Posts by Ball boy

Whatever next?

Perhaps he'll state that Russian farming output is up 15%, manufacturing by 20% and all comrades will celebrate this momentous news.

Or he'll argue that black is white - and we all know how that ends!

Need to get away from these names

So what comes after 'ultra'? 'Super Ultra'? 'Mega Turbo Nitrous'? At this rate, the die will have to increase just to have enough space for the chip's name.

The benefit of a numbering sequence is that, at a glance, you can see that the 15-series is newer than the 13-series. I admit, it doesn't help when there's performance, economy and other internal differences within a single family - but surely calling a generic range 'Ultra' is short sighted at best.

Same goes for Operating Systems please (although, to be fair to the *nix set, at least they seem use sequential letters: 'Hairy Hippo' is newer than 'Ancient Arsehole' or whatever insane names got used for those releases so they makes a tad more sense).

For shame. They did pretty good hardware

I'm not a fan of Redmond bloatware - but ironically, their keyboards had enough mass to stay still & felt good to use. Their mice were natural to use and usually outlasted other makes (who else remembers scraping the build-up of detritus off the rollers behind the rubber coated steel ball and the feeling of restoring a mouse to perfect tracking?). Must admit, I thought they just rebranded someone's hardware though, I really had no idea they actually made it. Never thought I'd ever say this but: full marks to them for some outstanding tech.

Now to convince them to drop this silly software lark and get back to making decent input devices!

Plays havok with the providers

The 'reasonable use' clause will get a hammering. The reason providers can afford to offer decent rates on connections is because the law of averages says that not everyone will be capping-out their connection limits all the time. If someone happens to be in a popular spot and their connection gets heavy use, the provider will most certainly see this as unreasonable use and bill them accordingly.

Nice idea - certainly very public-spirited - but there are issues with opening up a private connection for general use that go far beyond the basic security aspects.

Can I arrange to have mine sent an hour or two earlier, please?

If this were a real alert then getting it fractionally earlier would mean I can rush out to buy loo roll before the masses descend on the shops and strip the shelves bare of everything useful.

</ironic mode>

In reality, what's one meant to do if there's a real alert? If it's a natural event, I very much doubt it'd give enough warning to take any truly constructive action ("get to high ground" sent to everyone in, say, Norfolk would cause immediate and complete congestion on the roads, ditto "barricade against flooding" for DIY stores, etc.).

For many years, there was a weekly test of a network of sirens around the Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. Every Monday at 10 (IIRC) there was a test followed by the 'all clear' sound. This was dropped in the last few years because the authorities saw no need for such a service (social media was oft-quoted as a reasonable enough replacement that would reach enough people to make it functional). I wonder, is this a solution that's looking for a decent problem?

It's not just about the technology

Forget the technology of on prem vs. hosted or cloud for a moment and think about the money: if you're a beancounter, it's far preferable to pay a monthly/quarterly fee for your compute than it is to dig into the company savings and tie up a vast sum in buildings, hardware and people. Sure, if you average-out the costs over a few years of both models then the chances are good that the on prem will work out cheaper - but that's not how it works in finance. Operational costs are better on the balance sheet because there's there's less debt.

While they could bring the services back in house and lease the building space, rent the hardware and so on - that generally comes with lock-ins and, once again, that looks ugly on the balance sheet because it has to show as money you are committed to spending in subsequent years and you generally can't forward account for income on a similar basis.

It happens!

Late '90's and I worked for a distributor of optical storage subsystems. Got a call from an account manager working for a systems integrator. They'd sold one of our largest library units to a major bank and could we spare a specialist to attend site at short notice? Their client had told them they needed to move this bit of kit within its server room and the SI didn't feel comfortable without backup. A suitable fee was negotiated for the out of hours operation and I headed into central London, armed with the appropriate spare SCSI cables, terminators and anything else I could think of that someone could lose/damage in transit.

Having got there and signed-in to the fairly secure area, I watched, bemused, as the units castor wheels were each unlocked, the machine rolled backwards a couple of feet so an item that had rolled under the box could be recovered. The jukebox was then ceremoniously restored to its original location and its wheels locked. A few system tests were run and then we all went out for a beer. Probably the easiest consultancy fee we ever earned, just a shame the SI didn't clarify the extent of the 'move' first!

Discriminatory?

"The report says IAL2 non-compliance was a matter of discussion as early as 2019.

That discussion ended, according to the OIG report, when Vladlen "Dave" Zvenyach, former director of GSA's Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the group overseeing the development of the authentication service, determined that facial recognition via submitted selfies was discriminatory."

Isn't that the whole idea of using facial recognition for authentication - that it's discriminatory? There's not a lot of point using it if can't discriminate between users! Perhaps, in context, the discrimination was that some had laptops with cameras/phones whilst other potential users didn't have the means to generate selfies.

I don't feel too sorry for the publishers

Publishing are having their cake and eating it.

If I buy a book (paying their publishing fees in the price) and then render my copy unusable (drop it in the sink, have the spine un-glue itself, allowing the pages fall out, etc.), they don't let me buy a replacement at a discount: I have to pay their royalties all over again. Same went for music on vinyl and CD (remember them?): scratch a disk and you have to pay full price to replace it.

Fix that problem and I might see their side of this argument in a better light.

Not taking sides but...

Chances are, even if Adidas gave the damn things away they'd still have to pay royalties. Plus, it would be seen by many as Adidas profiteering (i.e. generating market awareness for being so 'generous') - and that itself would/could be translated into 'making a profit' and therefore fall under royalties conditions.

Mind you, I'm confused this statement: Destroying them would "raise sustainability issues,". What would happen differently if they were sold then? Maybe it's me, but I read that as saying "the environmental impact of our product lines cease to be a problem as long as they're sold and not in our warehouse".

Infuriating

Using Windows these days must be like sharing your car with another driver: each time *you* want to use it, you have to spend five minutes re-adjusting the seat, the mirrors and radio before you get going!

Perhaps the analogy would be better to liken it to using a hire car - because it's looking increasingly likely that OS rental is their objective.

Anyone been asked if they want this 'feature'?

I imagine, because it's integrated into the bar, that people will use it out of laziness (beats opening a browser, waiting for it to load then typing in the same query). Redmond will then take the usage data and declare it to be a roaring success because, well, look at the number of users.

Read the article - it's worth it...

...just for the phrase "Many insect species may be described as ‘frass-shooters,’ ‘butt-flickers,’ and ‘turd-hurlers’ that innovated unusual strategies to launch away both liquid and solid excrements" ('Discussion', about half way in)

Never thought I'd read a science paper that mentions turd-hurling but there we go. Mind you, I think I've worked for one or two turd-hurlers in my time!

What fun!

I can only imagine what a laugh someone will have when they find a hole in the security at Ford and 'relocate' thousands of cars to some suitable public location.

I'm no black hat - but even I can see the temptation to become one just for the giggles.

Using the cloud for DoD data is madness anyway

First rule of keeping anything secure is that you minimise the number of people who have access. When buildings like the Pentagon are constructed, that means the electricians, the plasterers - even the bloke pouring the concrete for the foundations - all have to be vetted to some level. This is done because the information contained therein is sensitive. To then outsource the storage or manipulation of said data to a cloud platform means that all their people need to be security vetted too - from the foundation-builders through to the daily ops teams and all in between.

Errors in configuration that do things like, say, expose sensitive data are that much more difficult to manage when the host platform is outside your control.

Updated quote

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we have a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses"

"Hate it. We're driving the new GM"

With apologies to the Blues Brothers.

Vaccumming up for you

Oh good: another IoT device that people will either forget to update regularly or won't get any security updates after a year or two.

Then it'll not only clean your floors, it'll most likely start Hoovering up your data as well!

Chewed wires?

Try this one: https://www.pestend.co.uk/2019/05/07/squirrels-can-cause-serious-risk/

Now that really is a serious case of the munchies! No word of anything actually getting flambéed though.

Mission critical components

NOTAM goes down and US aviation is grounded - so it's clearly a mission-critical application.

One change is that maintenance will now require two employees to be deployed. Good idea, I'm surprised the FAA hadn't already mandated peer-reviewed work for important jobs like this.

Perhaps now would be a good time to ask what, if any, other mission critical systems under their care still allow maintenance to be carried out by an individual working alone - and who signed-off on the risk assessment that allows it!

Strange way to respect user privacy

Running a scan to see what out of date (or soon to be out of date) versions of their software users might have doesn't strike me as 'respecting my privacy' that much. I bought it and if I choose to continue to run it well after it's outside their support time frame is surely my business and none of theirs.

As to 'keeping the data on secure servers'? Well, we all know how well that often works out. The less personal data out there, the smaller the vector for exposure. I'd argue there's no conceivable need for Redmond to store this kind of data - and if they don't intend to use it for anything, why do they propose storing it anyway?

It's a good platform to use!

A balloon makes for a great reconnaissance platform: it's slow moving and can have very non-aerodynamic antennas without them causing flight issues. However, it has a problem: if it's passively collecting data then the folk on the ground have predictable flight path options and can 'go quiet' when it's in range - or cover items from visible sight. If it's actively scanning then I'm sure NORAD will have a handle on its radar bands and will have deduced things like its likely resolution and so on - again, making it possible to mitigate what useful information it can collect.

Shooting it down is a tough call. If I were to send a balloon into someone's back yard, I'd wrap any sensitive equipment with a Pound or two of high explosive, primed to detonate either on command or automatically if the flight envelope varies outside what I consider 'expected'.

Even if it collects nothing more useful than the exact temps and wind speeds at 60+ thousand feet, it's served a very useful political role to someone: it's got the US public (and us lot!) talking about a potential threat and making people think national defence is sub-standard. I don't know if we should be embarrassed about it or shamed for not thinking of it first!

It's all about risk management

If your OS is sourced from a single supplier then you're at risk of them having an off-day when they roll out an update (sure, you can mitigate by extensively testing their updates before allowing them - but that does rather sound like doing their QA for them). However, if you then decide to place your business' email and working files in a cloud owned by the same software vendor then you're multiplying your risk considerably: not only could their cloud connections cause issues, but their own internal rollout of their own update could take you down (question: when they release an update, do they extensively test it before rolling it out across their cloud? I think we should be told!)

Put simply: the more you rely on a single supplier, the greater your risk. Use the cloud if that suits your operational/financial processes. Rely one one vendor for your OS and mainstream business apps too, if have to. Just be aware that placing all your eggs in one basket doesn't usually work out as the best strategy if business continuity is your objective - but then, we all know that, right? Right?

Sting's 'Brand New Day' album tracks

It's almost as if he foretold things because both Big Lie Small World and Tomorrow We'll See are tracks that feature on the album.

Of course, so does Prelude to the End of the Game. I wonder if he considered playing that little number to the Redmond elite?

That may well be the military analysis but it's a great deal more nuanced in reality: to more accurately assess the realistic response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan, we would need to know how the American population would respond (and the other Western populations). Given we're likely to be up to our necks in Ukraine still, would there really be much support for a leading role in a war in the Far East? With a weakened American President and the GOP looking like they're gathering momentum again, there's a very realistic chance of the country deciding they don't particularly want to get involved too much (there will be cries of 'look at the past history of US involvement in the East').

Then there's the financial situation: meaningful embargoes on China would be next to impossible for now: we import so much from them that there's no way the west could possibly re-engineer supply chains in such a short time frame; there'd be massive inflationary pressure that would hit pretty much every aspect of modern life and quickly impact the lives of voting citizens.

By far the most logical approach for a government to take, surely, would be to concede that Taiwan is 'only' important to the west because of the chip manufacturing it supports and it would follow that reducing that dependence is, by far, the cheaper and less politically risky strategy. Yes, it throws Taiwan to the wolves - but since when has that ever kept a politician awake at night? (cf. Middle East, Europe after WWII - and WWI - and most of Africa for time immemorial).

This think tank is simply a public display for the benefit of the Chinese. They're aware of the strength of the Chinese, their show of muscle with recent rocket launches and the west can't respond in kind. Writing up a 'we have a plan' paper is a more diplomatic way of showing the west's support.

Morgan hacked?

So Piers Morgan, then editor of The Daily Mirror when it was embroiled in a phone-hacking scandal, has had his Twitter account compromised?

I'm so sorry, atheists, but there does appear to be a God after all.

How's this sound as an idea?

Hey guys, I have a thought: let's buy CoD and license it to Sony, etc. It'll increase our bottom line a little this year, which will help.

But: next year - once we have Sony's gamers nicely on the hook - we release a new version of CoD that needs an additional library that Sony have to license from us on some kind of per-console, annual fee. To paraphrase Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption: Lord, how the money will roll in!

Migrating to Oracle?

Oh, that makes it all okay then: we all know Oracle's DB can't store IP addresses - so there's no chance of this kind of thing ever happening again and it'll all benefit from perfect oversight in the future.

Banned from Government devices? I'd suggest the last three words in that sentence need redacting.