Posts by John H Woods 3577 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2007
"In the UK they shut down News of the World because they engaged in criminal activity ... Not all free speech is welcome, some of it is just shit, and can be safely ignored, yet when the line is crossed there can be clear punishment handed out. It has in these two instances. So far, so good. YMMV." -- dadmin
So detected and prosecuted criminal activity punished by the courts is on the same level as a private individual trying to shut down a media outlet with a vast personal fortune just because you like both results? To my mind, only one of these processes has legitimacy, even though I hate Gawker.
In principle I have no problem with Thiel funding the lawsuit if it makes no difference to the outcome. But it makes me somewhat uneasy.
Sounds like some people need to be whacked over the head with one of Kerckhoff's weighty tomes
Good Morning Britain finished their toadying summary with this: "And, in a futuristic move, new laws will make Britain a world leader in driverless cars, unmanned drones and even space travel"
So, medium to long term investment in education, science, technology and manufacturing then? That would be GREAT NEWS. But I suspect they just mean creating a few more ill-thought out and unnecessary laws.
"They seldom understand any of it-- and they don't know (or care) that they don't understand it, which is what makes them even more dangerous." -- Updraft102 [my emph]
This is the key point. Nobody expects legislators to be experts in everything. The truly worrying this is that they have so many resources at their disposal to learn the things they need to know, and so much facility to consult, and so many of them still behave like this.
" it seems to me that the "remain" supporters really ought to be warned off by the political and corporate elite who want them to vote "remain"." --- AC
Even if one were to accept the idiocy of basing one's assessment of an argument on the characteristics of its proponents, you've still got to ask "Farage or Corbyn?" "Boris or Dave?" and "May or Gove?"
"of course their effective mass in an 'mv' momentum equation. This is well known." --- bombastic bob
Almost as well known as that m=0 for a photon: photon momentum is not mv. So you are not really chucking any "stuff" out of the back in the conventional sense.
... " That's why we have to continue to talk about this [the encryption debate]."
No. This has resolved the whole thing --- you can't stop people using strong encryption; you can't legislate to ensure that vendors compromise cryptosystems on your behalf; but governments can use serious tech and clever people to break into *specific* devices of interest. This is exactly as it should be: just a shame that his statement hints at wanting to change this ...
"I genuinely do not have a problem with the spooks having data on me. I do have a problem with some jobsworth from the council having access" --- isJustabloke
Whilst I understand to some extent, you are basically saying you have more trust in people who are paid to be dishonest (if about nothing more than who they work for).
"Don't you need a sample of 1500 to get a +-3% standard deviation of accuracy?"
Do you mean confidence interval? And it would depend on confidence level. For instance, with a population of 10,000,000, you would need a sample of (from memory) just over 1,000 to get a 95% confidence level of a 3 point confidence interval. But I think you need nearly twice that to get a 99% confidence level on the same interval.
Hi there, I've read up about this and changed my mind about Bristol Park Run, because the money is actually *for* something, i.e. grounds upkeep - I should have thought of that. But I'm still not sure what the $91/year for uber/lyft drivers is for ... just that the park run isn't a good analogy
The only problem with that is that you miss the opportunity to be part of the 'conversation' when a movie is in the public consciousness. But that really is the only problem, and it's probably not a big one. I wonder if there was a simultaneous release to disc / network whether cinemas could even survive?
I'm a bit shocked by all this. I wonder if there's a risk/reward thing going on here --- some USB drives can be large, useful and valuable. Most USB drives, I presume, are dropped by accident. Depending on the statistics, that could still make it worth plugging one in, though I doubt I would.
But how safe are ones you buy? Or are given by exhibition vendors? If the payload just quietly installed itself and didn't do anything / wasn't discovered till some time later would you even remember the potential infection source? Unless you had an airgapped machine you'd probably suspect compromise via the network, surely? Maybe not if you still had a guilty conscience about finding one in the car park.
TBH, I'm inclined to look at the stats the other way round --- isn't it good news that 50% of people don't risk it? (like the 50% divorce stats --- isn't it really rather amazing that 50% of people stick with the partner they married for life?)
"I've done some back of the envelope calcs (I'm pre-coffee, so please check this yourself :) ) - if you sucked data out at 5MB/s, 2,6TB would take you pretty close to a year"
No need for envelope backs, just type 2.6TB / 5MB into Google and get an answer of 520,000. Less than a week (Google can do that for you as well). Also Images of documents compress nicely --- 2.6TB of uncompressed data could easily be <0.5 TB of compressed files - which would fit on a USB stick or memory card in under an hour (and which could be sucked out of a >10Mb/s connection in a few days).
I use the Dvorak keyboard layout. For some reason known only two MS, RDPing to a server from a workstation with that layout sometimes caused the server to change to that layout, making me extremely unpopular.
But on the plus side, it was pretty hard for people to use my workstation if I walked away without locking it ...
"Eventually there will exist an ACTUALLY uncrackable device" --- JeffyPooh
I think there are some quantum principles which could feasibly be exploited to yield a device that you couldn't crack even with prolonged unfettered physical access, so I think you're right. Not sure it will ever be possible with non-quantum methods.
Depends if you're counting me :-) you did have a go at me for presenting the maths implied by the key length -- my defence was that I was only responding to people who suggested AES256 could be brute-forced. Neither of us think this has been cracked (if it has) by brute forcing a 256bit key, do we?
"Like I said before, if you have deep pockets you could probably clone the phone" -- Danny14
And like many of us said before, it's not that simple. Cloning memory is easy, but cloning other chippery is hard. Sure if you have deep enough pockets it can be done, but I don't think you really understand just how deep they have to be. And 256 bit encryption CANNOT be brute forced. Broken, perhaps, but this break will NEVER be by brute force.
"Every government on the planet now knows that iPhones can be hacked"
Everyone with a clue knew this already. What was being resisted was (a) a tool that could be routinely used (e.g. during police stop & search or temporary unauthorized access to a phone) and (b) a legal precedent. This is a 100% win for Apple.
... 3 position physical (key?) switch on drive (or array)
(1) looks to the BIOS/OS like a normal drive (or array) but keeps, inaccessibly and invisibly, all previous versions of files; perhaps also ignores destructive operations such as partitioning and formatting
(2) all versions above become visible but drive is read-only
(3) disk accessible as normal for partitioning, formatting or just maintenance (e.g. deleting of old versions of files).
I'm not sure that my drive usage is typical but it seems to me that ordinary file store disk usage would not be greatly increased by keeping all previous versions of files - by far the biggest chunk of my diskspace is taken up by files that are their initial version.
Even if this were not practical for operational disks or arrays, surely it's achievable for disk-based back-up solutions?
OK ...
I googled Mega Millions, it seems there are 5 numbers between 1 & 75, and 1 number between 1 & 15. The chances of getting all six is therefore one in 15 * 75! / ( (75-5)! * 5!) which is about 1 in 259 million (258,890,850)
The probability that you won't win is therefore (258,890,849 / 258,890,850 ) per play or about 0.99999999613. The probability that nobody will win in a draw with N plays is this number to the power of N. Where N is a million, that is 99.6%, but where N is a billion it is only 2%, so it doesn't seem that unlikely. Interestingly, that's nearly the exact opposite of your guess --- if 1 billion plays were made then the jackpot would get won 98% of the time!
If you want to work out what N is to so that the jackpot is won about 30% of the time, you need to work out what power you'd need to raise the non-win probability to to get 0.7 (i.e. a 70% chance no one wins a given draw). This is log (0.7) / log (258,890,849 / 258,890,850) which is about 92.3 million.
It doesn't seem at all unlikely to me that a 44 state lotto might get this many plays, it's probably only what, one play per average 2 head of population?
PS: didn't down vote you, because almost nobody can calculate probabilities like this intuitively, hence things like the birthday problem.
"Apparently what gives value to the painting/piece is the artist has attached a story to the painting giving it meaning" -- Triggerfish
basically says that modern art is a machine for generating art criticism ... possibly true ... but some *contemporary* art is extremely good.
1. No. They'd hack the hardware, possibly reading the security key from the processor with electron microscopy, side channel attacks etc. Brute forcing AES256 is limited "only by available compute power" but you couldn't fit the required compute power into the visible universe. There may be another way to break it but it isn't brute forcing.
2. Yes.
"Even though I get downvoted to hell and back, I maintain... if a court orders them to do it (after the argument has gone to the highest possible) ... they should damn well do it, or Cook should be thrown in jail." -- msknight
Err ... you do know that Apple are behaving in an entirely legal manner by appealing the judgment?
If your argument is that, once SCOTUS says they should do it, they should, you are wasting your time here -- Apple have already said they would comply with the law. Apple's whole point is that the law needs clarification and that should happen at a legislative level (SCOTUS / Congress) rather than be established by precedent in an individual case: as we all know, hard cases make bad law.
"If the supremes do make such an order then presumably everyone would welcome the decision? Isn't that what the Supreme Court for, handing down decisions that everyone accepts?" --- bazza
The last SCOTUS decision that was relevant here, in 1977, was that the All Writs Act had limits and could not be used to place unreasonable burdens on third parties.
Apple's argument is effectively that the FBI is trying to create law, rather than use existing law; and that this is a job for law-makers not law-enforcers. Sure many of us would be horrified if SCOTUS made the order to which you refer. But at least we'd know that this was now the official USA position.
In the end your argument is self contradicting: it is almost that no one should ever risk anything going to the Supremes in case the decision goes against them. I'm sure you can see there's a problem with such a stance.
"Then there's that whole 'warrant' thing people keep missing" -- Jeff Lewis
If you were right, the court of the first instance missed it is as well: because if it were a simple "warrant thing" then that court would never have needed to rely on the All Writs Act, as failure to comply with a warrant would put Apple in contempt of court.
People who say "This should be as simple as a warrant" are expressing an opinion that could potentially be justified by argument (I haven't yet seen a compelling one, but it's possible). People who say "This is as simple as a warrant issue" are just plain old wrong, and any other authoritative assertions that they make can be safely ignored.
"One could, of course, have argued that the OP is observing the good ship Panasonic on it's voyage to the downhill from a fixed point near the hilltop and so when he looks down he sees it red-shifted as it races away from him" -- 's water music
Bugger, I knew someone would get me with an alternative frame of reference!
"Hoooly shit, seriously? That's like the Pope's Divine Cheat Code Chair, only this applies to actual fucking law! If the court puts it into writing, it happens? Seriously?" --- ShadowDragon8685
Whilst I largely agree with your amusing take on this, there are two mitigating circumstances preventing it becoming a tool for draconian imposition of arbitrary burdens:
(a) the caveats, in the Act itself, of "necessary or appropriate" and "agreeable to the usages and principles of law"
(b) a 1977 Supreme Court Ruling that "... the power of federal courts to impose duties upon third parties is not without limits; unreasonable burdens may not be imposed"
"How is this any different from a warrant for telephone records or financial records where the telephone company or accountant are not complicit - nor alleged to be complicit - in any alleged wrong doing or financial malfeasance ?" -- Deltics
If it were no different, the All Writs Act would not have had to have been invoked because Apple would be in contempt of court for not complying with a warrant.
The FBI argues that Orenstein looked at the question too broadly and focused on possible future abuse rather than the actual case he was considering. And then effectively accuses him of overreach by saying his ruling "goes far afield of the circumstances of this case and sets forth an unprecedented limitation on federal courts' authority.
That argument would seem to be self defeating: the first part says that it is only about this one individual device (case) and pretends no precedent would be set. The second part is a concern that a precedent has been set (albeit the opposite one to the one they wanted) by a judgment in the same particular case.
"If I understood correctly the extracts of Hannigan's speech he is asking for crypto software which falls over if you don't follow a strict procedure, or some such 'human" cause of failure. So you can have your secure crypto but ..."
They already have everything they need to go after targets. No crypto is secure against endpoint compromise and all the old school spycraft (shoulder surfing, infiltration, honeypots) still works; all the new school spycraft (hidden cams, tempest, decoding audio to narrow down password search spaces) still works; and all the bang-up-to-date spycraft (keyloggers, hardware compromise, certificate compromise, rng tampering) still works.
I totally support them going after targets. I shall totally resist the dragnet.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
