* Posts by JimmyPage

3213 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2010

Cu in Hell: Thousands internetless after copper thieves pinch 500m of cable in Cambridgeshire

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Re: A simple (but costly) answer

The problems is

1) that pitch has been queered by companies parking copper cables as fibre to do security on the cheap - so thieves are going to rip them up anyway, just to make sure.

2) it presupposes a level of intelligence in thieves that all of human history doesn't really support.

Look, we know it feels like everything's going off the rails right now, but think positive: The proton has a new radius

JimmyPage Silver badge
Boffin

(whispers) perhaps it doesn't have a fixed size ?

Who knows, it's only a cloud of energy at the end of the day. Who's to say it doesn't vary with respect to another cloud of energy. Or indeed time itself ?

And just to muddy the waters further, are we sure all protons are the same ? I appreciate there's no reason to think otherwise, but are we assuming or is there some sort of proof in the equations of the boffins or has someone actually tried to experimentally demonstrate it.

The great thing about science, is that for every question you can think of to try and answer, there's 10 more waiting to be asked.

Microsoft's cloudy Windows Virtual Desktop: It fills a gap, but there are plenty of annoyances

JimmyPage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Is this where X-Server steps in (for Linux) ?

Upvoted, but noting that X11 could have been developed much further which would have meant the alternatives you list may not have been needed.

Big fan of NoMachine, myself.

Apple blinks on iPhone repairs, touts parts program for independent tech mechanics... sort of

JimmyPage Silver badge

Is the Apple money tap running low ?

Just a stab in the dark, but the "approved training" will be like the old MSCE (or current for all I know) trick of expiring one every few months and needing to have a set of 3 or 4 to be "qualified" ?

Looks like they're looking to start a new cash pipeline.

Or is that too cynical ?

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

JimmyPage Silver badge
Pint

Re: Benito Jonsolini

I regret I have but one upvote to give you, sir. Have a -----> on me

Dixons hits back at McAfee's £30m antivirus sueball: Your AV didn't work on Windows 10S

JimmyPage Silver badge
Linux

install a vanilla copy of Windows

Why ?

For home use, there's nothing I need Windows for - and haven't for nearly a decade.

And any occasional annoyance I have with sorting the right Linux app for the job is far outweighed by the fact I haven't (and am not ....) paying for it, and it's not spaffing goodness-knows-what back to MS.

I long gave up on the idea of Desktop Linux in business. But really can't understand anyone who works in IT not using it at home.

Huawei smartphone sales up but only thanks to China as US trade ban gives punters the jitters

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Re: 5) Get support for them.

To be honest, it sounds like you need support less than you need a refund as Not Fit For Purpose. Certainly while UK law allows it.

Uncle Sam is asking Americans if they could refrain from slapping guns on their drones

JimmyPage Silver badge
Boffin

Where in "keep and bear arms" does it say anything about them not being attached to an aircraft?

The word "bear". The moment you're not touching the arm, you are not bearing it.

(It might take a little bit of further thinking to see why that has to be be case. Start by imagining it wasn't, and work backwards)

Brit rocketeer Skyrora reckons it'll be orbital in 3 years – that is, if UK government plays ball

JimmyPage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Surely El Reg (or it's readers) could back this further ?

How about a pi-in-a-can minisat ?

Finally. Thanks so much, nerds. Google, Apple, Mozilla end government* internet spying for good

JimmyPage Silver badge
Big Brother

The biggest weakness in the whole TLS arena

Is the chain of trust required to support it.

We are all forced to use HTTPS etc. But I have to say my trust in it is pretty low.

Microsoft: Reckon our code is crap? Prove it and $30k could be yours

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

So this is the future - not wages, but "prizes" ?

Have YouGov taken over Microsoft ?

Am I alone in finding the "bug bounty" culture that appears to have developed a tad ... problematic ? How long before we see it applied to our own jobs ? And then in the wider world. Imagine if Sainsburys were able to avoid paying wages, but offer a "bounty" to the first person to get a shelf stacked ? Meaning (here's the genius bit) they actually get all shelves stacked (or 99% stacked) but only have to pay for one person.

Don't panic! Don't panic! UK IT job ads plummet as Brexit uncertainty grabs UK tech sector by the short and curlies

JimmyPage Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: And the NHS is doomed

No mainstream politician of any persuasion has ever argued with the principle of free at the point of delivery.

They don't need to, when most of the public can be conned into doing it for them, Look at the current "health tourism" trope that people have fallen for.

So your Google Play Publisher account has been terminated – of course you would want to know why exactly

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Is this the same Play Store

that quite happily flung "apps" that were just links to webpages ?

Or a different one ?

Cisc-o-no! 'We’re being uninvited to bid' on China deals admits CEO as Middle Kingdom snub freaks out investors

JimmyPage Silver badge
Holmes

A casual observer ...

might think that judging by results, Trump was batting for China, not America .....

How dodgy browser plugins, web scripts can silently rewrite that URL you were about to hit – and throw you into an internet wormhole

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

You could even end up on a Child Pron site totally by accident

Sorry, I call bollocks.

And bollocks again.

Like a paedo in every bush (which does sound like a depraved election promise, I grant you) this fairy tale notion that the web is awash with child porn that anyone might stumble on is one of those tropes shit newspapers rely on to whip the masses into more and more privacy busting laws.

Also, any investigation into a person suspected of viewing any form of illegal pornography starts with rebutting any danger the suspect can say "I accidentally clicked on a link". A successful prosecution needs to show the defendant knowingly and deliberately sought out the offending material.

We checked and yup, it's no longer 2001. And yet you can pwn a Windows box via Notepad.exe

JimmyPage Silver badge
Boffin

TL;DR but this seems a variant of message loop hacking ?

Us greybeards know how multitasking OSes actually work - by cycling through a message loop deep, deep, deep inside the actual silicon. At that level, the OS trusts - *has* to trust - that the queue of commands has been legitimately created.

It is possible to secure a message loop against hacking - by signing every message with the key of the process that inserted it. But we prefer performance to security.

I could throttle you right about now: US Navy to ditch touchscreens after kit blamed for collision

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

Based on my (Citroen) in car touch screen

They are all SHIT.

A little trick mine plays (for example when selecting a preset speed for the limiter) is to "blip" to show it's registered your touch, and then do fuck all - the wife has actually filmed this happening.

The result is you either end up speeding, or looking for longer than is safe at this utterly shit piece of kit that you have to somehow tell yourself made it through the most exacting of tests to be allowed out in the wild.

I know it's a car, not a 737Max, but the former explains the latter.

Reminder: When a tech giant says it listens to your audio recordings to improve its AI, it means humans are listening. Right, Skype? Cortana?

JimmyPage Silver badge
Mushroom

Do me a fucking favour ...

Sorry, but speaking two languages (as I do) there is no way of "listening in" to "correct a few word". Language doesn't work like that - there are nuances, subtleties and a vast layer of uninflected meaning in spoken communication.

The real headline here (apart from how easy it is for the tech giants to snoop despite promising not to) is how pisspoor "AI" must be if it needs an army of humans to actually provide it.

Not really very "A" is it ?

A much better solution would be to promote learning a second language - *any* second language - in schools.

They say piracy killed the Amiga. Know what else piracy is killing? Malware sales

JimmyPage Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: This reminds me of Son May

Indeed.

back in the days of vinyl (or today, if you prefer) when bootleg LPs were a thing, some of them were real works of art. Beautifully packaged, with proper artwork, labels - the lot. I have a couple of pristine Led Zeppelin ones "Destroyer" and "Live on Blueberry Hill" are as good as anything the band ever released.

It's also worth noting that quite a few artists have made use of bootleg recordings (Jimmy Page, certainly) to fill in the gaps on official releases ....

---> what being hit by Led Zeppelin in their heyday would have felt like :)

UK parliament sends snippy letter to Zuck and his poodle Clegg as it seems Facebook has been lying again

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... and ????

To be honest, unless there is a mighty action at the end of all this - either seeing some FB execs behind bars, or the UK moving to ban FB in the UK, all of this is really just for the popcorn sales.

Something feeding the current state of politics is the observation that no matter how big the wrong, no matter how many people are affected, fuck all happens.

Data breach, you say ? MILLIONS of peoples details spaffed ? Too bad really. A slap here, a tickle there, and the plebs will suck it up.

Rinse and repeat for every singly egregious act anywhere in the establishment until you get to the Priti Patels and Boris Johnsons of the world and realise they are now in charge.

Is it any wonder more and more people aren't respecting the law ? It clearly is for mugs only.

Satellites with lasers and machine guns coming! China's new plans? Trump's Space Force? Nope, the French

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Just flying a kite here

I'll start by disclaiming any expertise in anything, so this is a blue-sky (literally) idea.

Surely a powerful enough laser could heat a satellite in orbit enough to shift it out of position ? Not sure how robust these things are, but it's a damn sight cheaper to throw photons at something than real mass ?

NASA trumpets Orion completion as India heads to the Moon

JimmyPage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: 50 years since landing on the moon...

Build the heat shield on the moon ?

Or park the heat shield and re-entry lumber in LEO, go to the moon, and pick it up and drop back to earth that way ?

He's coming for your floppy: Linus Torvalds is killing off support for legacy disk drive tech

JimmyPage Silver badge
Coat

Er, what do I do with my old 78s ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSINO6MKtco

Can't dance? That's no excuse. Let a robot do it for you at this 'forced exoskeleton rave'

JimmyPage Silver badge
FAIL

Is it just me, or does that video clip

manage to convey nothing that seemed out of the ordinary ?

If they wanted to impress me, then seeing it without the special effects - maybe in a lab - would have been a million times better.

Cyberlaw wonks squint at NotPetya insurance smackdown: Should 'war exclusion' clauses apply to network hacks?

JimmyPage Silver badge
Coat

Re: cyber equivalent of a Weapon of Mass Destruction

Adobe Flash ?

Windows ?

Don't press the red b-... Windows Insiders' rings hit by surprise Microsoft emission

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

RE: holding off on Win10

Except you're not, are you ? There's no such beast as "Windows 10" - or indeed "Windows <anything>" anymore.

It's just Windows. Delivered as a service and updated to whatever, whenever Microsoft see fit. You can delay installation. Until you fall too many iterations behind - at which point you're not covered by patches and security fixes.

Welcome to the new world.

Marketing biz bares folks' data in the act of asking for their GDPR comms preferences

JimmyPage Silver badge

"we are an organisation that takes data protection and privacy with the utmost seriousness"

Until we have to pay for it ....

We really need an "O'reilly ?"/"Chinny reckon" Icon ....

UK.gov drives ever further into Nocluesville, crowdsources how to solve digital identity

JimmyPage Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Le sigh

Far too simple, and nowhere near enough pork to shovel towards Capita et al.

Rust in peace: Memory bugs in C and C++ code cause security issues so Microsoft is considering alternatives once again

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Re: you can't write a pre-emptively multi-tasking OS for the 8086

The 68000 was around by then ....

Those facial recognition trials in the UK? They should be banned, warns Parliamentary committee

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

It's not illegal when the government does it.

Who else is waiting to hear that gem ?

Don't give it away, give it away, give it away now, bot busting biz tells reCAPTCHA data serfs

JimmyPage Silver badge
Boffin

Whatever happened to reverse CAPTCHAs ?

Where only bots could solve them ...

It just wasn't meant toupee: Bloke nicked at Barcelona Airport with €30k of blow under wig

JimmyPage Silver badge
Coat

I guess a lot of regulars are on holiday ?

This far in, and no one thought of "hairline crack" ?

If malware wants to bury deep inside your Lenovo or Gigabyte servers, they can just ask Vertiv's insecure BMC firmware

JimmyPage Silver badge
WTF?

Interesting legally, rather than technically ...

I wonder how many MegaCorps have bought kit and had a T&C somewhere in the deal that required a declaration by the supplier/manufacturer that the kit was secure from such bright ideas as BMC ?

Or, more to the point, I wonder how many will from this point on ?

Now that's a popcorn-fest waiting to happen ....

Ex-Which? bod's £3bn Safari sueball has second shot at Google over UK data laws

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

But the judges were right ?

When was the last time anyone actually got any money as a result of a data protection breach ?

Loads of fines, yes. But not a penny to a victim.

Internet imbeciles, aka British ISP lobbyists, backtrack on dubbing Mozilla a villain for DNS-over-HTTPS support

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

Re: Do you have a link please?

Here you go

I'll also post the text ...

QUOTE

bbc.co.uk

Use of child spies by Home Office 'lawful'

3-4 minutes

A girl standing in a hoodie Image copyright Getty Images

Allowing children to be used as informants in criminal investigations is lawful, the High Court has ruled.

Charity Just for Kids Law brought the case against the Home Office over the use of children by police and other bodies in England and Wales.

The campaign group said the safeguards in place were inadequate and the practice breached human rights.

But the High Court rejected the legal challenge, saying there was a "system of oversight" in place.

In March it was revealed that 17 children had been used to secretly gather intelligence for police and other agencies in the last four years.

Lord Justice Fulford, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner who is carrying out a review into the use of children as covert human intelligence sources (CHIS), said one of the informants was 15 years old, while the others were aged 16 and 17.

The Home Office had argued that undercover under-18s helped prevent and prosecute problems such as gang violence and dealing drugs.

However, concerns over the use of juveniles were raised in the House of Lords last year with the case of a 17-year-old girl who was recruited to spy on a man who had been exploiting her sexually.

The peers heard that the girl continued to be exploited sexually while she was deployed by police.

Charity may appeal

Dismissing the charity's case, Mr Justice Supperstone said he was satisfied the scheme was lawful.

The judge said children were "inherently more vulnerable than adults" and that the "very significant risk of physical and psychological harm" to them from being a CHIS in the context of serious crime is "self-evident".

However, he said he rejected the charity's contention "that the scheme is inadequate in its safeguarding" of the juveniles involved in the scheme.

Just for Kids Law, which used crowdfunding to pay for the case, said it was disappointed and was considering whether to appeal against the decision.

The charity's chief executive, Enver Solomon, said the judgement acknowledges the '"variety of dangers" that arise from the use of children as covert informants in the context of serious crime.

He added: "We remain convinced that new protections are needed to keep these children safe."

Presentational white space

Security minister Ben Wallace said the ruling showed the court recognised that the protections in law ensure "the best interests, safety and welfare of the child will always be paramount".

Children had been used as informants fewer than 20 times since January 2015, he said, but they remained "an important tool to investigate the most serious of crimes".

He added: "They will only be used where necessary and proportionate in extreme cases where all other ways to gain information have been exhausted."

ENDQUOTE

So if you think I have a shred of sympathy for suck fuckers like that you can fuck right off to the far side of fuck and then fuck off some more. I really don't care about the nuances of the case. You don't do that in a society that you want me to be part of.

JimmyPage Silver badge

Re: Do you have a link please?

What for ?

JimmyPage Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: I have a small amount of sympathy with the police etc.

Sorry, I have fuck all sympathy for them. Every power they have ever been granted has never been enough. Nothing is ever good enough, and they are just as institutionally racists as they were 40 years ago. There's no other job in the the UK where you get to blow an innocent mans head clean off, and walk away with a pension.

So fuck them. They can bloody well do their job, do it by the rule of law, and also (controversially) be subject to the same rule of law. *Then* they'll have my sympathy.

My views may have been tainted by the recent story that they police were allowed to send a 17-year old girl to be sexually exploited for a case. That's a child in the UK, just in case you didn't know. A child FFS.

King's College London breached GDPR by sharing list of activist students with cops

JimmyPage Silver badge
Big Brother

Apologies are easy ...

Call me cynical, but given there's fuck all redress for a data protection breach, ever, I reckon the whole thing was premeditated and losing the subsequent court case factored in as an offset to the aim of keeping the great unwashed away from her madge.

It's like when police "accidentally" kettle protestors, and are slapped on the wrist after the event.

Brexit? HP Inc laughs in the face of Brexit! Hard or soft, PC maker claims it's 'no significant risk'

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Is this related to the HP that bought Autonomy ?

If so, I'd look outside if they said it was raining ....

UK's MoD is helping itself to cops' fingerprint database 'unlawfully', rules biometrics chief

JimmyPage Silver badge
WTF?

damage could be done to public trust in policing ...

What, the Guildford 4, Birmingham 6, Jean Charles de Menezes, Barry George, Colin Stagg, Harry Stanley cases didn't quite do the job ?

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

You are never going to rein this in, so a different approach is needed.

Let them do their worst with the data. But ensure that courts only accept legally obtained and processed evidence. And if it turns out a prosecution fails because someone "forgot" the law, the so be it.

I hate to big up the US on this, but they take "the fruit of the poison tree" very seriously.

There's something fundamentally wrong in allowing courts to consider evidence gained illegally. It's the first step in "the end justifies the means".

You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found

JimmyPage Silver badge
WTF?

*A* microprocessor ????

Surely there are 3 - all made by different manufacturers and all running different code with a vote as to what to do so as to eliminate any single faults.

Or was that too costly ?

Fuck knows what this means for self driving cars .....

FedEx fed up playing box cop, sues Uncle Sam to make it stop: 'We do transportation, not law enforcement'

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

Fifth Amendment ? Seriously ?

Doesn't the Constitution apply to citizens, not companies ?

What the cell...? Telcos around the world were so severely pwned, they didn't notice the hackers setting up VPN points

JimmyPage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Years ago there was a discussion about this

Yes, I took part in it. And received massive downvotes when I pointed out that even if you wrote the compiler, unless you had designed the bare silicon yourself you still had no guarantee of security.

Then Meltdown and Spectre came along and I had a couple or directors call me in to ask "how did I know" so far in advance (because I'd also written it into a weekly summary I did around 2011). I didn't "know". I just pointed out that there could be all sorts of vulnerabilities in the CPU itself, so there was a limit to how "secure" you could get.

I stand by that.

It's official. You can get FUCT, US Supremes tell scandalized bureaucrats in rude trademark spat

JimmyPage Silver badge

A bit worrying ...

one justices decision seemed to have fuck all to do with the law, and something to do with their own world view ?

"With the Lanham Act’s scandalous-marks provision, 15 U.S.C. §1052(a), struck down as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, the Government will have no statutory basis to refuse (and thus no choice but to begin) registering marks containing the most vulgar, profane, or obscene words and images imaginable."

Boo fucking hoo. Suck it up - it's what the founders intended. If they hadn't, you wouldn't have a first amendment.

What price the Moon? Tips from the past might save the present

JimmyPage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: "at least one year in its 100x100km orbit"

Presumably if you can put enough Big Things in the right places, you can create a square orbit a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_triangle ?

In fact if we are looking for advanced, intelligent life out there, highly artificial orbits of Big Bodies might be a better thing to look for than trying to extract sense from static ?

Samsung reminds rabble to scan smart TVs for viruses – then tries to make them forget

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

JUST SELL THE FUCKING SCREEN !!!!!

I hope there are big bucks waiting for the fist manufacturer to twig that a lot of people are happy to buy a dumb screen and plug their smartness into it. Making the smartness independently upgradable from the display.

Funny, but "Smart monitors" never caught on.

My 5 year old LGs "smart" features are never used now. Chromecast does me fine.

Hongmeng, there's no need to feel down: It's patently obvious this is Huawei's homegrown OS

JimmyPage Silver badge
Happy

Re: Will someone please tell Huawei!

Make that 1,000,002 and I'll take one

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

JimmyPage Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: how much would you spend mining the moon when we still have cancer unsolved?

Well if the answer to a cure for cancer is found in the minerals of the moon, you're going to sound pretty silly.

As Prof. Brian Cox noted, people said the exact same about researching the nuclear world. Right up until the MRI scanner was a product of that research.

Simplistic views tend to emerge from simple minds ....

Quick maths refresher: Intel CPU shortages + consumer stock bottleneck = no computer sales growth in EMEA for 2019

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

For posterity ...

"The commercial market will experience considerable growth through 2019 as the upcoming end of Windows 7 support will spur major renewal cycles across both public and private sectors," said IDC.

No it won't, says Register commentard JimmyPage.