Posts by David Pollard

Coincidence or delivered in person?

Earlier this year, in late January, Lincolnshire County Council's computer network was shut down after being hit by ransomware. Is this attack on LIncolnshire NHS in any way connected?

RHS problem ...

... may well have been a branching failure in a logic tree.

How about sharing *their* data?

A great deal of research goes unpublished; the so-called 'negative data'. When drug trials don't show a benefit for the promoter they get quietly hidden. Then data for published work is often either not available, incomplete or in a form that is hard to use. And a large proportion of the research papers themselves are published behind very expensive paywalls.

The non-profit organisation PLoS has changed and is changing the publication landscape, and academic campaigns for open access to research papers and open data also play a part. But there is a long way to go.

Big Pharma can have details of my medical history when they publish all their research data, including that which shows their products in a poor light, and when they stop charging people to read the papers

UK police sat on intelligence ... for 15 months

Only 15 months?

In response to disclosures about child abuse by Jimmy Savile and various other ghastly goings on, Theresa May announced in July 2014 that there was to be a full enquiry into historic child sex abuse. This, she declared, was to address "serious failings by public bodies and important institutions." Now, 27 months later, and despite the expenditure of large amounts of public money, there still hasn't been any progress.

Who was buying?

Someone made a packet.

Covata wrote ...

Maybe it's mentioned elsewhere, but one of the necessary requirements not included in the list is that the programs handling the data should be open source or open to full inspection by any interested party.

Tony Blair?

Given his experience as a peacemaker he would be a good choice to include in case there is a need for negotiations with aliens.

Sad for Freegle and Freecycle

Local Freegle and Freecycle groups do a grand job of recycling a whole lot of unwanted kit, thus steering lots of items towards further use rather than landfill. Although not perfect, Yahoo Groups hosts them both and it would be a shame if this hacking were to put people off using them.

Sofosbuvir?

Over 200 million people worldwide are infected with HepC. The drug Sofosbuvir presently seems to offer the best chance of a cure. The production cost is about $1 a pill, one a day being taken for a 12-week course along with other relatively inexpensive medicines. In the UK the price that the NHS would pay for such a course of treatment is currently about £35,000.

A firm called Gilead Sciences had bought the patent for the drug, paying $11 billion to a startup company, Pharmasset when their results showed promise. Their development of the drug had in turn been based on a research breakthrough at Cardiff university which had not been patented.

Sofosbuvir came to the market in 2013. By the first quarter of 2016 Gilead had collected £35 billion in revenue from HepC medicines.

There are maybe 5 million people with HepC in the USA alone, and Gilead is asking $84,000 each for its treatment. That's a total in Zuck's own back yard of more than a hundred times his £3 billion for just a single disease. It's not money that needed, it's an ethical approach to medicine.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-07-financial-acquisition-buybacks-threaten-access.html

Send for the moderatrix

I'm sure she would be perfect for the job. After checking a few replays she would soon pick up details of Mary's expertise on critical issues such as soggy bottoms and so forth. I'm equally sure she is still missed by Reg readers..

Location spoofing?

Has no one come up with software which will send bogus messages in response to prying, rather like the user agent switchers and maskers that are available for browsers? While this wouldn't prevent the use of triangulation, at least it would be possible to fight back a little against invasion by wi-fi, bluetooth and GPS.

Watch out for the 30-year rule

Far better than homework-eating dogs or malfunctioning archives which misplace critical records and find them too late for use in court, this rule allows the police to block access to information in case files for thirty years. And the count is from the date that any action was taken in relation to the case.

It appears that even a cursory review will suffice to have the files closed for a further 30 years and thus continue to block Freedom of Information requests. If certain information they hold about crimes which have remained unsolved for decades were to be widely available this would, they say, make solving them and bringing the perpetrators to court more difficult.

Obesity in China is seen as a substantial and expanding concern

I see what you did there.

Cover for theft/misuse?

Maybe it's a paranoid thought to wonder that the loss of data for the last 12 months might have been deliberately engineered to cover up some sort of misuse of the information, or to eradicate details of abuse. On the other hand ...

I for one argue against Jacob Ginsberg

"No one can argue with the fact that if intelligence agencies and the police were able to access and look inside all houses, they would catch more criminals."

Where you have policing by consent, the most significant part of crime control comes about through the co-operation and involvement of the general public. When the public's trust is broken this aspect of crime control is eroded. If the authorities invade people's privacy they will forfeit their co-operation and make policing less effective.

Obligatory xkcd

http://xkcd.com/1720/

managed to stay aloft for 14 days over the Arizona desert

Get many terrorists and enemies of the state in the Arizona desert, do they?

It's based on the Pinky Ponk

Clearly the designers must have studied aeronautics In the Night Garden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW0ATNNB-i0

Electric vehicles

One of the reasons behind the introduction of these meters may be a misguided response to the problem that electric vehicles presents. Political and executive decision makers don't always get things right.

Dealing with a million kettles being turned on during the break in Coronation Street is one thing. The prospect of a million cars all turning on their chargers at midnight is another.

Professor David Nutt

After being sacked by the UK government for publicly proposing a sensible drugs policy, David Nutt wrote an excellent book: Drugs without the hot air.

If authorities wish to help drug users rather than persecute them then they would do well to obtain a copy and read it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Without-Minimising-Harms-Illegal/dp/1906860165/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471258099&sr=1-1&keywords=david+nutt

HP Sauce, PG Tips?

So now we know why El Reg had been conducting those extensive surveys about the perfect bacon sarnie and the optimal way to drink tea. It was part of a covert propaganda campaign; and one which was obviously effective.

Oblig xkcd

https://xkcd.com/1338/

0.341 percent less each year

This sheds a new light on cosmic inflation.