* Posts by Chris Thomas

96 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Nov 2007

Page:

Gas refineries at Defcon 1 as SCADA exploit goes wild

Chris Thomas
Flame

By The Other Steve

and I will add, that DOS'ing the report module Is a FAR SUPERIOR alternative than getting owned like a bitch and having the entire system fail because someone was able to crack the system.

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

@By Peter Ward

Thanks for the nice words, but you're really wrong, I've never worked in your industry at all, but common sense and knowledge of these things goes a long way when trying to design such systems.

what I was saying, was my plain old common sense, I am talking from the point of view from someone who builds websites for a design company in barcelona and programs software applications. I'm no security pro, but what I'm seeing, is that if this web gig doesnt turn out to earn so much money, I can go into security consulting and probably do a dammed sight better than most people I am hearing about (disregarding "The other steve's" obvious comment about dropping bad connections instead of locking down the reporting network, which I thought about already, but I'd hit the send button by then)

Thanks peter, good luck with the instrumentation :D

Chris Thomas
Heart

OMGWTFBBQ

sorry, I coudltn help myself, I thought it was funny anyway

Chris Thomas
Dead Vulture

@Having had SCADA experience over 15 years

COLD SHOWERS!!! COLD F**CKING SHOWERS!!! THIS IS 2008, NOT THE 1930's I DONT WANT YOUR SHIT SYSTEMS BREAKING SO I HAVE TO ENDURE 2 DEGREE WATER, WTF IS THE MATTER WITH YOU, YOU ARE MENTALLY ILL, I CANT BELIEVE WHAT YOUR SAYING, YOU MUST BE A TERRORIST, IF I FIND YOU IN THE STREET, I'LL GUT YOU LIKE A FISH111!!!!one

COLD SHOWERS IS THE LEAST OF YOUR PROBLEMS NOW YOU TERRORIST SCUM!

Chris Thomas
Flame

@"Let them burn then" = Moron

I hope you don't think that connecting these systems DIRECTLY to the outside world is a good idea, has nobody heard of abstracting away direct access to limit severely what can be done remotely?

What about the following setup

SCADA system is on a network, the ONLY connection to the internet, is through a server who's job is ONLY to read the data, never to set, change, upload. It has a web server, which every 1 second, outputs through a WRITE ONLY port, data from the system.

Don't allow incoming connections, a single attempt to open a different port, shuts down the server and locks out the internet, all TCPIP communications with the server are disabled.

Any data received on the port the SCADA is sending data out, will result in a network lockdown.

Then, preuse all the data you want, safe that you've just limited about 99% of all possible infections, what are you going to do now?

A single byte shuts down the connections and locks it down, requiring a reconnection by an engineer onsite.

So how are you going to hack, crack, infect that?

So, I dont think the OP is a moron, I think maybe you are.

Mozilla dishes up teasers for concept browser

Chris Thomas
Dead Vulture

Lame videos

is it me, or does anyone else really dslike the stupid videos which are posted about that woman with the harvest, omg, its so lame.

Fedora 10 alpha code is go

Chris Thomas
Heart

@James Butler

in a way you're right, in another way wrong, it's a blurry issue tbh, some days I can go without a single crash, but when recovering from hibernation, sometimes my "login screen" is completely grey, a compiz issue perhaps? still, gnome will take the bullet, cause it's what I see, not the background, perception is everything I guess.

sometimes network manager fails to find any access points, when my girlfriend who runs linux too (shock horror: news at 11) has no problems and can see about 20 of them, etc, etc.

The point I was trying to make, is that COMPARED to 5, 6 years ago, linux is increasingly coming to the point where it crashes MORE than it did before, I think what we might be seeing is that linux is not infallable to these things, but because the software was less complex, less capable and less used, problems got missed and design strategies were unable to find them, now we've got 10x the users, 10x the desktops and 10x the complexity with 10x the functionality, all of a sudden, we start crashing like we took the piss out of windows for doing for years.

sorry to say it, but linux in the past crashed less often, because it did less, or it wasnt used as much, you wanna tell me I'm wrong, go for it, but you wont win, I've been using linux for 10+ years and I've seen it, 10 years ago, X windows was barely a window manager unless you hacked the holy mother out of fvwm and fvwm2, I remember gnome 1.0, it was nothing barely close to windows 95 in terms of ease to use etc, etc, so beware any of you guys who think you can tell me i'm wrong, cause I aint. dont waste your breath picking at straws, or terminology, get a proper argument too.

basically, linux has turned teenager and got spots, welcome to windows 95 territory, expect to see more of this before it gets better.

FORTUNATELY, linux moves at such a rapid pace that this phase will be over quite quickly, but still, painful for some.

Chris Thomas
Coat

@How does alpha code differ

you know, when I first started out with fedora, it was rock solid, no features allowed which would seriously compromise a system, it worked and was on par with pretty much all distributions.

however, that was then, NOW they allow pretty much any alpha feature you like in and f***k up the system with all kinds of experimental things, do you remember the time when alpha quality software on linux usually meant the equivielent of full quality software on windows? I sure do.

I remember a time when I wanted to recompile my first kernel and patch it with fat32 support with the original version that was available back in 1996 (more or less) my c language lecturer commented at me saying "I'd trust alpha code for linux over release code for windows" and he was right back in those days, alpha really didnt mean alpha in the way we all KNEW it meant, you just rode with the punches and they didnt come that often. alpha really was stable as houses.

Nowadays, alpha really does mean alpha, where did the quality go? maybe the pool of developers has gotten full of people who arent really up to the same level of quality as the developers years ago. Now any muppet who can write python, can get their project into a linux distro, almost no questions asked.

it really hit me when I found out that fedora 9 would come with a pre-release of x.org, not even a very functional one at that, unless you had an intel graphics card, so lets get this straight, whats the % of laptops or desktops that have nvidia or ati cards inside AND that use fedora 9

ALL of those people, have just been screwed and we're back messing with config files and disabling nvidia and ati kernel modules because the new xorg doesnt support binary drivers. When this was pointed out, I was told that fedora is an experimental distribution, etc, etc, blah blah.

like I'd just walked through the door five minutes ago, not been with fedora since day 1, or redhat linux before that.

we've gone from an age of rock solid reliability, to beta quality, alpha quality, who knows what quality.

Anyone else noticed that gnome crashes just as many times, or more, as windows? anyone else noticed that the reboots to your machine is now measured in days more then weeks (including hibernate). KDE is causing problems for pretty much everyone (read the blogs).

maybe I'm just bitter becasue I got bitten, but beta used to mean rock solid years ago, now it means barely functional (pulseaudio anyone?)

TL;DR

American man too fat for execution

Chris Thomas

@Seen pictures

OK, Lets compromise, we'll let this guy spend his life in jail and we'll execute prescott instead? Deal??

Victory!

Oz man cracks one off while speeding in drug-packed car

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

Now THATS balls!

Kilograms of drugs, plants on the back seats, loaded gun (in both ways! however one slightly less loaded afterwards) and excessive speed

now THATS a man with balls, when he's caught, "hey! np guys! look at all the cracked out shit I've been up to!!! oh btw, cracking one off at 150kph is a blast!!"

you've got to hand it to him (although metaphorically and with YOUR hand, not mine) he took being arrested and put in prison on the chin, am impressed

(icon: The hand, because well, y'know)

chris

Lateral thought saves sizzling server

Chris Thomas
Unhappy

STFU

Dude, I use this "it's random" argument sometimes when I want to get the boss off my back, don't give him ideas about why saying: "It's random" is bullshit, I need that excuse to give me more time to fix something before he calls me on it and demand that I explain it in other terms than "it's random" at which point, I have to say,

"I dont know, errr, hey, look at that hot chick on the second floor with the nice boobies!"

and hope he just forgets about it!

Ruining my day man! STFU!

Police told: Delete old criminal records

Chris Thomas
Joke

@peters joke

EPIC WIN!!!one1!!

Chris Thomas
Flame

Appropriate course of action????LULWOT?

I guess the most appropriate course of action you god dammed bunch of nazi's (Godwins rule?) is that you should goto the computer and type into their sql server "delete from criminal_database where innocent=true" and stop interfering with our lives.

I dont suppose for a second that anyone actualyl things they might do this and their view of "appropriate action" would be to delete them from the active database and keep a backup, just in case

And people wonder why the police arent respected, respect is earned, they havent earned it and most of the time, they arent "protecting the public" as in "protecting themselves" and chasing minor criminals cause "the numbers are good"

No PAYG 3G iPhone in UK until Christmas

Chris Thomas
Alert

@Why the iPhone Mania?

"which appears to be a vastly better phone"...... "single-touch only, unfortunately".... "outclasses it at every technical hurdle except the UI one"....

so basically, it's vastly better at nothing, since the major pulling points for the iphone are the multitouch (allows true speed typing) and the ui which is easy on the hands and eye.

basically, you just ruined your own arguement, you're not an investor for the Xperia X1 are you?

Also, do not overplay the significance of branding, apple got and gets where it is, off it's name alone, lots of people know it, understand it and are envious of it.

You see a technically superior product come to market and watch it get trashed REGARDLESS.

Unfortunately your dad and mine too, hardly buys this stuff because of it's technical ability, they buy because it's a) cool, b) easy to use c) nice to look at d) nice to use.

You could run quake3 raytraced on the Xperia X1 and you'll STILL see less phones, I know what you're trying to say, but it's just not going to win over anyone who's see the apple iphone and when it does come out, the next iphone will come and trash it anyway, why buy into a phone which in a couple of months, will be yesterdays news.

/me off to buy a 1st generation iphone!! LULZ

Linspire CEO defends Xandros buy-out

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

Lets hope they are touched by another distro

not xandros, anything, even debian would be better

JBoss app server 5.0 emerges from hiding

Chris Thomas
Coat

IT Angle?

Wheres the IT Angle her......oh wait..errr, ok, how to divide by zero, from EncyclopediaDramatica.com:

It's possible to divide by zero! watch. nine divided by four is either 2.25, or 2 remainder 1 so, by extension, 12 divided by 0 is zero point zero repeating remainder 12. computers just give up cause they don't have a concept of repeating decimals. OH SHI--

MySQL quits Torvalds' former BitKeeper love interest

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

About the name "Git"

Actually, it was in reference to linus's opinion of Andrew Tridgell who was reverse engineering BitKeepers protocol across the wire to try and create a clone, which was against the licence of BitKeeper.

So linus was forced to dump BitKeeper after Larry McVoy decided to renouce the licence given to the linux kernel project and withdraw the software from use, so linus wrote the first version of Git

Who do you think he thought was a "git"

so now you know, the name wasnt an accident, or finnish humour :D

Devil dog laughs in the face of Taser

Chris Thomas
Stop

At least it's just a dog

I hear in the US + other less civilised places, they do this to humans too

Bugs casts shadow over Firefox 3

Chris Thomas
Flame

Colour my stupid, but....

Why don't these security pros work on software BEFORE it's released, I am sure that this bug didnt ONLY JUST arrive in the 3.0.0 release, if it's there after the deadline then surely it's there BEFORE also?

So I think a little bit of glory seeking is happening here, which to be honest, its a bit rough coming form these guys who are supposedly into finding flaws and making children sing, dance in the streets whilst we all drink milk and live happily ever after.

They waited until the maximum impact time before announcing, thanks guys! you're indeed done the world a great favour by exposing us all to a problem you most likely knew about 3 months ago and instead of giving mozilla the idea to fix it BEFORE, you wait until everyone can be damaged and then say "oh, btw, we found this killer flaw in your software"

Bunch of muppets.

Apple's Snow Leopard to cut the bloat from Mac OS X

Chris Thomas
Dead Vulture

@XSlimmer

OH MY GOD!!! 15GB!! If I didnt have 200GB spare left on my drive, I might actually give more than one sh1t about what you just said!!!

Dude, 15GB, get a life, or a new mac, omg, people like you wouldnt never use snow leopard anyway if you're worrying about 15GB because your mac is a G5 or something, people with up to date macs, are not gonna be impressed here

Chris Thomas
Dead Vulture

Gonna party like it's 19, 90, 9!!!

Oh my!! wow!! they are gonna cut "bloat" from mac osx by removing things that take up hard drive space!!!

wow! on my 5GB drive, that will do wonders!! <sarcasm>!

What is this? last century? Are we all still concerned with saving megabytes of space because we want to download more pr0n? What would you prefer the geniuses at Apple to concentrate on now Mr Intel Mac owner? Would you prefer cool hot new features, or things that will save hard drive space and pretty much nothing else.

let me check my hard drive, oh!! wow, with all the coding and flash video encoding, etc, etc that I do, I've got like 200GB left (there abouts)

What the hell do I care about hard drive space, it's cheap and affordable, I'd prefer them to do something radical like they did with leopard, gimmie more cool sh1t!

Saving hard drive space? Yawn!

Is this gonna be like the rule of star trek films, every other film?

Acer punts £199 Linux laptop

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

Now thats a nice laptop

Anyone here wanna guess which one I'll buy and ASUS or Acer? look at the acer, it's lovely, it has "style"

the asus is just boxy and ugly, asus have style, similar price, anyone should reward that with their booty.

After Debian's epic SSL blunder, a world of hurt for security pros

Chris Thomas
Flame

@Daniel Palmer

ok another post full of mistakes, here we go:

1) if I was at a company and personally created a disaster that caused millions of pounds of damage, it doesnt matter ONE LITTLE BIT that they have insurance you dumbass, it has NO RELEVENCE WHATEVER on the fact that at the end of the day, I am collecting my P45, they are covered, thats true, but I AM OUT OF THERE.

What world do you live in where that is not true? Are you seriously trying to call yourself an informed debater in this little conversation here? coming out with crap like that?

2) it depends on whether you want to be taken seriously or not, if I had an employee who did this and basically if you work for "me" you're my employee, if you caused that much damage, I'd eject you like bad wood, you'd be on the scrapheap and don't call me for a reference, I have my companies image to look after and having you around, doesnt pull in clients, it pushes them away because they imagine you'll do the same with them too. This is pretty standard and simple stuff.

3) If the TV was straight out of the box and then at night set fire to my house killing my wife and children, yeah I'd be around your house to find out what happened with that TV that made it do that and if you tell me it was standing in a puddle of water!! and THEN you give it to me, I'm gonna do something very nasty to you. So yeah, sometimes a gift CAN be complained about. Don't mistake free of money to be free of responsibility, they are not the same thing.

4) but he obviously isnt, because if he was, he wouldnt make such a f**king n00b mistake would he.

5) Since I learned that debian is for idiots, I pretty much stayed away from it and I have nothing to do with it, and I enforce that with everything I do, I dislike their entire band of brothers do much, I never run into this problem. However, some of my friends, have.

6) Thankfully, I've never had to directly deal with idiots from debian, so I've been mostly free from having to interact with them and be "infected" with cool 1337 ideas like removing parts of RNG code.

Seriously man, get a grip, millions of pounds of damage has been done and thousands of man hours wasted over a f**king valgrind fix, this shit does not happen to good developers. Stop protecting the weak, their death is SUPPOSED to happen. It's called nature.

Chris Thomas
Flame

@Daniel Palmer

Daniel,

Irrational? ok, being in the software industry, if I caused this kind of damage, you think I'd be collecting a phat paycheck at the end of the month? or my P45?

Seriously, this guy needs ejecting and find his fun somewhere else and yes, in this case, he isnt paid, but should he continue to work on the project?

We are constantly living in a society where failure is tolerated at any level and while I agree that people make mistakes, they should also be shown that severe mistakes, are taken and fixed severely. There are some bugs you shrug off and others which you cannot and the only recourse is your head, sorry, but this guy was editing and compiling code which he isnt even remotely qualified to do.

and as for helping, I am helping, by using fedora and telling everyone else to not use debian and the second fedora makes this mistake, I'll go hunting somewhere else too.

Sorry, but for a decade I have had a hatred of debian because of it's idiotic mindset and looking upwards at some of the comments, I read I am not the only one.

Chris Thomas
Flame

Gentlemen (and ladies ?), please ...

No, no way are you serious, the debian packager who doesnt know his RNG from his TNG is 100% to blame, he is the one writing the code, he is the one admitting he doesnt know what the code in question does, he is the one who should know that this is a critical security software and shouldnt be touched unless you're an old hand. Then he ships crap sandwiches to everyone and openssl are to blame????

So, it's very simple Simon (pun?) did openssl team have anything to do with this patch and is the patch part of the official tree, if so, then yeah, they are partly to blame, if no, then debian is completely to blame.

And you are correct in saying that distributions "repackage" software for their distribution, but the difference here is that they ONLY REPACKAGE, they don't ALTER THE SOURCE CODE AND COMPILE A NEW VERSION just for them, packaging up and cleaning up the file heirarchy is nothing similar to changing the source and redistributing that.

It is simply not openssl team's job to respond to every mail on the mailing list, it's their job to look after their project and their code, if debian packagers decide to write an email and get ignored, it's not the fault of openssl that this guy then wandered off, dumped a whole world of hurt onto everyone and walked away, you're insane if you think that makes sense.

Chris Thomas
Flame

@Daniel Palmer

No, it's not flawed logic, I'll explain myself better.

Right now, almost all the debian devs are leaving, or pi**ed at the project, ubuntu is creaming the crop from what I read and everyone who installs linux, either installs fedora, ubuntu or suse, only mega hardcore geeks who are more interested in playing with config files than use their computer use debian.

The fact that a dumbass debian developer and NOT a ubuntu dev introduced this flaw wasnt particularly hard to foresee, when was the last time ubuntu devs screwed up in this way?

Yes, they import debians tree wholesale, but thats an issue of trust, not stupidity, you think now that trust is intact? I wouldnt be surprised if you start to see the gulf between debian and ubuntu widen as a result, most of the interesting developments in ubuntu didnt originate in debian, they just base off it because it's free work and you can't blame them for NOT catching this problem, since the retarded debian devs didnt catch it for two years either.

Then again, it would have been better if they didnt introduce it at the same time.

The argument that the guy was "ignored" and basically went off to write his own fix I can't see how it has anything to do with it, the guy was ignored because at the end of the day, the "problem" he described was a valgrind warning, it wasnt a big red balloon with a siren saying "VULNERABILITY!"

So, this guy fixed valgrinds warning! CONGRATULATIONS, you just fu*ked everyone in the ass! well done!! So lets all group hug and thank debian for thinking that valgrind warnings are worth solving, if it causes a major security hole and millions of SSL certs are now hackable.

Phew!! I can't wait until the next valgrind warning! we're bound to win the desktop this way!!

Expect to see ubuntu doing more work in the future, I can't see them relying on debian like they used to, if I was them, I'd start to leech devs who can be trusted and leave debian as a rusty old hulk.

Chris Thomas
Flame

Re: Does this only affect Debian?

So basically, it affects everyone because people like to use debian to generate the keys, but if they generated the keys on fedora for example, or centos, there would be no problem.

So yes, it does affect fedora, centos, suse, everyone, but ONLY if you generated the keys on debian.

So there you have it, everyone stop using debian and use a better more up to date distro with it's head not stuck in the sands of time.

Simple really, these guys are a joke, this just proves it, no wonder they are getting killed by ubuntu.

Chris Thomas
Flame

The real problem with debian

As far as I see it, the biggest problem with debian is that they can't use software like everyone else, they "import" the official tree into debians tree, modify it so it runs better with debian and then thats their tree they use for the distribution.

Anyone remember what retarded noise came from them when Mozilla's icon came up in the press a while back.

paraphrasing "We are going to fork firefox to call it iceweasel because the icon is not free (as in speech)"

They are the most retarded linux devs on the planet, and I am glad that they do very little in terms of developing linux compared to the bigger players like redhat and suse and novell (even if they are tainted by MS, they still do more work than debian)

If you have a patch to stop valgrind making noises, why not just put the patch into the official tree, let it be audited by everyone and then pushed out through a normal release, why patch it in the debian tree and push it out from there, hardly anyone I know uses debian anyway, so the more eyes make bugs shallow argument doesnt necessarily fly (because with debian, there are not so many eyes)

Can anyone remember the last time debian made something revolutionary for the linux ecosystem? Graphical installers? dbus? gnome? kde? firefox? x.org?

Yeah, I am sure they "contributed" but by comparison, my take on this is that they are the poor family of the linux world who nobody really likes.

I am glad they are spiralling around the cesspit of death, got no money? awwww, poor debian, maybe you should pay more money on developers and less on "committees". Ubuntu stealing the wheat from debians chaff and I'm glad of it.

Chris Thomas
Flame

Public Lynching at 11pm

There are some people on this planet who typed the code that did this, there is a group of people directly responsible.

Who are there, I want to see them publically lynched, I want them kicked out of the debian project and humiliated on slashdot, total destruction of their online status and shown as an example for all to see.

Who the f**k does something like "remove" a key component of the RNG in the first place, a dumbass, thats who, a total waste of space, do they even acknowledge the damage they have done?

Just a good job that most of the people I know wouldnt touch debian with a 10 year, out of date bargepole that debian is.

I know some people who are very angry about this and some people who are apologetic (freetards!!)

This is a disaster.

Isabella Rossellini romps with praying mantis

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

YESS!!!!!

NSFW!!! Holy smokes, it's the first thing I did, send to everyone, OMG, so funny, especially the bit with riding the preying mantis and shouting YEAAH!!!!!

Now THATS pornography!!!

LOOOL

UK Office of Government Commerce cracks one off

Chris Thomas
Coat

errr, I don't get it

wheres the joke about the logo??? I've obviously missed something whilst living in spain!!

Mine is the one which says "Hospital property, not for resale"

SCO bags $100m to fight another day

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

This is great news!! (for free software)

I don't know whether anyone has gotten this idea as well, but I'll spell it out what I just thought about them getting this extra cash

ITS A FANTASTIC TURN OF EVENTS

right now, free software is facing an uncertain victory, right now, we all know free software is victorious and never had anything to prove, or defend against, we know all this because we're not stupid, we don't read press releases like some people read the newspaper "Wow, did you know that Free Software developers don't feed their children for up one week a month? Thats interesting honey, pass the marmalade"

Some people out there believe every little lie that SCO tell them and everytime they read in the newspaper about a judge kicking them down, they understand a little bit more than they did before.

WE NEED THEM TO CONTINUE, SO THEY CAN FAIL AND THE WHOLE WORLD CAN'T SAY IT WASN'T TRUE.

We need SCO to continue, we need that judgement to be passed down and their asses kicked, we need a judgement, in black and white, SCO didnt own a thing, couldnt sue for anything and free sofware is vindicated. I know that a lot of people will still argue black is white, regardless of what proof you tell them, but for the other 80% the final day of this case, will make them wake up and then nobody can deny what we've known all along.

Sometimes the continuation of painful process, in the long run, is a good thing, lets enjoy the show!

If it wasnt for SCO, I'd do a whole lot more work during the day and a whole lot less reading groklaw, without SCO, I might have to find another pursuit to prevent me from doing things too quickly :D

Enjoy

Top cop urges RIPA review in coded attack on snoop code

Chris Thomas

@Suspicion of what?

No, again, you've missed the point of what I said, the example I mentioned was that PACE was brought in for a number of reasons, one of them was because of the Brixton riots, the stop and search doctrine changed so that stopping a black guy on the street was not to be taken lightly, you had to fill in all the paperwork, dot every i and cross every t, if you don't, then you might get into trouble.

Compare that with what happens when they stopped the white guy, BOTH are equally under suspicion, from what I read in the passage, but the white guy didnt take any documents, not as much "pressure" to get things 100% correct.

What the book was saying, which you missed twice now, was that the legislation was brought in to make it FAIR and EQUAL for whites and blacks, hence removing ANY doubt that ANY black person could have about the reason they are being stopped, that they are being treated 100% the same as everyone else, to cut down the number of complaints about harassment.

However, what it has actually done, is POSITIVELY DISCRIMINATE towards non-whites, making the police work 2x as hard, 2x as much work, to deal with non-whites as it is to deal with whites, SOLEY because they don't want to have anymore complaints.

But, as I mentioned above, it was NOT the intention to make it more work to deal wth, just the SAME amount of work to deal with, but thats not happened, it's made it harder

I tell you what mate, I've walked about my blessed Island for 30 years until I moved to barcelona and I've NEVER in my life been stopped once. However everyone I know who HAS been stopped, was stopped for a good reason, nothing happened, but it was a good reason. Because he had a tuned up car, because it was driving too fast, because he looked like he was on drugs, perhaps he looked drunk, etc, etc.

No smoke without fire. The police arent corrupt, most of the corruption is in your head, they are just trying to do the best job they can with the least time possible (thanks for paperwork) and the most apathy from the general public.

Thats not to say that they are all little angels, but they arent devils either.

Chris Thomas

@Suspicion of what?

in addition, you are entitled to know WHY you were stopped,you failed to mention this, what was the reason?

He hasto provide you with the paperwork and you know what, you are more than entitled to go around to the police station and complain there and then.

if he had no reason at all, why didnt you complain? Are you going to say that you couldnt be bothered, that you had better things to do? you wonder why nothing changes when you don't put any effort into trying to change it, they'll stop harassing you if you keep a note of all the paperwork and then complain with harassment, did you ever try that? Don't tell me, you didnt, right? you just complained to your mates, threw the papers in the bin and go on with your life?

If thats not the case, then I apologise, but you see what I'm trying to say and I hope you did complain, but then again, maybe he DID have a good reason (you were drunk ?)

Chris Thomas

@What you see isn't what you get

But you've made a critical error here which I don't think you've seen, BOTH of them, were stopped, with only SUSPICION as a reason, but the white guy, didnt ask for paperwork, didnt care, just answered the questions of PC Copperfield and left, the black guy is GIVEN the information, WITHOUT requesting it. They were both stopped and searched in the same manner, but why did the white guy nto get any paperwork?

Think, if the black guy was 100% identical in personality to the ray, the white guy, then surely he must be thinking, WTF do I want with all this paperwork.

The part of the book I mention has little to do with what the black or white guy thinks he needs and more about what the police force REQUIRES him to need. The police force practically turns a blind eye to white people being stop and searched, because they are not afraid of any complaint, whereas the black guy, they are terrified, they'll drown the guy in paperwork even if he doent want it.

So instead of intelligence being on the front line and backed up by the commanders, it's all inthe offices where the front line officer is told to not think, just do

oh, but the passage in the book never mentioned whether it was a KNOWN black car thief or not, so I guess I cannot say anything more than that, but even if the black guy WAS a known car thief, they would STILL plaster him with paperwork, just to avoid a complaint.

There is something wrong there, what the passage was highlighting, was that the IDEA of PACE was to make it so that people would know WHY they are arrested and to note down all the evidence, however the effect of PACE has been to make police afraid of stopping any non-white guy because of the complaint that might follow and if you DO stop him, you'll be 15 minutes filling in forms with him at the bus shelter. That is NOT the intended effect of creating balance that it was supposed to have.

Chris Thomas

working in the public sector

The guy who posted anonymously (why? I am brave enough, aren't you?) might like to think why we dislike the public sector so much, it's mostly because we see you all as a bunch of useless people who couldnt get a proper job.

I live in spain right now (barcelona to be more exact) and I'll tell you that it's a goal for most people here to land a public sector job the reason being is that once you've got it, you can sit back because the gravy train never stops. Thats putting it shortly, they believe they will have a job for life and never get sacked because they were "unnecessary".

It's true to say that I don't like public sector workers much, they do a good job at some things, but most of the time, I only interact with you guys when I don't want to.

the reason you put forward for being resistant to change is that people in the public sector always see a new boss coming in, changing things, getting replaced and starting again, but ask yourself why do you fear your job is going to be lost in the first place.

If you provided a job, a service which the country could NOT work without, then surely you're going to be working there for a long time, nobody will sack you and nobody will be unhappy with you, the reason you are afraid is because you KNOW you're useless and surplous to requirements, you know that you are not needed in society and the only reason you have this job is because someone was stupid enough to create the job in the first place and you are thinking that maybe one day, someone will turn around and tell you this, along with the opening times of the job center.

If you are secure in your job, you'll never feel this, but if the public sector feels this so much, then that says a lot about them in society. Most of them are unnecessary and should probably find another job and stop wasting my money.

you also made some comments about what I said and the NHS, I don't doubt that they need a lot of people to do administration and buy drugs, supply chain, building managements.

But are you seriously suggesting that we need all those administrators? Cause from what I hear, most of them don't actually help the NHS, just to create paperwork and other "accounting" which is 90% of the time not needed, but nobody will touch it, nobody will reduce their numbers, because each one of them is a voter and you don't wanna piss the votes off do you.

My Mum works in the NHS and twenty years ago someone was standing next to her said "I've got more managers now than I have workmates, I'll have to start talking to strangers"

She knew, 20 years ago that the NHS was creating a disaster and nobody listened to her, or the other people like her who no doubt wanted to warn the NHS away from this current strategy.

The problem is not hard to see, you see it in the papers each week or so, that the NHS has more managers than front line staff, that saleries are hopelessly skewed towards those who do the least work where the people who do the most, get peanuts.

Chris Thomas

AC@Letting people get away because of too much paperwork

The problem then comes in that if the police officer takes the initiative and puts the car under surveillance and catches the guy, he is not 100% sure that he'll have the authorisation afterwards, even if it can be retrospectively applied for.

The problem mentioned in the original book I wrote about also talked about this problem, that the guys on the ground don't 100% always have the support of the guys at the top, because instead of looking at joe public, they are looking after their own arses and approving that surveillance, MIGHT put that guys promotion at risk.

So you can't really expect people to act in the moment when they know there is a maybe involved, maybe he'll get a black mark, maybe he'll never reach his pension.

So, the situation compounds itself

Chris Thomas

@failure clauses? Not just for the IT contractors!

This is correct, I never mentioned that it's not just the contractors which fail, but the people who hired them, the problem with these contracts is that they are spending my money and I cannot see the contract.

most government projects are done behind closed doors and the final agreement is not open to the public to see, why? I paid for it, I want to see what you've agreed, if I then see that you're asking for more things on top of what you already contracted them for, I need to be able to control that and prevent those changes from breaching the agreement my government made and is now trying to change.

I guess this is why in your last sentence you mentioned accountability, this is ultimately what we need, we need to have public information about the status of projects, it's problems, costs and the current status, I admit that most people would not be qualified to know WTF they are saying, but at least some of the people in the country would be able to know WHY things don't work, WHO has requested what and when.

if everything, or at least most things, were public, you'd find less stupidity, because people don't want everything they say public, only the "clever" things, if people are forced to think before they talk, they usually stop acting like fool, it's only because things are hidden, people can "speak openly"

accountability, good call, how do we get it?

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

Wasting Police Time

The book, named above, is a pretty critical piece of work by PC Copperfield and I recommend it, merely for the amusing stupidity that infects our police service. The ISBN is: 978-0-9552854-1-7

everyone buy it now and read it, you'll most likely be told what you already know, but you'll at least find it funny and have something to talk about the next time the topic comes up.

It's not just RIPA that needs investigating, it's the entire system, the problem comes that the people who oppose changes are the people finding themselves jobs and changing that, eliminating jobs, is eliminating votes, who is going to vote for a party which plans to radically tackle beaurocracy? You? I hope you have skills in other areas and find a job soon.

If you're a beaurocrat, you'll vote the other guys, if you want to keep your job anyway, so the problems faced are significant. People need to start thinking about the big picture (tm) and not just their small piece of it, not that it'll happen anytime soon.

What we need is a PM who is going to shake it up, not give a damn about getting re-elected and just tear through the system.

IT contracts? yeah, with expensive failure clauses. You can't find a contractor to agree? fine, divide the contract up, spread the failure across smaller companies.

BIG IT contracts? who needs them anyway, you want an integrated NHS service, are you REALLY REALLY sure you need IBM to achieve it? or do they need to just design the principles and push local IT companies to do the implementation at a LOCAL LEVEL? Failure clauses? sure, but since the risk is now smaller, surely you'll find someone.

Police service? It would be great if seargents and the top brass of police were electable, then at least we could get rid of the useless ones. We need to rebalance the entire system and starting with this incredible nonsense called Political Correctness. In Wasting Police Time, PC Copperfield explains thusly (paraphrased).

I walked up to a known drug dealer, asked him "Hi Ray, Got any drugs?" which he replied "no", I searched him and asked him how his wife and kids were and mentioned that his eldest is about to take his GCSE's, found nothing, he walked away with a smile and a wave, it was almost "chummy", friendly. Now contrast that with the reaction a suspected black car thief gets, it's similar to: We are searching you with our powers granted by the PACE act 1984, here is a copy of your information, here is a copy of the form I filled out to authorise the stop and search, I am based at Newtown police station, you are required...[Ed. get on with it...}etc.etc.etc. In the end the treatment the ray, the white drug dealer got was completely different from the black car thief, which is not what people intended.

That Sums up completely what is wrong with race relations and the police in this country, they are SCARED of arresting non-whites because then they have to defend themselves against racial allegations.

The NHS? make redundant most of the people who fill in paperwork and let doctors and nurses COMMAND their wards, like the Matron of old, that system worked and worked very well, people seem to think that the idea behind the NHS was a new idea, it was actually nothing new, just a new name for something that already existsed before it, albeit with more resources, wealthy people in the days before the NHS used to pay donations to keep the poor healthy, albeit on a much smaller scale, all Labour did was take the idea and apply it to the entire country and tax everyone to pay for it.

But now, we don't pay for nurses, we pay for Beaurocrats, I know which type of Beaurocrat I would prefer, one that knows which end of the needle to stick in me, or one who knows how to put plaster casts on broken limbs. If you're going to employ people to do paperwork, don't employ someone new, make their existing workers do it, then at least the staff levels don't increase, not enough time to fill in all the papers AND do your job? ok, reduce the amount of paperwork.

Has anyone considered that most of the paperwork is merely Ass-covering? What is the point of that when there are people waiting outside for 4 hours to see a doctor? Paperwork is coming BEFORE patient care. How did that happen?

Lots of things need to change and we need to start thinking about laws that affect us and laws that do not affect us. just because a law doesnt affect you today, doesnt mean it doesnt affect you tomorrow, stop thinking JUST about yourself, start thinking outside your cosy life and standing up for people who are nothing to do with you, only when will you find the assistance you need when you need it.

To quote a poet who wrote: First they came...

First they came for the Communists,

- but I was not a communist so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,

- but I was neither, so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Jews,

- but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.

And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me

Time to start waking up, time to start helping each other get what we want

IT angle? read above

Paris Angle? she doesnt understand, she's at home cooking

ManFromMarsAngle? He'll probably say something interesting, it'll be funny either way

UK.gov says no plans for FBI DNA database hookup

Chris Thomas
Flame

@Wouldn't it be a better approach to....

Don't be a dummy, that would defeat the whole point of the idea

think boy think!

Uncertainty for Ruby and Rails despite changes

Chris Thomas
Thumb Down

Zed is a lame assed Donkey

Right, a rant about a nobody,

The RoR community is small, very small, in fact, most people I talk to, know very little about it, compared to PHP, or Java, or C, or C++ it is incredibly tiny, that said, they have a good idea and it's rapid ability to create something useful has made it useful for a lot of people.

The fact that some people noted in the article failed and went back to PHP in the case mentioned says something about how you might like to think you can cut glass with a hammer, reality states that this is not quite the case, RoR has a use, it's ability is limited by the methods it was created by and the aim it was designed to fix.

This is pretty obvious.

PHP was designed (ROFL!!!) to do whatever people wanted to do when they write webpages, it was less designed as evolved, but well, even though there are some hilarious design defects, they are work-aroundable (new word? bonus points?) and you can live with them, but RoR is more like a straight-jacket, because that is how it was designed, it was designed to do _something_ good, fast and better than the alternatives, you cannot blame RoR for not being able to do something it was not designed to do, because that would be stupid.

However that doesnt mean that Ruby by itself it limited by RoR, obviously RoR is a subset of the Ruby language, so to speak, which is designed to solve a particular problem, whereas Ruby could be compared to PHP, being a general language, designed (or evolved in PHP's case) to solve many problems that RoR was not designed to do.

All of this is pretty obvious so far.

Zed's problem seems to be that he cannot live with other people, he's created a good piece of software and believes it gives him the right to shout his stupid mouth off, this is pretty obviously wrong. Zed needs an employer, therefore zed has to follow rules and if he doesnt (which he seems not to) he becomes unemployed (which he has been, a lot it seems) and therefore becomes poor (which he seems to be) because he is unemployable (because he cannot keep his mouth shut).

He has the bare faced cheek to compare himself to Joel Spolsky, who you can read about here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

Now, many people might like to rate joel highly, or lowly, but I like to think my code will not appear on thedailywtf.com anytime soon, so when I say that joel has some good resources on his site for programmers and managers alike, I like to think my opinion is right, he may not be right about everything, but he happens to be right about things I agree with. You might not agree with me, but ok, I will put my code where my mouth it. I am the developer of Esftp for Eclipse, you can find it here

http://esftp.sf.net

Determine yourself if you will, whether I am capable of telling you left from right.

All in all, I rate joel quite highly and however as we all are human and make mistakes, I believe he does everyone a good job in telling us things that we might agree with or how to be a better programmer.

That doesnt mean that you, or I, could not write something similar, or we could NEVER write something like joel does, I am sure that there are people who could do a similar job. But Joel just stands out because unlike people who could do it, but don't, joel has done it and it's readable by you right now. So rate that sentence as highly or lowly as you like.

Now, compare this to what Zed has done.

<big silence>

he is a big fish in a small pond, he writes a single piece of good software, throws a whole bitchload of shit around like he is God and thats about it. omfg, zed, are you f**king serious? Zed is a nobody, just like I am a nobody.

The world is full of good programmers, what sets me apart from zed is that whereas I might bitch about PHP, or give guidelines to what I believe it right, sometimes in the same way as zed might, I wouldnt do what he has done.

What I find unbelievable really, is that people give him the light of day, where there are far more deserving people around who would do a better job, given the motivation to do what he has done.

So, zeds dead baby, who cares, just a rant from a nobody. Not even a good nobody.

PS. Zed, if you are reading this, I live in barcelona and if you wanna come here and organise your little boxing ring, I'll take you up on the offer JUST TO SEE if I could beat your sorry ass :D LOL

Clarkson's 'steal my ID' stunt backfires

Chris Thomas
Thumb Up

Brash, but in self-rightousness and in honesty equally

Whatever you wanna say about jeremy, he has the balls to put his hands up and admit when he's wrong, he can say stupid things sometimes, mostly off the cuff and no doubt wrote what he did ad-libbing as he went, without checking it out before publishing, but thats just the man in action.

what characterises him the most, is how when things go wrong, he doesnt try to cover it up, or play stupid word games, he simply puts his hands up and admits it.

how many people would like that kind of brashness from our own politicians who caused the mess? But instead all we seem to have is face saving double speak, which gets them out of trouble, but not out of the shit they are in and that we are all in now. I don't even know if my details are included, but I would like to know, anyone know how I could find out.

I was having a conversation with a polictical science student I live with a couple of weeks ago about politicians and lying, I will share a little with you. Even though it is slightly off topic, we spoke about why politicians lie and why not just do a clarkson, as I shall forever call it.

The reasoning from him was that politicians are practically forced to spin favourably everything they do/say because if they do not, the opposition will, but negatively. They don't necessarily spin because they like it, but if labour did a clarkson, the conservatives would pull their legs off. So don't expect this level of honesty from anyone who wants to keep their career. Anyone stupid enough to do this, would find themselves dumped by their bosses (the pm in this case) because they damaged the party. It is not enough to be honest, you have to support the party, if being honest damages that, you are not permitted to be honest and keep your position, so even though 99% of you would pat the guy on the back, he'd be out of the door in no time and therefore not be in a position to tell the truth about anything interesting in the near future. It is a crap situation to be in, but it is our own fault, because we practically reward political spin, just look at how people vote to figure that one out.

So, clarkson maybe gobby, but he's honest in a way that no politician could be. So don't go expecting any of them to put their hands up and admit to all these data protection breaches anytime soon.

chris

IE's Acid trip back to conflict

Chris Thomas
Pirate

...start another war

can you say which features are coming from firefox which are pushing out into new territory? just for those who happen to not know something you do?

I happen to know that safari is pushing out with css animation, that looks verrrrry interesting.

so there are SOMETHINGS out there, some people as well, who are pushing it out, I really hope to god everyone gets on the train and starts a "my browser has <insert here> and yours does not" type argument, cause I am sick to death of having to do stupid tricks to get simple stuff done.

You know what browsers need (amongst other things)...animation, they need to start pushing up the performance of javascript, so that it can run realtime, 30fps animation of ALL dom attributes.

it's time the web stopped thinking about laying out text like it was on a page of a book, it's not, get over it.

Having accurate text and image positioning, as well as font and image rendering is great, but there are better ways to layout text, think about how a 3d artist models their works, we need to start thinking big and thinking more complex (not necessarily INCREDIBLY complex), how many times have you said to someone "HTML is really easy, it's so simple that even YOU can do it, don't worry, you'll pick it up in a few hours Mum/Dad/10yr old Cousin"

you know, that one sentence is a death knell of HTML, writing a web page should be no different than writing a book or writing a complex animation routine, it should take skill and time to acquire. I know it's great that a beginner can write something with very little effort, but it's KEEPING those people in mind, which is holding us back, the argument comes around, it goes like this

"We can't do XYZ, because it would make HTML to complex, so beginners can't use it"

oh, you wonder why anyone with a clue wants to drop HTML like a hot rock and go with Flash? because HTML is for babies and it doesnt move, it doesnt innovate and it just stays where it is, professionals hate it merely because it childs them, it restricts what they can do, merely to keep the kids at the back who wanna write myspace pages happy. How many people here agree we should let a (mostly)untalented minority hold back HTML?

The question returns: Who wants to see a war now?

Chris Thomas
Go

Good Lord I hope this is the start of a war

You know, sometimes war is a good thing, nobody tends to realise this until you're in the grip of tyranny, or stagnating in a wasteland, but a war, can shake up the ground you live on and turn your peaceful boring life, into something worth living again.

Has any of you thought that having nice, cosy standards, which work everywhere is a bad thing(tm)?

Have you ever thought you'd LOVE to insert video directly into the browser's HTML and that it'll work on say Firefox? or Opera? Ever wondered what using javascript to write SVG images directly into the browser window and then manipulating it to perform animations in real time? Ever wondered why instead of just f**king doing CSS 2.1 the browser developers spend 200 years talking and debating?

Sometimes to say "f**k it!" is a good thing, sometimes, to say, I don't give a damn about who agrees with me, is a good thing, sometimes to say, I'm going to implement this in my browser, standard or not and if you wanna use it, use my browser, then I'm sorry to say, thats a frigging amazing thing!

I am so sick and tired of waiting for all these guys to stop sucking each other off and start frigging working on improving the system I'm starting to wonder how much work it would be to do it myself, they are so enamored with talking about "seeming" how important they are to each other, they've forgotten that they are on candid camera and we are all watching.

I think some of these people are just involved with the "standards" process because they actually like being seen to be important, not because they are actually doing ANYTHING IMPORTANT.

What we need, is someone to break ranks and go for broke, start pushing some REALLY COOL TECH into the browsers and if you wanna use it, you'll need that browser and if you don't have it, tough f**king shit. If the other browser devs want to catch up, let them. If they don't, stay where you are and be a third rate jockey.

I just don't care anymore about standards, I want progress. I also would like a common theme to all browsers, which is what we've got and if we get more of it, then great.

But what I would like more of also, is the ability to use advanced features that are maybe not available everywhere, just because that maybe someone comes with a fantastic idea that I love and is copied everywhere else.

Just a thought

When is Java not Java?

Chris Thomas
Stop

Open Source?? How??

Can anyone explain to me why Andriod is open source?? Taken from

http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/11/dalvik

"The interesting question is, of course, why doesn’t anyone have the courage to ask the same questions of Google, that they ask about OpenJDK? :)

Android is proprietary, despite being marketed as open source. Android has a compatibility pledge, signed and kept behind closed doors. Android has no governance model, nor any indication there will be one. Android has no spec, and the license prohibits alternative implementations, as that’s not a use licensed by Google in the SDK license. Android is completely controlled by Google, and Google reserves the right to kill off competitors applications if they hurt Google financially, etc. It’s only as open as it is in Google’s financial interest to allow openness, by design. Same old proprietary Java wine, in a different bottle.

It’s as if we’re witnessing the rebirth of the JCP, with folks lined up to lend open source community ’street credibility’ to another closed off vendor cartel around a single, proprietary implementation, this time with Google instead of Sun."

So, anyone care to explain how the hell this is open source?? Only an idiot woud think this is anything but bad old proprietory software

Hell, even now Sun are looking better on the open source front than google with this andriod platform, basically, if you want open, openjdk is where you can get it, or icedtea, but anywhere but andriod.

get a clue people

Aussie boffins translate whale chat

Chris Thomas
Joke

Hold the phones Doris!!

Breaking News!!!!

Whales are marine animals, news just in, confirmed by multiple sources, we are still awaiting our top biology expert to confirm this amazing insight into the world underneath the waves

We have a quote from a source saying:

"Its quite fascinating that they're obviously marine mammals, they've been separated from terrestrial mammals for a long, long, long time, but yet still seem to be following the same basic communication system."

This is gonna make my name in stars!!

Page: