Posts by Uberseehandel

Encryption Is Not Convenient

Much of the time, telco encryption is deliberately weakened (set the 16 leading bits of the key to 0), so that officially interested parties can freely access users and conversations they wish to monitor. It is so much more convenient that way, no warrants, no oversight.

Right from the outset, the MNOs did not wish to know about SMS, they didn't notice, in any material sense of that word, its capability when GSM was introduced, but they did shut down the (ISDN compliant) dual SIM capability (because customers use it to save costs). MNOs had to be brow-beaten into accepting that users would make use of it, especially when roaming. Believe it or not, they took the same approach to data, remaining in denial about customer take-up until too late.

There are a number of organisations which have official and court approved access to telco switches. However, the number of staff who have access to the data centres which process the telco back-end systems is huge. A number are outsourced. I know of one that outsources its data centre processing to a company that has been bought by its principal competitor. They remain quite relaxed about this, despite ample evidence that there is much to be concerned about.

MNOs should not be allowed out.

Old Tech

The Surface 4, Surface Book and Surface Studio were launched using old technology.

Microsoft did not plan for what would be mainstream when they launched the products, and even the revised versions are off the pace. Not only do they choose the wrong chip sets, but the wrong processors and the wrong memory. And no Thunderbolt 3.

The Surface Studio is promising, what happened to the second screen? Without it is not functional. Hybrid drives in a premium product c'mon!

Even at the eye-watering prices, I'd love to have a dual screen Studio, or even a properly equipped Surface Book or Surface 4. But paying way over the odds for yesterday's bargain bin parts, is not going to happen. Microsoft has achieved the impossible, they have made everything else look affordable, and often faster.

Moby Dick

The title says it all - will future releases be in Ahab prior to beta? Will there be a Pequod? Is one of the developers called Ishmael?

So Docker becomes Dicker.

What a bunch of Dock-heads.

Cost £4 Billion, to which add £ 3 Billion of debt = £7 Billion to get out. Not a chance.

Shrinking market - the only reason for anybody to pay more than change for this financial equivalent of a black hole is if the purchaser has an alternative use for the existing towers, such as automotive connectivity, or emergency networks.

How much of what is in the article is accurate

Neither of Ark's data centres is inside a "bloody great army base", in the vicinity of, yes. As far as the security goes, I've had to deal with much more secure data centres, elsewhere.

There are locations in Britain which have pretty secure and resilient redundant power supplies together with network access. These are natural locations for data centres as well as government/defence facilities.

This isn't a 4G/5G choice, both are required. Professor Webb is behaving like a Luddite.

R+C

There is fibre in everybody's future

Europe was also tabbed as a strong market, particularly in the industrial sector where growing connectivity of appliances means larger networks and the need for cables

The industrial sector needs fibre, rather than copper. I ordered fibre 35 years ago, those sites are still running fibre, in really hostile conditions. The price of fibre to copper converters with PoE injection is dropping all the time.

Even a small switch needs 10/40 GB uplinks, and "campus" deployments should not link buildings using copper, if only to keep the insurance company happy.

I expect lots of disasters in China (not gangnam ( OK Seoul), but, Lightning Style).

Not secure

I hope it is coincidence and not prescience, but the castle in the photograph at the top of the article is Bodiam.

Bodiam was one of the last, if not the last, castle licensed to be built in England. It wasn't built to defend anything, it was built for show. The curtain walls would have crumbled as soon as an enemy looked at them.

Is Win 10 security any better than Bodiam's?

Only in Britain

As a kid we were advised by the (UK) Foreign Office not to stop and help if we saw a traffic accident or somebody in trouble whilst on holiday in Spain, let us hope we are not seeing a reversion to those days.

Many of my Czech friends refer to their country as Czechland - if it works for them, it works for me. Sadly, not all Czechs are Bohemians, were that so, then the name would be obvious.

Historically, Silesia would be a poor choice of name and Moravians, whose country is part of Czechland, are not Bohemians.

Mistaken Identity?

When McLaren developed the iconic F1 road car, it was the creation of designer Gordon Murray. His business, Gordon Murray Design has developed new techniques for building cars in the Twenty First Century, perhaps presciently called - iStream® - http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/en/istream.html a move here would make a lot of sense, we know Apple likes British designers.

So perhaps the financial press has been barking up the wrong tree?

From time to time I have had to work with what US embassies euphemistically call "Legal Attachés", or the oddball occupants of corner offices in large international consulting practices. Without exception, none of these people struck me as intelligent, interesting, sophisticated, stylish or educated. It never occurred to me to socialise with any of them. Yet these are the selfsame people who are demanding back doors in encryption tools. . . . go figure oops, they don't do "math".

Absolute planks.

Who really benefits from this research?

Is it possible that the Big Data project in India has nothing to do with the D/L/S method but is, in fact, a useful tool for the nation's bookmakers and punters?

Ultimate Cool & Very Effective

Quite fortuitously I was at Comdex when the Grids were released.

I was looking for portable PCs for all the staff of the professional practice I was a member of, and sadly realised that these wonders were too expensive if I were buying over a 100 of them, but that they were perfect for putting on board the most competitive ocean racing boats.

Previously, we were using PDP11s on race boats, which were not ideal in a very difficult environment. The self contained Grids had a magnesium case, which struck a chord with the tech savvy yacht designers and crews, and fortuitously the best race instrument maker at that time had written software for use by the US's 12 Metre America's Cup racers, which, thanks to a bit editor from Norton, I was able to run on the MS-DOS Grids, which was a first.

The following year the first event in the World Chamionship was the Kenwood Cup in Hawaii, which was windy, hot and humid with big seas running, and inside a yacht hull built out of composites, the temperatures soared and the salt laden air was so corrosive, I had to strip down the computers and clean them as the salt was showing signs of eating into the boards.

The Grids were great, we won the regatta and the world championship later in the (2 year) series. from this time onwards computers became an integral part of racing offshore. I never knew that John Ellenby was British but we did know that some of his computers were used by the CIA.

All they have to do is ask the MNOs. German/Swiss Red Cross have the portable quick set up tech as well.

In reality they probably have a greater need for portable espresso machines. Then they can think straight about the other stuff (not being rude, the espresso machine is a vital technology component, honest).

Dream On

Bernard Cazeneuve is from a smart family. Presumably, as the thicko of his generation, he was shuffled off into politics.

Back doors are so easily overcome it is pathetic to try and evolve a situation where they are universal. There are Open Source tools out there that cannot be legislated out of existence.

I'd love to have a contract providing bath soap to politicians.

I guess Tesla knows its market - fast in a straight line, sh1t round corners

Windows Beta

Whilst I generally like Win 10, I am very uncomfortable with its perpetual beta-feel. Together with Office-365 and Azure (Cloud), there is an ongoing sense of flakiness that is extremely unsettling. I'm glad I'm not trying to administer this frickarse[sp].

Nobody at MS has an overview of the big picture right now

Presently I have Office 365 Business Premium, which gives me most of the Office applications (not Access) on up to 5 devices plus 1TB of sync-able Cloud storage and, usefully, a managed Exchange server, for GBP 78 a year. Which is a really good deal. By dint of stuffing around I manage to turn off most of the Win 10 Pro and other MS nastiness, and remind myself that my data is stored in the USA, but that need not be an issue, with careful planning.

I soon discovered that using Office 365 gives me an Azure AD account, gratis. And then discovered Azure Information Protection (in Prview). At this point I decided I better understand a bit more about Azure. Which seems more useful that I anticipated, which was encouraging.

But what is truly overwhelming is the rate at which new and updated services are being released, the uncoordinated prerequisites for similar services and the understandable inability of authors and online trainers to keep abreast of what is being released.

MS has tools that allow what feels like zillions of their people to cooperate on everything, but nothing to make sure that somebody has a clear overview of what is being pushed out the door as policy.

I have found 3 different sets of prerequisites for the new Azure Information Protection service. When I ask the team developing the software what the situation is, silence. Because nobody sees the big picture.

Beat Up

Is El Reg sourcing stories from Sputnik?

MOD fears ??????

Bleeding Edge?

A trimaran sailed round the world in 45 days, Ellen MacArthur went round alone in 71 days. Guess what - Wind powered.

For goodness sake - do you want to make some progress in dealing with eyesight related health problems or not? That is what it is actually about.

Most Businesses file at National & EU Offices

When I had dealings with IP lawyers, they always advised filing in each individual EU state as well as in Munich (Patent) and Alicante (Trademark). So not much changes?

TeslaCrypt (not TrueCrypt) malware

Allegedly, in May the developers of TeslaCrypt publicly released the master decryption key. I wonder when the events described occurred.

I was vaguely surprised that anything more technical than schedules were on the laptop. And possibly some setup data. In my experience normal paranoia causes race teams to back up this kind of data and it won't just be on one machine. This team were exceptional in exposing themselves to a single point of failure.

Pay rates stink

pay peanuts.....

What MPs don't get is that for central London, they are on 4th quartile wages,so will they ever hire people who are good at what they do?

Even Leberkäse (or allegedly Fleischkäse in CH)

For me, there are 4 reasons to be in Zürich

1. Good transport links

2. ETH - one of the best Computer Science establishments anywhere

3. Benign judicial environment

4. The city is functional