happen - after all, their record on not storing data related to people that haven't committed a crime is squeaky clean, isn't it?

I encourage you to persist in reading to the final sentence of the article,

"Hundreds of thousands of mugshots, mostly of innocent people not convicted of any criminal offence, are used to feed the Met's face-matching database. "

Judge: You can't call someone a c*nt, but a C∀NT is a cunning stunt

Kernel

Re: As we know..

""unwanted Brits" AKA the lucky ones"

Some years ago I read a book called "The Second Fleet", which was about the women that made up a large portion of the second shipment of convicts.

They wouldn't have thought so at the time, but looking back at where many of these women came from (think backstreet prostitution and gin by the bucket full in some of England's finest cities) and it's hard to disagree that in retrospect it was the best thing that ever happened to them and their descendants.

Worth hunting down and reading, if you're interested in the history of early European settlement in Four Ecks.

Terry Pratchett's unfinished works flattened by steamroller

Kernel

Re: I'm touched by the weirdness of this request...

"I wouldn't start with Unseen Academicals or Raising Steam, two of the last Discworld series as I'm not sure they are as good as the others. Felt like he was losing his bite, particularly in Raising Steam *ducks and runs for cover*"

Personally I'd add "Strata" to that (happily, very) short list - vaguely Disc World related and an attempt to explain how Disc World came into being, but it doesn't really fit with the rest of the series.

How the CIA, Comcast can snoop on your sleep patterns, sex toy usage

Kernel

"We could easily see a router manufacturer figuring out a way to disguise identify such traffic and use a new privacy setting as a unique selling point sell the information in a timely manner."

FTFY.

Just wait for the message to pop-up on your tablet or PC - "We see your sex toy is slowing down - would you like to order new batteries for it now?"

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

Kernel

Re: Per Diem

"That's why most companies are using per diem rates from the tax code without trying to be clever about it."

Ah, this will explain why my Finnish employer has specified our per diem rates here in NZ in Euros rather than $NZ.

Paris nightclub red-faced after booze-for-boobs offer exposed

Kernel

Re: Not unusual

I'm not sure if it;s still there, but a few years ago there was a bar in Taupo, NZ, that had a wall decorated with framed bras that various female customers (I assume) had donated.

Calm down, internet. Elon's Musk-see SpaceX spacesuit is a bit generic

Kernel

Re: Double vacuum

'If the astronauts used pure Oxygen it might only need testing to 1 bar for "double vacuum" '

That would actually be "triple vacuum" I think.

I seem to recall from the early Apollo days (pre-fire) that when using pure O2 the pressure required to get the same amount of oxygen into our blood stream as we get from air is only about 4psi, ie., the partial pressure of O2 in air at standard temperature and pressure is about 4 psi.

We are designed to operate on a mixture of about 80% inert gas and just under 20% oxygen - goldfish excepted - so if you filled a suit with pure O2 to 1 bar (about 15psi) then that would be a little over three times as much oxygen as called for in the spec and probably well on the way to causing seizures and/or death.

Sonos will deny updates to those who snub rewritten privacy terms

Kernel

Farewell Sonos

Never owned a Sonos system, guess I never will now.

Where there's smoke there's a Galaxy Note: Refurbished Model 4 batteries recalled

Kernel

Re: Well done Samsung!

"Another winner!"

You didn't actually read the article, did you?

If you had you'd know that it's not the batteries that Samsung installed (or most likely were installed on their behalf by a Chinese manufacturer), but replacement batteries installed in the USA by a 3rd party.

President Trump to his council of industry CEO buddies: You're fired!

Kernel

"Funny old world. I was in the market for a new laptop, with Dell's XPS13 at number one in my list. I went elsewhere. And now I'm glad I made the right choice. "

And now, to complete the job, you need to email the highest up person in Dell that you can find and tell them why you made that decision and how you feel about their company's continued support for racists - people who refuse to buy from Dell over this issue need to also tell them that they are spending their money with Dell's competitors.

On the interactive web conference, nobody will hear you are a dog

Kernel

"Or, you could just teach people to, y'know, MUTE their lines when they're not speaking."

Oh yes, please!

And for an encore, can we teach them to dial in before the meeting starts, rather than a t some random time in the first 15 minutes - followed by requests to repeat what's been discussed so far, because "I wasn't here and don't know what was talked about."

South London: Rats! The rodents have killed the internet

Kernel

"Wow... it's almost like they didn't have redundant fibre down there too, and that nobody was monitoring or noticed that their fibre strands were dropping off one-by-one...."

It was possibly the cable from the exchange to the roadside cabinets - I woulndn't expect them to be redundant, especially if it is an x-PON type system where there is only passive optical splitter/combiners in the cabinets.

I can also tell you from personal experience that the time between one bitten fibre and 8 or 9 can be very short - like a matter of seconds - it all depends on exactly how that particular rat goes about the job. If it eats around the sheath first and then follows up with a chomp at the kevlar strength member in the centre of the cable then it's going to take out more than one at a time.

The other aspect to consider is that if, as I mention above, there is only passive components at the far end of the cable, there is nothing capable of reporting a signal loss. As for loss of the back channel signal back at the exchange - is the cable cut, or have the customer's modems just shut down due to a power cut?