* Posts by Nick Kew

2841 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jan 2007

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

Nick Kew

Re: And who made copyright possible?

Years ago, I had an entry in an Audio Visual competition.

Heh. I guess that must've been a competition where the music wasn't expected to be the primary focus of your entry. Were there specific rules about copyright?

When I entered a composition competition, the focus was on satisfying them that all the texts I used were permitted. That means, I'd need to supply written permission, in a suitably legalistic form, for anything not out of copyright. Writing to the lawyers who own the rights to Dylan Thomas's works was a lesson in how contemptuous those people are of anyone interested in creating new artistic works that happen to draw on a great legacy. Not only would I have to pay (which I could accept - within reason), I would have to withdraw my entire work before the poem went out of copyright (erm, no chance, I'm not getting into that kind of game with a bunch of shyster lawyers).

Nick Kew

Re: Congress?

Jockland? How about, you hold Trump's golf course to ransom?

Nick Kew
Nick Kew

@Sgt_Oddball

You do know Mozart carried out the most audacious act of piracy in music history?

The Vatican had successfully protected its copyright on the famous Allegri Miserere for 150 years when Mozart, aged about 14, was touring in Rome and heard a performance at the Vatican. With his famously-perfect ear and memory, he transcribed it afterwards, and released it for the outside world.

But the article talks of recordings, not of music. The world could be a better place if some of that muzak priced itself out of our public spaces!

Brit ISPs get their marker pens out: Speed advertising's about to change

Nick Kew

Re: Hmmm...

Back in January (before I parted company with them), my Virgin 70Mbps connection was giving me consistently less than 0.5Mbps.

Or I really should say, inconsistently, as it frequently dropped out altogether, leading to regular timeouts on things as routine as web and email, as well as having to use the mobile 'phone for a voice line.

The role of the impossible-to-contact customer service is in keeping me paying over the years of crap service before then. It was simply a line of least resistance. And, to be fair, Virgin's router had a feel of quality by virtue of providing the most solid wifi I've ever had: it was the connection to the outside world that was problematic.

TalkTalk ups the (dis)satisfaction ante as UK folk wake up to borked email

Nick Kew
Facepalm

Email contact

... by removing the ability of customers to complain about it by email this morning

You mean they were previously contactable by email?

Sheer luxury! Virgin Media victims can only dream of email contact when our service needs fixing.

Real fake scam offers crypto-coin to replace frequent flier points

Nick Kew

Not a cryptocurrency

"HoweyCoins will partner with ..."

That doesn't look much like a bitcoin. That's a description of a wannabe new player to compete with Nectar. Or, going back a bit further, Green Shield Stamps.

Now when you say Frequent Flyer points, that started life as a pure-bred scam: bribes for employees to spend their employers' money.

DOJ convicts second bloke for helping malware go undetected

Nick Kew

Missing detail

... living in Latvia at the time of his arrest,

OK, two guys with names suggestive of not merely living in Latvia but having roots in that part of the world. Convicted in the US.

So were they:

(a) legally arrested and extradited?

(b) kidnapped like that Libyan couple who just got an apology from the UK government?

(c) ambushed like Hutchins?

Google shoots Chrome 66's silencer after developer backlash

Nick Kew

Re: Chewing bandwidth?

A little loudspeaker icon that only becomes visible when there are so few tabs as to have space to display it. Not really useful.

Nick Kew

Re: Chewing bandwidth?

Why make a distinction in the first place? Nothing should move nor sound unless it has my permission!

As for both bandwidth and nuisance, how about when you re-open a browser with lots of tabs, and it takes forever to find which of those tabs are playing crap at you, and causing the browser to be slow to respond to trying to cycle through tabs and find the offenders?

People like convenience more than privacy – so no, blockchain will not 'decentralise the web'

Nick Kew

Re: Historic revisionism

I could have forgiven the usage of "google" and glossing over earlier search engines.

A much bigger red flag was the role ascribed to Compuserve, that was wrong on so many levels it would need a whole bloomin' article to fix it.

Nick Kew

Historic revisionism

I stopped reading when I got to those wildly inaccurate comments about "the early web". Oh dear.

However, on the subject of decentralisation, that's been an issue all along. Thinking of an easy reference, how about for example Eben Moglen's 2011 FOSDEM keynote? Sorry, the link is my blog comment: I don't have a link for his actual talk.

Did I say Chinese jobs? I meant American jobs says new Trump Tweet

Nick Kew

Re: Pot/Kettle.

That's just the Law of Outrage. When your powers that be are noisily outraged by a foreign power's alleged evil, you just know the accusations hurled are of things they themselves not merely do but take for granted.

I suspect this law applies mostly to those countries that set themselves up as moral entities. It's certainly strong in some of us whose national narrative is "we're the good guys because we beat Hitler".

Wah, encryption makes policing hard, cries UK's National Crime Agency

Nick Kew
Headmaster

Re: #Apparent

"Apparent" means "based on what we can observe". It's accurate in observing someone's ignorance, even if they're just playing stupid and really do know better. A synonym in this thread is "evident", but other words suggested are materially different (and not quite 100% proven).

In any context involving spooks (or children, or lawyers, or politicians, or thespians, not to mention cats, cuckoos, ...), you should never assume that what you see is necessarily what's really there. See also Playing Dead.

MPs petition for legally binding target of 95% 4G coverage across UK

Nick Kew

Re: The one issues could be...

You don't drive on a different set of roads according to whether you have a Ford or a Honda. So why the different set of masts?

The whole competition regulation needs to be completely overhauled, so we can get a signal wherever one is available. Just as we do when travelling abroad and connecting to our provider's local partners.

PGP and S/MIME decryptors can leak plaintext from emails, says infosec professor

Nick Kew

Beyond the obvious?

Decryptors in a mail client. OK.

I wonder to what extent we're talking the obvious: things like accidentally quoting or forwarding, as in when your system thrashes, your desktop becomes unresponsive, and your unintended actions get buffered (not to mention your unencrypted contents getting swapped to disc). Or even just the ability to cut&paste unencrypted text?

Hmmm. I guess El Reg will give us detail, and a URL for the report itself, when it's published?

Fixing a printer ended with a dozen fire engines in the car park

Nick Kew

@Alan Brown

one radio station I worked at had the morning studio staff arrive(*) to a building full of smoke, open a few doors to clear it out and start their breakfast shift after putting a screwdriver through the alarm sounders.

That reminds me of chemistry lessons in my 'teens.

I'm sure that was the norm for mine and earlier generations.

Africa's internet body in full-blown meltdown: 'None of the above' wins board protest vote

Nick Kew

Democracy

So Africa - with its short and patchy history of any attempt at democracy - has come to a more honest outcome than broken systems in many more developed parts of the world.

try {

elect a decent ruling body;

}

catch (they're all scum) {

#ifdef AFRINIC

None of the above;

#else

Declare the biggest crook the winner;

#endif

}

Nick Kew

Re: None Of The Above

First past the post is Good. But the system Blighty calls first-past-the-post isn't: there's no post to pass. The Single Transferable Vote (see for example steve.apache.org) puts a 50% post in it, and ensures winners do really have more support than losers - as opposed to votes being wasted or manipulated.

Make masses carry their mobes, suggests wig in not-at-all-creepy speech

Nick Kew

No no no! We had tracking in Blighty in the 1980s, before we ever had GPS. We pensioned it off when GPS and Glonass offered a globalised alternative. But now that we're opting out of globalisation, we can simply revive a national positioning and tracking system.

Nick Kew

Re: Click bait headline

Clickbait indeed, and many of the commentards have taken it with no signs of having read the article.

Compulsory mobes sound a lot like the electronic tags sometimes imposed on convicted criminals. We know that won't happen: talk of "everyone" carrying mobes is pure hyperbolae.

But what does seem entirely plausible is that most of the population will carry them most of the time. The closer that "most" gets to "all", the more it raises new possibilities for law enforcement to play statistically with patterns. And of course, a lot of criminals aren't exactly very bright.

Glibc 'abortion joke' diff tiff leaves Richard Stallman miffed

Nick Kew

Re: Well done that man!

Iconoclasm is alive and well today. Modern-day wannabe-Savonarolas range from Islamist nutters to our own Royal Family.

The worst instance affecting us is, I think, the censorship movement characterised as SJW. That's worst because it's the most influential: it's taken root in the BBC, for instance. But we should bear in mind that the real a**hole SJW is as much of an embarrassment to reasonable left-ish folks as Trump is to advocates of free speech who push back against SJWs.

And of course there's nothing new about it. See for instance Wilt (1976) for some wicked send-up of SJWs that look remarkably similar to today's.

Mobileye's autonomous cars are heading to California. But they're not going to kill anyone. At least not on purpose

Nick Kew

Re: Smart??

Nonsense! People are very insistent on their inalienable right to a machine that might kill them. Cars being an obvious case in point, killing thousands each year and terrorising whole populations into keeping children and vulnerable folks out of danger - and hence denying them freedom to develop.

It's only looking from outside an obsessed culture that you see such obsession and its absurdity. Like when we in Blighty view the US and its guns.

Nick Kew

Strawmen

You tell us Shashua was full of straw. Then you use your own strawmen to argue against him.

I don't recollect ever seeing that bouncing ball, in [mumble] years of life. You say I should be alert to the possibility of it being followed by a child. I say Shashua is right: that shouldn't affect behaviour. When in charge of a potentially-dangerous machine you should always be alert to risks. You really shouldn't need a bouncing ball to grab your attention.

What grabs my attention is any broken line of sight. Anything from parked cars to a gate or hedge could conceal the next hazard, and I want to be prepared for it!

Don't try and beat AI, merge with it says chess champ Garry Kasparov

Nick Kew

The prodigy

Chess is one of those activities where the child prodigy can shine. Years of worldly experience count for less than sheer ability to work with patterns. The only caveat is that the patterns are somewhat removed from natural by the complexity of the rules (I much prefer patterns in Go).

The chess computer learning without ever studying human games is basically taking that principle to the extreme. If it's winning, that kind-of makes it the ultimate child prodigy: deep pattern awareness, no worldly experience.

It's Galileo Groundhog Day! You can keep asking the same question, but it won't change the answer

Nick Kew

???

We keep seeing this reported, but no details or reasons.

Q1 - What? Is it "the UK will be locked out", or "the UK's current access will no longer exist"? The latter seems more plausible, and would then be subject to negotiating an alternative deal.

Q2 - Why? Is it a matter of EU court jurisdiction? A financial deal? A security deal? A standards deal?

Q3 - Who? Does Norway have access, and on what basis? Iceland? Determinedly-neutral Switzerland? Technically-allied-but-troublesome neighbours like Turkey or Israel?

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

Nick Kew

Re: It's going to be fun...

Indeedie. All sorts of things that smell of an impossible thing the Boss expects. Fertile ground for the likes of Dilbert, xkcd, or (best of all) a Reg Friday column such as BOFH or On Call.

I expect we'll find that this policy, once clarified, applies only to user-writable storage. So devices like an approved read-only USB stick will be allowed for cases like this. And likely some more clarification once egg is seen on someone's face.

What's no doubt really meant (even if someone behind the press release thinks otherwise) is naturally a "no unauthorised use" policy and a robust process for authorisation. And then somewhere down the line, fire someone for allowing authorisation to become a rubber-stamp exercise.

Zero Tech Emitted: ZTE halts assembly lines after US govt sanctions cripple mobile maker

Nick Kew

But didn't you say ...

So how does this fit with the customary narrative that the Chinese just rip off American tech willy-nilly?

How come ZTE aren't just producing their own clones of components whose supply has been cut off, or at least sourcing them from some Chinese tech-clone manufacturer?

Mike Lynch's British court showdown v HPE pushed back to 2019

Nick Kew

Re: Caveat Emptor

As per recent Reg articles, many within HP, including the then CFO, thought the same but they were railroaded and/or simply ignored.

A URL or two would be welcome there.

Some non-techie folks take a different view. Here's one such.

Yes, people see straight through male displays of bling (they're only after a fling)

Nick Kew

Indeed, the study as reported here seems to have asked leading questions that completely prejudice the answers.

I heard about this on the radio last night, and formed a somewhat-different impression from that report. But it occurred to me that I've always steered well clear of flash or bling when looking for a mate, for what that's worth.

Writing that, it occurs to me you could take it two ways. I meant to say, I've always steered clear of ladies who are dolled up and looking artificial or expensive. But it could also describe how I present myself: even when I had a car, I wouldn't touch a wankmobile.

UK's Royal Navy buys £13m mine-blasting robot boat

Nick Kew
Thumb Down

Guto Bebb

No good will come of this minister. Just look at that grammar[*]!

[*] Neither will any good come of those who would seek to legitimise it. The (defensible) proposition that some split infinitives are less bad than others does nothing for such egregious usage as quoted here.

Nick Kew

@Ledswinger

I was going to say something along those lines.

But what you really want in the face of this thing is a good mix of technologies. Some fancy-modern, others (possibly ancient and simple) that will elude this device.

Heir to SMS finally excites carriers, by making Google grovel

Nick Kew

Re: Can we fix what's wrong with SMS?

I can blacklist based on number, but yes, it could be better. Not a problem with the SMS protocol, but a problem with the software.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

My core desire is:

1. Default: accept messages from valid senders provided the address is replyable.

2. Default: reject messages from un-replyable addresses.

3. Blacklist/whitelist on individual addresses (not just on a number).

and a (for the time being) lesser thing:

4. Rules-based filtering (e.g. "loans" --> reject).

Current main bugbear is (2): does the protocol provide any means to determine whether an address is replyable? I suspect that might be a growing issue if GDPR doesn't stop most SMS spam.

Nick Kew

Can we fix what's wrong with SMS?

OK, what's wrong with SMS?

- very limited control over what you allow/block

- phone insists on beeping to alert me of sms.

The first calls for much better address traceability, and better software. The second should be straightforward in just software, or by getting a better phone.

I'm happy for them to develop a new protocol. Just so long as it doesn't start to become a integral to having a 'phone number, as SMS has done for mobiles.

Nick Kew

Anyone remember RCS

... as Revision Control System? The GNU alternative to sccs, before we had CVS, let alone modern systems like svn, git, hg.

Guess I'm showing my age, but I struggle to think of RCS as anything else in a computing context.

Hacking charge dropped against Nova Scotia teen who slurped public records from the web

Nick Kew

@Ole Juul

The IT contractor probably just meant to draw attention to the possibility of slurping data in bulk, with the implied question "Is this really what you want?" They might have been banging on about it already, in which case this becomes "look, it's happened, we told you so".

That offers a perfectly innocent explanation of the contractor's actions. And the contractor would then be as flabbergasted as any of us at the bizarre reaction to it. It would also fit the scenario of a client who had completely failed to grasp what the contractor was talking about in the "is this really what you want?" memo.

Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it

Nick Kew

Saved by the power supply

Power supplies can do a pretty good job.

December 1997. I had just started a new business and had as workhorse a shiny new Pentium Pro (about £2k at then-price). Was working at it when - without warning - a great flash of lightning. One suddenly-dead 'puter. And being the holiday season, nothing I could do for several days 'til the shops reopened.

Come the new working year, I take it to the shop, first thing. We try a new power supply. It works: slackware runs fdisk, all is well. Phew: I can cope with a two-figure replacement bill!

Thereafter I had a motherboard that was visibly blackened in several places, with one corner curled up from - presumably - a momentary scorching. Yet the power supply had taken all the real damage, and the machine lived many years.

Blighty: If EU won't let us play at Galileo, we're going home and taking encryption tech with us

Nick Kew

Re: TwatNav

And FYI you missed the part about unemployed migrants being able to move to a state and claim whatever unemployment benefits are available.

Wrong. That right only applies with permanent residence - after a qualifying five years contributing to your new country.

My original point is that you could move to a member state and become a burden on said state and the rules back that up.

The rules are very explicit: you absolutely can't become a burden on a state other than your own before five years legally resident in that state.

Nick Kew

Re: TwatNav

Half the problem with the EU system is that there are no checks that someone moving around the EU can actually afford to do so.

That's the core lie. EU rules say no such thing. Freedom of movement offers three basic rights (all subject to some conditionality for exceptional circumstances like terrorist or serious criminal activity).

(1) The right to visit another EU country pretty-much unconditionally for up to three months.

(2) The right to work. So long as you have a job with sufficient income to live on, you can stay indefinitely and on non-discriminatory terms.

(3) The right to retire. You have to demonstrate sufficient income to live, and also medical insurance, in order to stay more than three months.

Oh, and after five years legally resident under (2) or (3), you can claim permanent residence and other rights of a native-born citizen.

Any rights and privileges beyond those are completely in the gift of member states. The fact that the UK system confers some very perverse rights is just one consequence of a system that's broken-as-designed: it suited Labour to create dependency and encourage immigration, and it suited the Tories (and their paymasters) to demonise Europe.

Nick Kew

Re: NAVIC

Once Britain leaves Europe we could move it to another continent,

El Reg is ahead of the game. They already reported on that.

Nick Kew

Re: NAVIC

Brownness as such may have a very different effect to what you'd think.

It was the rise of white mass-immigration that enabled an anti-immigration party to avoid the "racism" stigma that had always stuck to their predecessors (the National Front and BNP) when immigration was predominantly non-white. A new era of commonwealth immigration would reverse that: either we move to open racism, or an anti-immigration agenda again becomes taboo. 'Cos anti-immigration vs anti-immigrant agendas are too subtle a distinction for the Chattering Classes.

Nick Kew

@Chris G

I had no vote but I would have voted to remain.

Aha! Are you one of those Brits abroad who Cameron promised to enfranchise in the 2015 election manifesto, but then gerrymandered out of the referendum vote?

Nick Kew

Re: NAVIC

Yeah, but every time our journos ask Indian people what they want in a post brexit deal, it's always free movement of people.

If Eastern European immigration was too much for the Brits, India has an order of magnitude more people who are an order of magnitude poorer.

BOFH: But I did log in to the portal, Dave

Nick Kew

Re: I've been there

Would that be the HPE that just got taken over by Micro Focus a few months ago?

You never know what changes that might portend. For myself, I don't expect ever to find out, and I'm happy that way.

My PC is on fire! Can you back it up really, really fast?

Nick Kew

Warranty

That kind of story no doubt stems from the idea that whatever equipment you buy, if you tamper with it you invalidate the warranty. Which is probably at least a disciplinary offence in a workplace.

So "do not tamper" becomes an instinctive reaction, and hard to override.

Typical cynical Brits: Broadband speeds up, satisfaction goes down

Nick Kew

Re: Where I live speed isn't the problem

I've been in exactly that situation. I'll happily book a Premier Inn, but only when I've checked that the bedroom windows can be opened. I have phoned ahead with that question, and I don't recollect it as a difficult experience.

Nick Kew

Re: The good news is that Comcast is going to enter the British ISP market...

I don't think the United States would do that to you guys.

What is spoken (or written) in jest ...

My experience of the US is very limited, but I've seen much that is good when there. Yet your most famous and successful exports are utter trash. Conclusion: you export your worst stuff, but keep your best stuff for yourselves.

Our Virgin Media is owned by a US corporation. I don't know if that has any bearing on its evilness.

Nick Kew

Re: Where I live speed isn't the problem

The next up is the cost of the technical support line.

The cost is now regulated in Blighty, and I *think* that's EU-wide. No premium-rate numbers. Though it can mount up if the *reason* you're calling is that the line is down, and you have to resort to an expensive emergency 'phone.

Virgin do better than that. After the long, long sequence of menus and adverts comes the On Hold, where instead of the usual dumbed-down Vivaldi or Lloyd Webber or whatever, you get some aggressive yob screaming down the phone (words unclear; message an emphatic "F*** OFF"). Then if the synthetic voice eventually reappears and tells you it's putting you through to a human, it cuts you off instead.

Nick Kew

There is a commonality in expectation.

If my mobile 'phone service dies, I expect to be able to demand a fix from customer services.

If my broadband service dies, I expect to be able to demand a fix from customer services.

The former has always been fine: if all else fails, I can walk into my provider's high street shop and they'll deal with it.

The latter was OK too, until I had the misfortune to become a Virgin customer. Now I've been waiting since January to get my broadband fixed (and in practice moved to 4G broadband).

Nick Kew

talktalk rebrand?

chatchat?

Hmm, maybe we can come up with something more catchy. Chitchat? Scope for alternative spellings there.

(though they really can't be worse than inspired-by-Kafka Virgin).