In one way he's right: Thatcher did tend to be rather too obsequious towards the Yanks.
But she who privatised BT absolutely didn't believe in the dead hand of the state trying to tell our telecoms industry what suppliers they could or couldn't use.
Posts by Nick Kew
2841 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jan 2007
Page:
US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout
I can't say Mike Lynch knew about Autonomy dodginess, star witness tells High Court
Thursday 9th May 2019 20:51 GMT
... meaning he has admitted his own wrongdoing over some of Autonomy's deals.
I don't think it necessarily means that. Rather it may merely mean he feared - rightly or wrongly - "they were out to get him".
The witness looks bad. But that may just mean the lawyer is doing his job: Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Yes of course I believe almost certainly the case is dodgy and the witness compromised by the US trial. But not so much on the strength of today's report.
Key to success: Tenants finally get physical keys after suing landlords for fitting Bluetooth smart-lock to front door
Thursday 9th May 2019 05:11 GMT
Key? No thank you.
The last flat[1] I lived in (not long ago) had a much better solution. Normal keys to the (four) individual flats, but for the front door to the building, an oldfashioned mechanical combination lock. No question of tracking, but also without the inconvenience of a lump of metal to burden the pocket.
Security worked surprisingly well too: on at least two occasions, yobs tried and failed to get in.
[1] That's "apartment" to Leftpondians.
Autonomy's one-time US sales chief can't remember if he took part in grand jury hearing
Remember those stolen 'NSA exploits' leaked online by the Shadow Brokers? The Chinese had them a year before
Wednesday 8th May 2019 07:25 GMT
So at least two governments had it before it was public.
Who's to say it wasn't more widely shared than that? More governments, not to mention perhaps private-sector blackhats?
And do we have proof of its origin, or is it just assumed to be the US Government/Equation Group because that's where it leaked into the public domain from?
Lightning speed – how fast is that again? Virgin plugs in another 102k to superfast broadband
Wednesday 8th May 2019 07:18 GMT
Re: Revenue Generating Units?
Careful with that!
When your Virgin line plays sillybuggers, you could find yourself where I was two years ago, with a line that's unusable for VOIP (or much else). I found I had to switch my telephony to exclusively O2: either my mobile number, or VOIP over their 3G and 4G data.
And Virgin's customer service is in a class of own in terms of fortification against ever being contacted when your service fails.
Dutch chip-making specialist ASML rifles through pockets of rival XTAL: Nice IP. We'll be having that
Tractors, not phones, will (maybe) get America a right-to-repair law at this rate: Bernie slams 'truly insane' situation
Tuesday 7th May 2019 00:08 GMT
Clarity needed here
What exactly is the controversy about?
If you repair your own tractor or iphone, are you committing a criminal offence? Surely it's the government, not Apple or John Deere, who determines what is or isn't a felony? What is it that distinguishes something you can repair from something you can't? This just doesn't make sense to me.
Or is it just that the act of repairing your own iTractor voids whatever warranty rights you might have, and perhaps any relevant manufacturer's liability if something bad happens? That would not be so unreasonable, though presumably it then becomes ultimately a matter for a court when $farmer claims his replacing a tyre wasn't relevant to the engine blowing up?
HPE court witness subjected to own LinkedIn page
What a pain in the Azzz-ure: Microsoft Azure, SharePoint, etc knocked offline by DNS blunder
Sunday 5th May 2019 00:10 GMT
Outlook.com?
Could that account for my inability to send email to an NHS address on April 29th? Or indeed the message that took about 24 hours to reach me from a friend on May 2nd/3rd, with most of that time spent on outlook.com servers?
The bounce from the NHS mail contained full diagnostic information. It was in a mail loop at outlook.com:
Received: from AM6PR10CA0087.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM (2603:10a6:209:8c::28) by AM5SPR01MB03.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM (2603:10a6:206:1b::28) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.13; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:48 +0000
Received: from HE1EUR02FT049.eop-EUR02.prod.protection.outlook.com (2a01:111:f400:7e05::207) by AM6PR10CA0087.outlook.office365.com (2603:10a6:209:8c::28) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.12 via Frontend Transport; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:48 +0000
Received: from EUR04-HE1-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com (104.47.13.51) by HE1EUR02FT049.mail.protection.outlook.com (10.152.11.8) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.13 via Frontend Transport; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:48 +0000
Received: from DB6PR1001CA0034.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM (2603:10a6:4:55::20) by VE1PR10MB2879.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM (2603:10a6:803:10f::28) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.15; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:46 +0000
Received: from AM5EUR02FT030.eop-EUR02.prod.protection.outlook.com (2a01:111:f400:7e1e::209) by DB6PR1001CA0034.outlook.office365.com (2603:10a6:4:55::20) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.12 via Frontend Transport; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:46 +0000
Received: from EUR03-VE1-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com (104.47.9.54) by AM5EUR02FT030.mail.protection.outlook.com (10.152.8.180) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.13 via Frontend Transport; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:46 +0000
Received: from AM6PR10CA0049.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM (2603:10a6:209:80::26) by HE1PR10MB1548.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM (2603:10a6:7:5d::25) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.13; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:44 +0000
Received: from VE1EUR02FT014.eop-EUR02.prod.protection.outlook.com (2a01:111:f400:7e06::208) by AM6PR10CA0049.outlook.office365.com (2603:10a6:209:80::26) with Microsoft SMTP Server (version=TLS1_2, cipher=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384) id 15.20.1835.12 via Frontend Transport; Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:44:44 +0000
'I do not wish to surrender' Julian Assange tells court over US extradition bid
Sunday 5th May 2019 00:55 GMT 
Botany Bay should do nicely
For the UK to lock him up is legit, though IMHO a bit petty at this stage.
For Sweden to put him on trial and lock him up if found guilty would be entirely legitimate. But he's a hot potato, and I suspect the Swedish authorities would rather never see him again. Hence why they haven't issued a new warrant.
For the US to lock him up would be political, and political prisoners deserve our support. The prospect of supporting Assange has very little appeal.
If Sweden shows no interest, just let him go when he's served his sentence: we routinely do that with criminals at all levels of seriousness. Or deport him back to Oz - the sooner the better.
Having a bad day? Be thankful you don't work at a Russian ISP: Kremlin signs off Pootynet restrictions
Saturday 4th May 2019 23:58 GMT
Re: What about satellite?
Satellite isn't anyone's default connection. Those using satellite have made an active choice to do so. They're outside the scope of the Russian Internet that they're seeking protect from the risk of hostile action from Trump or a successor.
As for the evil surveillance state side of the action (both that and the legitimate defensive explanation are entirely plausible and likely), those using satellite are surely too few to worry about - for now, at least. And probably too techie to suppress. Like those who can use commandline PGP - rather than an app that can be backdoored or banned - to get around Oz's spying law. Or those who can route around Blighty's great firewall (aka IWF).
A day in the life of London seen through spam and weak Wi-Fi
Friday 3rd May 2019 14:59 GMT
Smells of google (or similar) translate.
In my time in Italy - being most of the 1990s - I saw a few amusingly "interesting" translations. But never that one.
And that looked suspiciously like a burger. Italian fast-food I encountered could be pretty disgusting (not least the mountains of salt that would make the pizza white regardless of the nominal ingredients), but I don't recollect burgers. They'd've been segregated into foreign chains I knew to avoid.
Personality quiz for all you IT bods: Are you a chameleon or an outlaw? A diplomat or a high flier? Vote right here
Friday 3rd May 2019 14:32 GMT
Re: Impossible to answer
You've hit another facet of my first reaction.
Namely, over many years in the business, my focus has certainly shifted. I expect that applies to most of us of a certain age. Perhaps the survey should look at age groups, and (for older folks) how we were at an earlier age. Maybe (if they dare) also split results by sex as well as age.
A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'
It's May 2. Know what that means? Yep, it's the PR orgy that is World Password Day... again
Friday 3rd May 2019 08:47 GMT
Honeytrap?
In the past week or so I've had occasion to dig into some mail logs. I find an interesting phenomenon which I've not seen before. Persistent failed attempts to log in to a couple of accounts via imaps. Accounts that have never existed, but have very, very specific names. Like "alexgfcnichols@mydomain".
Users who have misconfigured devices that misspelled their domain? Doesn't look much like it when the attempt comes from a different IP address every couple of minutes.
Dictionary attacks? More plausible, but where did they get the username from? It's not even a name that appears in the smtpd logs, as would happen if it appeared on a spam list.
The thought occurred to me: would there be any mileage in setting up an "alexgfcnichols" as a honeytrap account, with p@55w0rd123? With what could I then populate this email account? I could sign it up to a legit. mailinglist or two, but beyond that a convincing selection of realistic stuff would look like a lot of work. And how evil would it be to find some ransomware to make into interesting-looking attachments?
May Day! PM sacks UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for Huawei 5G green-light 'leak'
We regret to inform you the massive asteroid NASA's all excited about probably won't hit Earth
Oracle co-honcho Mark Hurd can't wait to turn your $1 of IT support spend into $4 of pay-as-you-go cloud revenue
Thursday 2nd May 2019 04:51 GMT
It kind-of works
The idea that Oracle can make more money while at the same time saving its customers money kind-of works. What he's talking about is big efficiency savings, taking out expensive, under-used per-customer installations and maintenance costs.
I don't need to point out the likely flaw with that plan, 'cos A/C already did that above ;)
Huawei, Huawei. Huawei, Huawei. Feeling hot, hot, hot: US threatens to cut UK from intel sharing over Chinese tech giant
Wednesday 1st May 2019 03:59 GMT
JP Morgan - whose interest is in Cisco as an investment without reference to what they actually produce - made that connection. Banning Huawei won't affect the US much because they never deployed much of it in the first place, but they expect it to do well for Cisco kit in EMEA and Asia-Pacific-ex-China markets.
Tuesday 30th April 2019 08:38 GMT
Re: BIOT
It's a power struggle within the UK government. Quite a few of them see Blighty as a satrapy of the US. Which is also why we need brexit, so we can abandon EU food and farming standards and adopt US ones, this being their Red Line for a big trade deal.
In at least some of their minds, a Huawei ban is now tied in with that trade deal. Which, given that the US farming and agri-tech lobby has no interest in Huawei, isn't going to affect their red lines, only ours.
Don't be Russian to judgement but... Bloke accused of $1.5m+ tax filing biz hack, fraud
Wednesday 1st May 2019 03:19 GMT
Re: Something's wrong here
Indeed. What's his expectation of surviving that long in a US prison? Shouldn't those lifetime-eating sentences be for criminals who have at least made enough money out of it to fee a proper defence lawyer?
It's hard to have sympathy for a fraudster, but 27 years would kind-of turn him into a victim! I expect it's more a legal maximum than a practical likelihood?
Out-of-office email ping-pong fills server after server over festive break
Monday 29th April 2019 13:00 GMT
Re: Exchange?
Yes, MS was absolutely to blame. Email had been around for a long time before there was ever a MS exchange (or outlook), and a lot of gotchas were well-known, well-understood, and well-documented. In short, solved problems. No excuse for re-introducing them in a new product, particularly one marketed as suitable for technician-level admins with a box ticked on their CV. Mail loops were just one of those.
Though to be fair, MS wasn't the only offender to p*** in the pool of 1990s (and early-this-century) email. Lotus also did some inexcusably dumb things. And then world+dog inflicted pseudo-HTML on us.
Baffling tale of Apple shops' 'non-facial' 'facial recognition', a stolen ID, and a $1bn lawsuit after a wrongful arrest
Saturday 27th April 2019 20:43 GMT
Re: A Good Counter Argument ...
I deleted my reply to Steve K when I realised my response to his joke was inappropriate to this particular story[1]. And because I'm uncertain of the detail I had mentioned.
But they weren't lying on that occasion. I had newly arrived in the area (just back in Blighty from several years in Italy), but when I told the story to friends locally, they said yes, I looked remarkably like the photofits they'd seen over several months of disturbing reports.
[1] I routinely use Mr Scrooge's trademark expression of disdain at any time of year.
Ok Google, please ignore this free tax filing code so we can keep on screwing America
Saturday 27th April 2019 05:33 GMT
El Reg should help here
US taxpayers are not my concern, so I don't know why I'm commenting, but ...
When El Reg publishes an article like this, should it not include links to the free alternatives? Or - best - identify reputable third-parties who maintain lists of such software, and link to those? Thereby doing your bit towards making them easier to find in a Google search.
I can see a link for one product ("Turbotax"), but are they the only offender? If so, why give them free publicity? If not, where are the others?
Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?
Thank you, your DNA data will help secure your… oh dear, we've lost that too
Friday 26th April 2019 10:24 GMT 
Security
How do you secure your fiefdom?
[ ] I'm not stupid. It won't happen to me.
[ ] A tickbox list (like a CIS benchmark) - cover your arse
[ ] Do what you're told (thou shalt not huawei; noone ever got fired for buying IBM)
[ ] Decades of experience and a paranoid attitude
[ ] It's all about blame. I just give my security staff impossible and self-contradictory instructions they must violate.
[ ] I'm collecting stories for "On call" and "Who, me?"
[ ] Mine's a pint, please.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
