A politician who understood the truth....
...A politician complaining about the media is like a sailor complaining about the sea....
Enoch Powell
Posts by Dodgy Geezer
1773 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
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Why aren't you being arbiters of truth? MPs scream at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
Brit regulator pats self on back over nuisance call reduction: It's just 4 billion now!
Friday 9th February 2018 16:04 GMT 
Re: 60 calls a person
The way spam call centres work is that they have a warehouse full of people in cubicles with a phone and a script.
At one end is an automatic dialling machine. This dials numbers, and every time someone picks up the phone it allocates the call to the next free spammer in their cubicle, and continues calling.
Now the spammer may be having a smoke, or just bored, and may not pick the call up. So, after a pause of 10secs or so the line is dropped.
That's usually the reason for most voice-free calls....
It's been 50 years since those damn dirty apes took the planet by storm
Friday 9th February 2018 11:30 GMT
That's not bad going...
...The premise is that in 3978, many hundreds of years after a nuclear war destroyed human civilisation, our near-relatives, the great apes, underwent the same evolutionary leap that had taken our bloodline from forest-dwelling apes like Ardipithecus ramidus...
A jump from Ardipithecus to Homo took around 2m years, and a jump from Homo Habilis to Sapiens took us another 2m. The Pan genus must have some pretty impressive mutagens to do a similar leap in 2k years....
...which picked up a handful of Oscars for makeup, costume and musical score...
It was up against 2001 - A Space Odyssey. 2001 had incomparably better make-up/costume, including an accurate (for the time) tribe of Ardipithecus, and I presume that I don't need to remind you of the 2001 musical score. With shots of Jupiter 'on location' from the probes. And Planet of the Apes won...
At the time Arthur Clarke said "Maybe they didn't give us the make-up prize because they thought we used real ape-men..."
BT backs down from charging millions in phone book listing fees
Sysadmin finds insecure printer, remotely prints 'Fix Me!' notice
Secret weekend office bonk came within inch of killing sysadmin
Friday 9th February 2018 09:02 GMT
You get much the same issue on boats - where the pipework is designed on the Olympic system (the bloke who gets there first runs his 1/4" pipe straight, and the big 18" low pressure steam conduit has to bend round it).
For my sins I started work in a military command and control complex, where keeping the computers and signals equipment up under nuclear war conditions was a business requirement. So we had full replacements and engineering support on site 24hrs (or rather UNDER site, since we were well underground).
The worst outage we had was due to a stationery delivery, when the trolley clipped one of the aircon pipes. You can't get rid of heat easily when you are underground, so that was critical for the mainframes. And of course we ended up with an airlock.....which lowered the defensive capability of the country for nearly 36 hours....
UK worker who sold customers' data to nuisance callers must cough up £1k
Friday 9th February 2018 07:38 GMT
Re: Actual accidents
The last time I had such a call, I asked which accident they referred to, and explained that I had been in many car crashes. the caller got very excited, and called her supervisor over - thinking she had hit pay dirt. After a rambling confused conversation I finally told the cold callers that I was a stunt car driver, and crashed cars on film for a living...
Unlucky 13 collared by cops hunting cyber-crew who stole up to $2.2bn
Laser sauce, cheat code, jam seshs: The Waymo vs Uber trial kicks off
Thursday 8th February 2018 09:51 GMT
..."Did you ask Levandowski to bring Google information to Uber?" Uber's lawyer asked his former CEO. "I did not. Ever." A follow-up: "Did Mr Levandowski tell you he was going to bring Google information to Uber?" Kalanick: "He did not."...
Um. In any job interview the company recruiter is interested in what advantage in skills, knowledge, background etc the applicant will bring to the company?
It would be incredible if Levandowski was NOT asked about the work he did at Google, and what aspects of that would be of value to UBER. In fact, if the hiring was really above board, the topic of intellectual property and restrictive covenants limiting Levandowski's employment should have been a major topic of converstation.
If they weren't, well....
What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids
Thursday 8th February 2018 09:37 GMT
Re: Tax write-off
You don't need science experiments - that will trow politics into the mix. What he needed was an advert from the marketying crowd.
He picked a Tesla, which gave him a nice publicity boost. If I were him I would have added a pointable low-power astronomical telescope - maybe several - a stability system and a 2-way communications link. Those are all low-cost and pretty much standard off-the-shelf kit. And that would have meant that he could have provided 'space' pictures over the internet to hobbyists for as long as the stability system/comms link held out. Who knows - the 'probe' might come within reasonable viewing range of an asteroid....
I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word
Thursday 8th February 2018 07:27 GMT
Do you mean that you only have ONE email address?
I run many. Any address that goes out to uncontrollable sources - and any commercial source is uncontrollable - is an address that I don't mind losing. I regularly cycle them around - as I do my credit card numbers, and various other hooks through which I am connected to the outside world.
That way, I can always disassociate myself from any unpleasantness...
Can't wait to get to Mars on a SpaceX ship? It's a cold, dead rock – boffins
MPs: Lack of technical skills for Brexit could create 'damaging, unmanageable muddle'
MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)
Peers approve Brit film board as pr0n overlords despite concerns
IBM: About those agreed voluntary redundancies ... we were just kidding
Lauri Love judgment: Extradition would be 'oppressive' and breach forum bar
Tuesday 6th February 2018 13:39 GMT
Re: The argument makes me sick
...Seriously, these arguments just sound anti-US....
Yes, they are poor arguments, and obviously driven by something other than legal consideration. But I don't think they are anti-US for the sake of being anti-US.
The US has a track record of treating this kind of crime very severely - much like a terrorist-type threat (particularly if it was committed by a foreigner). Do you remember the Aaron Swartz case? An activist convicted of the unauthorised downloading of academic papers on a network they gave him access to, and he committed suicide rather than risk a 35-year jail sentence. While we see malicious hacking as a serious crime, we don't see this kind of thing as life-sentence/capital punishment.
That's why we wanted to get him off. Our politicians, of course, may have a different view...
Tuesday 6th February 2018 13:29 GMT
Re: The argument makes me sick
...It is a basic principle of jurisprudence that ignorance of the law is no defence. That principle collapses into absurdity if it hinges on the expectation that an individual must know and adhere to the legal code of every country with an internet connection. ...
The principle collapses into absurdity if it hinges on the expectation that an individual must know and adhere to every aspect of the legal code in the UK. That is already too much for a single person to handle. Then add the fact that much modern law is written so that the Executive Authority are given the authority to interpret things in any way they wish (HM Revenue and Customs are masters at this, but even straightforward criminal law now depends on opinion hate crime for instance, or many terrorism offences..). Nowadays the law is simply a threat to everyday living...
You're the IT worker in charge of securing the cloud for your company. Welcome to Hell
Tuesday 6th February 2018 08:57 GMT
Oh?
...Your mileage may vary, because there are some financial and government systems that will never be (or at least should never be) anywhere near the internet....
Try designing a system without any standard parts like routers, switches and firewalls. Because all of these are by default remote maintained.
OK? Now, how do you maintain these new isolated boxes you've just designed? That's right - you bring in software, updates and a machine from the outsilde. Which has been connected to the internet...
Unless you dig your own sand to make your own silicon for your own processor on which you run your own firmware... all maintained by a bunch of cleared engineers and technicians locked in your own secured facility... you are going to have to interact with the outside world at some point....
Epic spacewalk, epic FAIL: Cosmonauts point new antenna in the wrong direction
Cox blocked! ISP may avoid $25m legal bill for letting punters pirate music online
Friday 2nd February 2018 07:00 GMT
I admit that I'm not completely on top of legal definitions...
..."Proving contributory infringement requires proof of at least willful blindness," the court wrote, "negligence is insufficient."...
... but I would have thought that taking active steps to avoid being informed about a situation was practically the definition of 'willful blindness'. Why is the court interpreting it as negligence?
Super Cali's unrealistic net neutrality process – even though the sound of it is something quite... ferocious
Friday 2nd February 2018 06:05 GMT
Federal and State Law
Given the depth of government interference in our everyday lives nowadays, it is surely possible for any legislative body to enforce any behaviour they want by roundabout means, even if that behaviour is directly banned.
As a tongue-in-cheek instance, if a State were to decide that guns are to be made illegal, a Fedral government could pass a law saying that you could not own a car unless you owned a gun, or some other such requirement.
Given that this tit-for-tat possibility exists, there must be some legal process for addressing it - otherwise parts of the country run by different parties would forever be sniping at each other. In this case, is there no facility for the Federal Government to claim that specifying net neutrality as part of the license requirements to use public utility connections is tantamount to a State striking down a Federal law...?
Are you taking the peacock? United Airlines deny flight to 'emotional support' bird
Wednesday 31st January 2018 17:21 GMT
Re: The real question
...their science and tech is shamefully poor, all written by journalism grads who know nothing about anything technical....
It's funny that people who support the political opinions of a newspaper never complain about the 'Opinion' sections - even though the level of competence shown in such discussion is very low amongst ALL the major newspapers - both Left and Right,,,
NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it
Dodgy parking firms to be denied access to Brit driver database
Tuesday 30th January 2018 10:08 GMT
Re: Petty Speeding
Exactly!
The key point about travelling on the road is that it ought to be safe. Making speed limits for road stretches is a very arbitary way of achieving this - sometimes a high speed is quite safe, sometimes even a low speed is dangerous.
Speed limits are convenient for the authorities to administer, but we ought not to lose sight of the fact that they don't address the real problem. I suspect that driverless cars which are connected to a central monitor at all times might be the only way to really address it.
Tuesday 30th January 2018 09:56 GMT
Um...
If I were the parking company, I would simply keep my evidence of your parking and my claim of 'breach of contract', and then sell it to a debt collecting agency at half-price. The debt-collecting agency has the experience and admin systems to generate court cases swiftly and efficiently, and will add a charge to the claim to reimburse themselves.
So you will be looking at a court case plus costs....
EU bods up GDPR ante: Threatens legislative laggards with ‘infringement procedure’
Friday 26th January 2018 14:46 GMT
Actually, before this, we had 1/28th of a say in where the line should be. You will not be surprised to hear that we have been outvoted more and more often in recent years. Initially we used to be in full agreement with the EU - now we disagree around 30% of the time. See http://www.votewatch.eu/blog/special-report-would-brexit-matter-the-uks-voting-record-in-the-council-and-the-european-parliament/
Hey UK.gov – cute tweaks to snoop regime. Your EU law reading needs work
We won't need to go outside if these haptic tricksters have their way
FYI: There's now an AI app that generates convincing fake smut vids using celebs' faces
Thursday 25th January 2018 06:20 GMT
It seems obvious to me...
...that the answer for ALL iffy technological questions is for education and society to improve sufficiently to mean that 'evil' uses of tech are widely depreciated.
But the road we seem to be travelling down is to turn out warped and appalling human beings, and then try to micro-control what they are allowed to do...
Pope wants journalism like the Catholic church wants child sex abuse probes: Slow, aimless...
Thursday 25th January 2018 05:56 GMT
Re: Warning: Devil's advocacy in support of the Pope (???!!!)
...You read The Economist because you want thorough fact-checking and analysis,...
Ah. So Brexit plunged the UK straight into recession in 2017, and Climate Change is settled science and mustn't be questioned?
I think you'll find that The Economist has its own prejudices and follows the crowd like the vast mass of the mainstream media..
Cold calling director struck off for ‘flagrant’ breach of duties
Wednesday 24th January 2018 13:39 GMT
This sounds remarkably similar...
...as the firm received "unjustified grant funds" of £38,326 from Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership, after Abbott provided inaccurate information....
...to the illegal activity called 'fraud'. Fraud attracts a criminal charge, and if found guilty, you could be imprisoned for some considerable time.
I wonder why there's no mention of fraud amongst these alleged misdeeds?
Death notice: Moore's Law. 19 April 1965 – 2 January 2018
Mass limit proposed so boffins can tell when they've fingered a brown dwarf or a fat planet
Info Commish tells UK.gov we shouldn't let artificial ignorance make all our decisions
NASA is sniffing jet fuel over Germany
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 11:02 GMT
Re: Biofuels, probably won't end well
..But would we want the additional carbon in our atmosphere?..
We don't really care - it won't affect us. The 'science' behind the 'dangers of CO2' was never true, and has collapsed. The only people pushing the hypothesis now are activists and those making money out of it.
But CO2 is plant food, and plants stop growing when it drops below 200 ppm. They REALLY need it to be 400ppm, ideally much higher. However, even burning lots of hydrocarbons isn't going to raise it that much - unfortunately...
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 09:17 GMT
Market distortion
Biofuels cheaper than kerosine due to more efficient extraction and refining - good.
Biofuels cheaper than kerosine due to political taxes on fossil fuels - very bad. Market distortion for activist reasons is never good.
How long will it be before we get hydrocarbons from Titan? If the market operates properly this is the sort of thing it might provide...
NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside
UK Army chief: Russia could totally pwn us with cable-cutting and hax0rs
Monday 22nd January 2018 13:51 GMT
Modern defence thinking...
...and the cutting of the main comms line in the Crimean peninsula during its annexation of the region shows precedence....
Actually, the most obvious precedence was the Royal Navy cutting of German cables in August 1914 - https://warandsecurity.com/2014/08/05/britain-cuts-german-cable-communications-5-august-1914/
If the UK defence community have only just woken up to the practice of cutting your opponents undersea communications, then may I also suggest that it might be a wise move to develop some sort of armoured tracked vehicle which can move over country safely under machine-gun fire to support infantry? And we should pay attention to the possibility that new-fangled flying machines might be able to deliver Whitehead torpedoes onto our heavily-armoured battleships...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
