Posts by Matt Bryant

Re: keithpeter Re: Assumptions, assumptions...

"....wondering how to get all this on the Gantt chart." Amusing as it is to imagine many a PHB scratching their heads at the possible impacts, the majority of manglement I have dealt with seem to have a hard time planning further than their next lunch! The reality is, even if Article 50 was enacted today, there would be a full two years minimum that the UK would still be tied to running with existing EU regs, so for most projects it will be zero actual change or impact involved. The fun bit is any new EU regs that get brought in during the negotiation period after the Article 50 announcement, which Brussels may want to force on the UK as part of the negotiations.

Re: Elmars Re: There goes the EU data Safe Harbor business

"This seriously sucks for foreign companies using hosting services in the UK to meet EU data residency requirements.... no choice but to move....." Er, why? UK-based companies can still comply with the EU rules, there is no disadvantage there compared to EU-based companies. But, UK-based companies can now take a more flexible approach to non-EU customers, such as the US, whilst EU-based companies cannot. Take the example of a big US healthcare company like McKesson, say they want to build a DR center for US patients' data, and the choices are the UK or France. With the UK post-Brexit they may just have to worry about the existing cost of HIPPA compliance, but if they go to France they have to add the cost and complexity of complying with EU rules as well as HIPPA. So the UK option now has a cost and simplicity advantage as well as a language advantage (oh, and we don't have the French Union problems either).

Re: ShelLuser Re: Assumptions, assumptions...

".....but what's with all the negativity?...." Well, from a purely business perspective, change of any sort introduces costs and requires planning, whereas stability means you can just carry on as you were. The problem for businesses is the Brexit introduces uncertainty, which makes planning even harder and more costly - staying on a sinking ship when you can predict the rate of sink makes for a more predictable business environment (especially when you can kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with) than jumping overboard and swimming to shore (will there be sharks in the water, or cannibals on the beach?). Hence the negativity amongst "business leaders". But, what business leaders want and what the average Joe on the street wants may not align. The problem for those business leaders promoting the predictability of continuing in the EU - basically, following the herd - was that the 2008 recession and the experience with the Greek bailout showed that following the herd off a cliff is sometimes not the smart thing for the average Joe in the street to do.

Re: Antron Re: Turn about

"Well, my question is: is it illegal to block an attempted hack?....." No. If you are simply defending yourself against an unidentified threat then that is perfectly legal. Being unaware it is the FBI makes your actions innocent as defensive measures would be the reasonable response to an intrusion. You could probably even get away with deleting evidence by claiming you thought deletion of the data was the only way to protect your secrets from the unknown hacker, it would then be up to the FBI to prove you deliberately deleted evidence to avoid the FBI discovering it. But you might be called to explain in court why you thought your actions were justified defensive measures, and if the prosecutor can sow the idea in the jury's minds that you did it in bad faith.....

".....And the followup question: if you know it's the FBI trying to hack you, is it illegal to block the attempted hack?" If you become aware it is an attempt from the FBI, and you are in an area under their jurisdiction (probably including areas with co-operation and extradition treaties), and the FBI could prove that you knew (not sure how they would), then they could charge any further attempts to thwart their hack as interference with an investigation (or spoliation of evidence if you delete or encrypt anything after you become aware the FBI are hacking you). I suppose a defence would be, when an attack is detected, if you believed it was the FBI then call them and ask them - if they deny it is them then you have the legal protection of saying your further defensive measures were innocently made because "they said it wasn't them". Of course, if it's not the FBI and you call them, they may say "no, but we'll hack you now you're on our radar as thinking we might have an interest in hacking you, thanks!"

Outside the FBI's jurisdiction it becomes a matter of co-operation between local and US authorities. Ukrainian hackers have recently found out to their cost that hacking US servers can lead to extradition, but hackers in places like Ecuador, Cuba, China or Venezuela are laughing.

Re: AC Re: As it should be

"FBI should hack Tor, Tor should secure against that. If FBI wasn't allowed to try to hack it, how would we know it was backdoored?...." Well, yes. But I suspect the FBI's NIT did not "break" TOR but simply made TOR's hiding of IP addresses in transit irrellevant. Note the article states the "malware" was put on the server, which is effectively outside TOR, then the identifying "signal" was collected after the package had exited TOR and was on the target's PC. All TOR does is encrypt the package and obfuscate your IP address in transit, it does not detect and prevent malware from broadcasting your IP address after it has reached your PC. This is how honeypots are used to track e-crims, it's nothing new, the only legal question was whether the use of TOR by the paedos gave some right or expectation of privacy, which the judge decided it did not.

Re: Pascal Monet Re: So the FBI has the right to hack the world

"So the FBI has the right to hack the world....." Er, no. Despite the click-bait headline, the judge is clear that the FBI's rights only extended in this very narrow case due to the larger threat of child pornography to US Citizens. You may continue as you were (unless you're into child porn....?).

Re: Cynical Observer Re: E(USSR)

".....I suspect that the Baltic states who are now members of the EU were more than a little grateful that they had those ties in place when Mr Putin was flexing the muscles of Russian military might on the Ukrainian border....." No, membership of NATO was what they were glad of, not the EU. NATO membership guarantees mutual defence, not the EU. The EU's Common Security & Defence Policy makes zero actual guarantee of mutual defence, it is just another bit of airy-fairy gobbledygook which "strives to have a future common EU military force" but is completely reliant on NATO. This is just another bit of Remain propaganda. Without NATO (and that really means the US) Pootie could swallow each of the Baltic states at will and the EU would be able to do nothing other than issue strongly worded letters of condemnation. Indeed, the economic pain of a US-led banking embargo is much more of a deterrent to Pootie's ambitions than the collective whining of the EU.

Re: Preston Munchensonton Re: (E)USSR

"......given how brutally Soviet citizens suffered under the USSR with none of the protections afforded by the EU....." True, whilst not as extreme as some of Stalin's measures, you might find a lot of Greeks would like to disagree about the "protections afforded by the EU" after the economic hardships introduced by Greek participation in the EU. The biggest complaint I hear from Greek friends is that the baillout makes the Greek people feel literally enslaved to the German-led EU, like some indentured slave state, with zero control of their own future. Even the idiotic Greek policies that led to their economic downfall were a direct result of the EU's encouragement and policies, and the lackadaisical accounting and oversight that worsened the mess are definitely the fault of the EU's politically-inspired blinkers. The rise of both far-Right and far-Left parties across Europe (especially in the PIGS countries) is a sign of just how unpopular the EU's "protection" has become, especially as it seems to leave them unable to do anything other than follow the diktat of unelected officials in Brussels (rather like the USSR of old).

Re: Christian Berger Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish...

So much fun forwarding articles like this to freetards and watching them go purple ranting on about "The Great Satan in Redmond"!

Re: AC Re: Itanic is right!

"HPE should have taken the Tandem SQL and the Tandem non-stop architecture to IA-64...." Er, they did, quite a while ago. IIRC, you can still buy Itanium-based Nonstop I servers and now also Xeon-based Nonstop X servers (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/integrity/nonstop/nonstopi-rackservers.html#!&pd1=1).

Re: DavidJB

"If I recall correctly.... Sea Dart only worked against high level targets...." Read, digest, recall accurate information next time - http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Sea_Dart_(missile), http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Sea_Wolf_(missile). Please note the bit about how, during the Gulf War, an RN Sea Dart saved USS Missouri from an Iraqi Silkworm missile after the USN's Phalanx was fooled by their own chaff. The RN decided they preferred Goalkeeper to Phalanx as Goalkeeper's 30mm shells are much more likely to destroy an incoming missile with one hit than Phalanx's 20mm shells.

Re: x 7 Re: Sorry that handle Voland's right hand Two steps forward...

"I think its (sic) now fairly well accepted....." Er, no. There was a particularly strident group of morons that tried to claim that the Patriots were a failure because they didn't actually hit the Scuds, but this ignores the fact the Patriots weren't designed to hit but to explode near bye, the shrapnel from the airburst then damaging the target so badly it would break up. This is common to the majority of SAMs - they don't usually aim for a direct hit. The same group of morons also tried belittling the Patriots' success rate by talking about "per-missile interception rates", which again ignored the fact that Patriots were fired in groups at a target to produce several airbursts around the Scud for maximum chance of breakup. But the biggest factor in the "low" rate of interceptions was the shoddy quality of Saddam's Scuds - many simply broke up on during flight, leaving nothing for the Patriots automatically fired in anticipation to actually hit! Plenty of Scud casings were recovered riddled with hits from Patriot shrapnel. Since then, Patriot has undergone a number of enhancements to make it even better as an ABM. So, think again.

Re: TheVogon Re: Two steps forward...

".....I think you mean since the demise of the British Empire...." The Middle East has been screwed for centuries, regardless of the British Empire. The bizarre baaaahlief that all was rosy in the area until Britain took an interest simply doesn't stack up with historical fact. Even under the Ottoman Empire there was plenty of bloodshed, such as the Armenian genocide, and Arab nationalism kickstarted anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire long before Britain got involved (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Antisemitism). Britain (and France) just inherited the results of thousands of years of ethnic strife in the region.

Re: Sorry that handle Re: Voland's right hand Two steps forward...

".....Has Patriot's been tested in that role?...." Even first generation Patriot could, as shown during the 1991 Gulf War when they swatted Scuds out of the sky. Iskander is little more than just a developed Scud, not the all-singing, all-dancing, magically-teleporting-about-the-sky superweapon Voland thinks it is. What Iskander can do that the new RS-28 can't is go out on the road and be launched from just about anywhere, making it much harder to strike pre-emptively or monitor for launch plumes. That was the real problem of Saddam's Scuds during the Gulf Wars - their mobility. As the RS-28 will go into already known silos they will all be under 24x7 surveillance from US satellites watching for any hint of launch activity (such as fueling up), even before we get to launch plumes (nice big IR indicator). As it is, the Kaliningrad Oblast is small enough that satellite tracking of Iskander mobile launchers trying to hide wouldn't be too hard a task.

Iskander does pay a penalty for being mobile and staying sub-orbital in that it is smaller and much shorter-ranged (@280-500km). Going orbital makes for true long range, staying inside the atmosphere requires a massive amount of fuel to go intercontinental, especially if you want to try maneuvering inside the atmosphere. Iskander only maneuvers on the downward arc of its trajectory, not during the climb, making it vulnerable to anti-ballistic missiles after launch. If the RS-28 wants to try hypersonic maneuvering inside the atmosphere without folding up it will not be making small turns but massive arcs, which will not be hard to track and intercept. Claims that any ICBM will be flying nap-of-the-Earth like a cruise missile but at hypersonic speeds are too stupid for words, as maneuvering at such speeds would require a structure made with massive amounts of reinforcing to handle the stresses, so much so the warhead would be tiny. The fact that the RS-28 uses the same engine modules as the old R-36M2, which are not designed for hypersonic maneuvering inside the atmosphere, goes to show the RS-28 is just the same-old-same-old in an updated wrapper.

Pootie needs his part of the MAD balance to be at least a viable threat, and there are rumours that the older Soviet ICBMs simply rotted in their silos to the point where only one-in-four were fit to launch, let alone deliver their warheads successfully. The RS-28 is just Pootie updating his old kit with new kit plus a lot of propaganda.