* Posts by Alan Brown

15029 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008

Voting machine memory stick drama in Georgia sparks scandal, probe

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Perhaps they had to drop a shift so they could vote and can't afford to do that again. "

If people need to do this, then the voting procedure is neither free nor fair.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Lost ballot box

"Of course, one could also track them easily with numbered (non-counterfeitable) seals."

You mean you don't?

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Lost ballot box

> Then a very embarrassed official turned up. "Sorry, chaps, we've just found this extra ballot box."

One of my relatives is a district returning officer in a relatively small country.

There is a _very_ strict policy about counting boxes out and back in - along with ballots and registers.

Whilst there's a preliminary count done at polling stations in front of observers before the ballots are returned to the boxes and resealed, central counting doesn't _start_ until all boxes are in and their seals verified (each official observer has their own seal and it must be present on the returned box).

if the number of ballots + spoiled + unused that comes back doesn't exactly match the number sent out, then heads start rolling - and the ballot serial numbers are all recorded going out, etc to avoid ballot box stuffing.

There are a lot of checks and balances in a paper-based system which are highly visible and auditable. Making the voting electronic makes impersonation a slightly bigger risk, but the real risk is in the ability to commit fraud at the backend. Various despots are attributed as saying there's no need to manipulate the voters when you can far more easily manipulate the vote takers.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Please

"One of the older tricks was to "pre-vote" a bunch of ballots and when the polls closed, ballots were exchanged. "

Which is one of the reasons why every paper ballot in most countries has a serial number and those serial numbers are recorded against the voting register.

if one shows up that isn't recorded against a voter, you know something is off. It's still gamable but a lot harder if there are the requisite number of observers onhand.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Transparency

- after an election, they don't count in the number of memory sticks returned and that it matches the number of machines which were in use?

And what's on the sticks isn't cyptographically signed to verify it's not been tampered with?

UK Home Office slurps 1,500 schoolkids' records per month

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: How long before the fingerprints get handed over?

"lunches are paid for by a fingerprint scanner"

Those are insecure and spoofable. Subdermal vein scanners are more accurate (even identical twins have differing patterns) and they generate a non-reversible hash of the scan (which means that fingerprints aren't actually copiable on a file somwehere).

They're also more hygenic, as you don't need to touch them (which saves norovirus doing the rounds, amongst other nasties - does your school insist pupils wash their hands _after_ touching the scanner?(*))

The problem with swipe cards is that they're easy to lose or be stolen, but I'd take that risk to my kids going down with some nasty virus.

(*) A similar principle applies to bathroom doorhandles, given the number of people who don't wash hands after wiping their arses.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: And what do you expect from GruppenFuhrer Rudd?

"Concentrating their attention on children..."

As tory ministers are reported to like doing.

Sysadmin 'fixed' PC by hiding it on a bookshelf for a few weeks

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Top Floor Perks

"We went and checked up one night."

The IT director at a certain australiasian clothing catalogue company was caught doing something similar. He didn't even make it to the end of the day (management _really_ frowned on that kind of thing)

He showed up as director of the motor vehicle registry not long afterwards, insisting on trying to _email_ 200Mb files between offices overnight (in the days of 14k4 modems and mail systems defaulting to 10Mb maximum) and blaming all the ISPs along the chain for it not working.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: deja vu

"So Del whacks it and up it comes..."

You may laugh, but the old ceramic 286s used to get so hot(*) that they'd cause thermal problems with their sockets. They'd power up and work for a couple of minutes, then lockup. A whack would reseat the CPU socket fingers and off it would go until switched off and let cool.

The advice given was (obvoiusly) "Don't turn it off"

(*) Hot enough that touching one resulted in a sizzling sound and a blackend fingerprint left behind. I sported a huge fingertip blister for 10 days.(**) Very few of them were ever fitted with heatsinks despite the obvious benefits.

(**) The only other time this occured is when I inadvisedly made contact with a 1980s vintage photocopier fuser in the days when they weren't adequately protected against such things. Even old valve amps didn't get that hot.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: deja vu

" The number of computers I've sent out, only to have them mysteriously fail "

i tend to insist on paying a visit to see exactly what's being done - and on more than one occasion have fixed the problem by turning the wall switch on.

Around 1.4 million people have sub-10Mbps speeds - Ofcom

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: I am one of the 1.4m

"I've argued with BT to do something about it"

Your problem is trying to do anything with BT.

Switch to a _small_ alternate provider and explain the situation. You'd be surprised what can be done.

Alan Brown Silver badge

This is an ideal opportunity

To break up BT - simply say that giving them the money is conditional on Openreach becoming a completely separate company

Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo fit to go: Europe's GPS-like network switches on

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Does this mean

Anything from Qualcomm 805 chipset onwards (eg: galaxy5 note4) onwards has Gallileo built in, along with Glonass and Beidou. It's just a matter of having supporting software.

So unless your phone is more than 2 years old, you probably won't need to buy a new one to use the service.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: US was worried it couldn't be turned off?

"Shoot them down?"

That's exactly what they were threatening to do to Gallileo

and apart from the obvious political shit there's Kesler syndrome to worry about.

Poor software design led to second £1m Army spy drone crash

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: When R/C hobby models now come with autoland, these folks are simply pathetic.

"Why does JBS bloke that sound like a physco in the making?"

Which order did he drop them in? :)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Outsourcing

"Fortunately, my $WINESUPPLIER of choice appears to have ditched Yodel as a carrier."

Perhaps it's the same $WINESUPPLIER who used them to deliver a shipment to the right address (mine) in the wrong town (ie, I didn't order it). I refused delivery twice in 2 days then came home a few days later to find the previously rejected delivery dumped on my doorstep with an obviously broken bottle inside.

$WINESUPPLIER was duly informed and promised to arrange a pickup, but never did so.

I use the anecdote (and Yodel dumping stuff in the bushes outside $orkplace security gates because they can't be bothered using the intercom) as good reasons to warn people off such companies. It gets amusing when they try to use "Yodel have recorded the delivery" as a defence for breaching distance selling regulations.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: This software...

"...was probably written by the same jokers that wrote the software in my (well known brand German) car."

Something similar happened in a friend's Mercedes(*). The onboard computer said about £2500 pf parts were busted, so the shop replaced them - and the computer still said they were busted, but friend was out £2500 in parts plus the labour.

I borrowed the car and took it to my friendly local wizard. We discovered very quickly that the thermostat was jammed open, the engine remained stone cold and this was confusing the hell out of the computer.

The stealership refused to accept responsibilty for this amazing level of servicing incompetence and tried to claim their warranty was voided by someone else looking at the vehicle. My friend didn't have the stomach for a legal fight and just replaced the thermostat (coincidentally also a £50 part on a merc), whereupon all the computer complaints went away.

Moral: If there are a lot of systems supposedly wrong, there's usually a common cause. You don't just replace everything that "computer says", but tales like this are depressingly common in the motoring industry (My own car blew an O ring in the steering rack at 3 years old. Nissan's answer was a new rack. A reconditioning outfit removed, serviced, replaced the O ring and machined a second groove for a second O ring(*), then refitted it for less than the stealership's quoted labour cost, which would have been 1/3 of the total bill)

(*) Unless AC has XX chromosomes, it's unlikely to be the same car.

(**) Apparently Input shaft o-ring weakness is a known issue that most makers have never addressed.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"you get the feeling Thales logic was cobbled together as they noticed things that didn't work..."

This is more than likely to be the case, most software end up like this even if it was more-or-less straightforward in the first place.

The question is whether it was designed to have software modules added/removed as required or if the programmers wrote a Spaghetti Monster from Hell (I'm betting the latter)

Now factor in that Thales not only write drone software, but also do stuff for transportation systems with critical safety requirements (such as railways and civil aviation) and that substandard programming ethos tends to be company-wide.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: GPS - not as good as you might think

"There's probably a good reason why a radar altimeter isn't used, but I don't know what it is."

Probably the same reason why Thales deleted the WoW sensor instead of going to a more reliable one.

Cheapeset bidder, built to specification even if that spec is obviously missing critical parts - all such additions are off-contract extras at some exorbitant price.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Re the weight-on-wheels thing

It's not the matter of turning it on or off. It's the matter that Thales are apparently still using fragile mechanical switches to detect such things and they get broken on rough ground.

A strain gauge simply sticks to the strut and measures the flex that occurs as the aircraft settles - if you look at the pictures you'll see it's U-shaped. It's that way because it's a spring and springs flex.

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/c/automation-control-gear/sensors-transducers/strain-gauges/

This kind of thing isn't exactly new. Aircraft have been using strain-guage based WoW sensing for some time - precisely due to the fragility of oleo sensor switches (WoW sensors on manually flown aircraft are necessary for civil autoland systems but are more frequently used as lockout devices to prevent someone accidentally hitting the gear-up switch whilst on the ground. It happens occasionally and causes much embarassment to everyone concerned)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: OK here's a fix....

I'd say both.

Hall effect sensors for spin are rugged and lightweight - and weight on wheels can trivially be measured with a strain gauge stuck onto the landing struts - which would only break if the struts did, so it'd have to be one hell of a rough field.

Climate change bust up: We'll launch our own damn satellites if Trump pulls plug – Gov Brown

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Deniers" a pejorative? I think not

"I also suspect that as the earth warms it will lose heat more rapidly to the relative cold space,"

The relative change in planetary heat vs space is a tiny fraction of 1% (you need to refer it on the Kelvin scale). A warming capable of obliterating life on earth would result in a very tiny increased reradiation rate into space, so your suspicion is mostly wishful thinking.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Deniers" a pejorative? I think not

"Get back to us when the temps start to rise again, okay? Heck, just the ocean would be enough."

Ocean temps have been rising throughout the supposed "18 year hiatus" - deep ocean ones in particular.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Deniers" a pejorative? I think not (@ itzman)

"The bad news is that this carbon sink is already failing"

Even before that stage, our ability to put carbon into the atmosphere has been outrunning the sinks' ability to absorb it for some time. A reduction in sink capacity(*) isn't really proven at this point but it doesn't need to be if we keep emitting at current rates.

The added factor of the risk of a few gigatonnes of methane burping out off the north coast of Siberia(**) thanks to incursions of warm water into the arctic ocean shouldn't be discounted. What's allegedly come out already is probably enough to account for the "mystery methane level increases" that have been recently reported (and blamed on farming) as methane watching satellite instruments haven't been looking that far north(***)

(*)An "Anoxic event."

(**) Leptav Sea methane emissions.(****)

(***) They are now, but the instrumentation has an extremely hard job seeing methane emisions on water (not enough contrast)

(****) Some US researchers are actively poo-poohing these reports, because there's no easy way of verifying Russian reports(+) - but they're also trying to discourage anyone looking to see if they can be verified.

(+) Russia makes life hard for its own scientists, let alone foreign ones wanting to come and verify observations and the researcher's reports are accused of being extreme exaggerations.

Bluetooth-enabled safe lock popped after attackers win PINs

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Someone please explain why you need to press a button when your VERY NEXT ACTION is to touch the door you wanted open / start the car you wanted started."

Cold climate, mostly. Locks freeze (literally) and remote start means you can get the interior warmed up before leaving the house.

'Public Wi-Fi' gang fail in cunning plan to hide £10m cigarette tax fraud

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Proof (if it were needed)

"What's picking a lock compared to buying shares? What's breaking into a bank compared to founding one?"

None of them hold a candle to the amount of money that can be made from religion - and it's tax free.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Rather do it the old way... without computers and email..."

Even then, not in plain text.

Al Capone was done for tax evasion - but only after his accountant's code system was broken.

Alan Brown Silver badge

150% isn't high enough,

We're talking about a product which _if used as directed_ will kill or seriously disable about half its users (it was previously believed to be about 1/3 but the numbers have been revised upwards after longer studies.)

On the bright side, the ones that die young won't be a tax burden in their old age. Perhaps we should be encouraging baby boomers to resume smoking like chimneys.

Beancounter nicks $5m from bosses, blows $1m on fantasy babe Kate Upton's mobe game

Alan Brown Silver badge

"A colleague and I had managed to uncover certain indiscretions"

At that point you document everything and hand it to "the authorities".

Whistleblower protection laws apply from that point.

On the other hand if you don't notify "the authorities", then you're potentially an accessory once someone else discovers them.

Trump's 140 characters on F-35 wipes $2bn off Lockheed Martin

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: F-35 is about jobs

"Take the meat out of the aircraft and it will be capable of performance which would mince a human pilot inside their G suit."

Up to a point. You can only pull so may 9G turns in a 35 ton aircraft before the wings fall off and that limit isn't programmed in by the squishiness of the flight control computer.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: You never know........

"There is always the possibility that Trump will can this scheme."

No, he can't do that. Not that he might not try, but the fact is, he doesn't have the power to do so.

The F35 embodies the lessons learned from the F111B debacle - specifically the ones which showed how programs are vulnerable to shutdown. Lockheed has made damned sure that it's impossible to shut the program down.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"(2) who do you think owns all those US T-bills that financed the F-35 and all the rest of it?"

The _interest_ from those T-bills pays for virtually the entire of the PRC military.

The chinese economy is now the largest in the world and they're in a pretty good position to weather an economic storm just on their internal markets.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: The new President

"should change his name to"

I was hoping for Trumplethinskin

"Could he be impeached by his own party?"

Yes. They actively dislike him and would prefer Pence to be well and truely in the driving seat.

All this is presumptive, of course. The _actual_ presidential election is still 4 days away.

Alan Brown Silver badge

" Superiority plane, well, if the weather is fair and the enemy has nothing able to take off! "

You may be jesting, but that's pretty close to the design truth.

The F35 isn't designed to go up against enemy aircraft or ground-based air defences. That's the F22's job.

Relabelling an air support/strike plane as an air superiority fighter - and then selling it to other countries is one of the more egrarious frauds I can think of.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: bombastic bob 400 billion? Try 1.5 trillion

"No, they had designs that would have failed Allied standards for employment, and were only used because the Germans were desperate."

A large chunk of the reason that the germans lost was that they spent huge amounts of time and effort turning out highly advanced (but buggy) designs that ended up being trounced by their fuel consumption(*) or sheer superior numbers of inferior weapons(**). The desperation part only kicked in in the latter stages of the war.

Japan's war effort was doomed from the moment its fuel supplies were cut off, the fact that they kept fighting after that was sheer bloodymindedness on the leadership's part (same for the final days in Germany)

Napolean is attributed as saying "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - and most countries unfriendly to the USA are more than happy to let them keep making mistakes with the F35.

(*)Tiger tanks - it was easy to disable them by targetting their fuel supply. From that point you could simply stay out of range and arrange for them to be picked off when attackers were ready.

(**) Shermans might have been tommycookers, but for every one the germans destroyed with their superior Panzers there were 3 more behind it firing back. Ditto on the soviet T34s.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: 400 billion? Try 1.5 trillion

" I'm guessing a similar multiplier for defence spending in the US "

You'd be guessing wrong.

NASA is subject to so many levels of oversight that the money is traceable.

the US military isn't and the vast majority of spend disappears into only a few pockets.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: billions lost?

"But the military there are as septical of the capabilities of the plane as ElReg's readers"

Having them isn't the same as using them - and they don't need much maintenance if they're only wheeled out of the hanger and carefully flown around the block once a week.

BT's hiring! 500 more customer service folk to answer your angry calls

Alan Brown Silver badge

"G.fast is pretty much very selective vapourware, in terms of real world results "

Expensive vapourware that BTOR can charge 150% of installation costs up front for without having to go to the expense of new cable.

Widespread installation of FTTH requires they amortise the cost over 20 years (they can charge for the terminal equipment, but not the cable laying)

Alan Brown Silver badge

" the only method of getting an update on when the VDSL cab might perhaps be fixed seemed to involve opening yet another fault with BT (the previous one having been mysteriously closed) "

The reason for _that_ being that Openreach techs only get paid when the fault is closed, so they close it no matter what.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Peston on Sunday Interview with Mike Rake , Chairman of BT Plc, his 'Freudian Slip'

"Mike Rake at this point still can't stop chuckling to himself...(he knows BT basically owns ofcom). He make several further chuckles to himself, knowing the mistake he made was really the truth."

Same problem in New Zealand. It was the Ministry of Commerce which forced the breakup after quantifying the economic damage the original NZ setup was doing and documenting how BT was systematically abusing the UK market with the BT/Openreach model that TNZ was attempting to sell to NZ regulators as the way forward.

The subsequent experience in NZ is a good indicator for the UK:

The split-off lines company has proven to be very sucessful, selling to all comers and actively recruiting customers who the original Telco regarded as competitors. In the UK the effect would be seeing duct access sold to Virgin so they can run their own cables at a fraction of the cost of digging up roads, etc.

Contrary to doom and gloom predictions, the lines company has proven to be attractive to banks (financing for investment in infrastructure), whilst the telco has started looking quite ill.

Also contrary to predictions, the actual cost structures that the telco had presented as arguments against a breakup (claiming the lines company was a major cost/loss centre) proved to be completely fictional.

The exact same arguments against the breakup of BT/Openreach were presented against the breakup of TNZ/Chorus - and anyone who looks at what's happened in the last 5 years in New Zealand will know that the effects have been good for the country.

None of this will happen unless Openreach is 100% separated from BT.

The problem is not that Openreach is a monopoly, but that Openreach is a natural monopoly which BT can use (and IS using) as leverage to behave anticompetitively in other areas. Directors, board and offices must be completely cleaved from the mothership to end up with a company that is not subject to undue influence and anticompetitive pressures.

BT is terrified of losing Openreach, because:

1: Openreach is actually a major profit centre

2: It is being used to lever their monopoly to seek additional rent on interconnections with or circuits used by competitors

3: Without it, BT will be an extremely sick company without much political influence.

If Openreach really was such a massive pensions liabliity, BT would be actively seeking to unload it on the government.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Fixing" the wrong thing

"So long as their facial hair doesn't rustle against their headset mic,"

They shave other parts, so the poo doesn't stick.

Solar-powered LoRa IoT node: Nice idea but it won't replace batteries

Alan Brown Silver badge

10,000 cycle lithium batteries exist.

In the laboratory at least. They have implementation "issues" for traction applications (current availability) but for very low power draw systems that shouldn't be an issue.

Ransomware scum offer free decryption if you infect two mates

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: @MyBackDoor

"About 10 years ago I bought some magazine archives, via the publisher no less, that are now utterly unreadable."

There is software for Linux which will do its utmost to extract data from such disks.(Dvdisaster)

There's other software which can merge multiple sets of such data (assuming you have several copies of those disks, each with their own bad spots)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: If only someone....

"- Once every 3 months I physically plug in a 4TB HDD via usb3 into the back of the NAS for half a day, which triggers a full backup to the external disk. "

The same external disk each time. *Facepalm*

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: @MyBackDoor

"I am moving to a system of multiple drives with a week's gap in between and offsite storage cycling - just in case."

This brings up an important point about backups. You need at _least_ 3 copies of your data on separated media (the one you're backing up on, the one before that (offline) and the one before that (offline), which will be recycled to be your backup disk next time.)

I've seen script kiddies knock out ISPs and businesses because all their "backups" were online and directly attached to the system being "backed up". People really have no clue about keeping things safe.

The other classic is burglaries - people have lost not only their computers/laptops, but all the external hard drives that held the backups - conveniently placed on a shelf above the PC. Don't do that.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: @MyBackDoor

"Hard drives can make a perfectly valid backup if done correctly. That means ..."

Amongst other things - NOT running the backups on the system which is hosting the original data.

Bacula's pretty good for this. Not only does it backup clients across a network, but because it keeps hashes of all the files in a database, you can tell what's changed and when it changed - aka a semi-decent IDS with restoral mechanism.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: @MyBackDoor

"You are fortunate that a 1995 CD backup is still viable as I have encountered azo dye-based CDR/DVDRs which are unreadable or showing errors after only 5-6 years."

DVD-Rs are a particular problem as they slowly delaminate if flexed.

I'm surprised anyone is still using AZO. Phtalocyanen has proven much more stable.

CD-RWs are better still as they are a real phase change material, not a dye.

Top tech company's IP was looted by China, so it plans to hack back

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Patents?

"Are you unfamiliar with the Chinese approach to patents? A patent provides no protection within China, hence the enormous range of knock-off Chinese goods"

Actually a patent _IN CHINA_ provides the same protection in China that a patent in the USA provides in the USA or a UK patent provides in the UK.

If you can't be bothered patenting in all applicable countries then expect this to happen. If a chinese manufacturer is making somehting that's patented in the USA then he has zero liabilities unles he's also the one importing and selling it in the USA.

You can thank the USA for this kettle of worms. They set up laws so they could conveniently ignore other countries' patents/copyrights/Intellectual Property until it suited them not to. Now what goes around has come around.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"How long do you think would be before every geek and secretary in the organization is suddenly 'assaulted' by gorgeous people?"

No need for that. Just plant people in the research team. Friendly and unfriendly countries have been doing that for decades (There weren't just Russian spies at Oak Ridge, etc)

Of course if you're spying on your friends you tend to need to be a bit more circumspect about how you use the information you've gathered, but the point remains.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: RAND

"Simon says this was run by the RAND corporation. They've been researching, and influencing policy, for sixty-odd years, so yes, I would expect the outcomes at least to be placed within easy reach of the policy-makers and executives. "

One of the more eyebrow raising discoveries by the RAND corporation was that no nuclear-authorised US military officer will ever use the things. In simulations run during the 1960s-80s they tended to only use them once, then in all subsequent runs, try everything else - including surrendering - _even if the other side has tossed them first_.

The "Nuclear option" so beloved of politicians, isn't. Soldiers pledge allegiance to their country and it's one of those things where the only way to win is not to play - and not to accept such an order.

This is another one of those scenarios. Declaring war and "hacking back" overtly will result in all hell breaking loose.

Intellectual property has been stolen and traded for hundreds of years, one example being Marco Polo's silkworms and pasta. One of the more interesting paths to innovation is when something is copied _badly_ and the copiers actually come up with new ways of doing things as a result (pasta being an example of the latter as an italian version of rice noodles).

In terms of a Tekwar, the problems can be as bad as a nuclear one and using the civilian population of XYZ country as a target is an idea which WILL come back to bite you, even if that's things like targetting the infrastructure to damage power and water supplies. Don't forget that one of the fastest ways to recruit terrorists to attack ABC country is simply for ABC country to drop bombs on his family for no apparent reason - and it doesn't matter if the bombs are literal or logic bombs - if they kill people you'll end up with a steady stream of revenge-seekers.

Everything is too interconnected to consider this kind of thing. Imagine the effect of energy supplies in the central USA being cut off in the depths of winter. How long before people freeze to death? etc. etc.