Posts by Version 1.0 5415 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009
Security can't be "fixed" - all we can do is fix today's bug - tomorrow there will be others. Security isn't something that you can impose on an insecure design, all we do is patch bugs as they are discovered.
But what's "security"? Is it making sure nobody can access your data, is it making sure you don't lose your data, or is it being able to access your data at any instant?
Pick any two - you can't have all three.
Their mainstream products rely on the license model - corporations had to switch from single use purchase to a small monthly fee ($40/user) to continue using them. The monthly fees are paid by credit card and unless someone looks very carefully at the corporate credit card statements, they continue with the licenses forever ... even if the original user stopped using any of the applications.
Do the math, $40 times 10,000,000 users each month (and that's a conservative estimate).
This has been around for years - when my company moved me from being a "Service Engineer" (zero paper qualifications in the UK back in the 70's) to fix their stuff in the the US, I made them print me a whole new set of business cards.
This is the US - in Louisiana you need a State License (sic) to braid hair and sell flowers.
W10 is now three years old and will be four by the time that W7 support is pulled - so I would expect that Microsoft is working on another version by now. I use Vista, W7, W8 and W10 daily - and there's an XP system that's used for old software support.
Every time this subject sticks its head up we have the usual "move to Linux" comments (yawn). But the fact is that most people are not moving to Linux, it's just too different - I think there's a market opening for an operating system that looks like, and works like, Windows 7 but runs on OpenBSD or some other secure system - W10 may be "free" but I'd happily pay for security, no data leakage and being able to get on with my work without learning this months features.
So he screwed a Venture Capitalist ... That's a first - normally it's the other way around.
When the VC's call you all they want to know is, "Do you have more than $2M income?" otherwise they just fade away ... they call this a "startup" but if you have more than $2M income I think you are way past the startup phase. VC's have zero interest in real startups or "investing" - they just want to tap into your income.
Is the ICO any different from the rest of the UK government?
It looks to me as if they are following standard UK operating procedures - pay the managers and outsource as much as possible. This saves a lot of money, savings that can be used to keep the costs of running the government down. Sure, the quality of the services often means that the delivery is poor but that doen't usually appear on the radar until later - then we rinse and repeat.
That's quite normal, the PHB probably thought that everything would go fine and the staff would fix any issues - no need to miss a nice day for golf. Turned out that way too - the PHB probably got a nice bonus at the end of the year for the successful migration too. Welcome to modern business management.
... the standard target for NSA and GCHQ - how terrible, the Chinese are trying to hack into our computers! Of course we would NEVER do anything like that would we?
Welcome to the world as we know it - everyone is trying to hack you ... and our global tech companies are telling us how wonderful Cloud Storage is ...
In the modern world, corporations are "people" too, so will we see them using the "Right to be Forgotten" in the future? Will politicians start calling on the"Right to be Forgotten" to remove evidence of their previous antagonism towards citizens that they think might vote for them in the next election?
The Right to be Forgotten fixes nothing, it's just kicking the can down the road.
Could be someone working at Gatwick and wanting to have the rest of the week off?
Watching the official reaction here I think that this will become a popular protest method for future runway expansions if you can shut an airport down with just a couple of drones.
Never attribute to Malice anything that can be achieved with Incompetence ... while I would not say this to defend Google, if you are running a currently supported version of Windows 7 Professional and follow Microsoft's own link in Control Panel System Settings to "Get More Features..." or upgrade then you get a message that your browser is out of date - no upgrade for you.
I quit diving before the computers came around - we always did the math in our heads, planning the time pre-dive and then adjusting the time depending on the depths that we reached. And I always allowed for a margin of error and a safety margin - that's the way we were taught back then. The golden rule was - and probably should still be - TRUST NOTHING.
You can store whatever you want, wherever you want - just don't assume that you are the only person who knows about it. The safest place to store anything is in plain sight - I would be very surprised if any cloud storage was not being monitored these days.
I have been (briefly) detained in the past and never had any problems other than a delay. If you read the story, and you live in the US, then you'll see that all of the issues came up after he followed your suggestions.
And yes, they can do all this to US citizens and if you take your attitude up with them I doubt that we'll see you here in the comment section for a while.
Funny, but sadly it's not just the Republicans doing that, the Democrats aren't much better and the Russians, Saudis, Chinese etc are far worse. It's Christmas so I'll offer a funny reply link - they all just need to F.O.C.U.S.
This happens all the time - the user gets a shiny new machine, copies all the files over and puts the old one in the cupboard - just in case something goes wrong or they missed a file somewhere. The shiny new machine works great and a couple of years later they notice the old machine in the cupboard ... better get rid of that, oh wait - there's a property tag on it, better call Central Services (sic) and get it taken off the inventory. And away it goes ...
Windows has been around for a while, perhaps it's time to pull the chain, flush the whole thing away and start again?
On the plus side, it's an operating system with a lot of baggage and an infinite number of developers independently writing drivers, TSR's and apps - given the lack of control over the hardware and the operating environment, I'm impressed that it works as well as it does ... see icon.
I was watching the posts on Facebook during Brexit and the 2016 election in the US and it was blindingly obvious that their users were being manipulated via the targeted adverts. But ever since Trump and the Brexiters "won" the votes, they have been working to deny that their victories were organized by third parties.
Now they say things like "Anyway, sure, let's have some government regulate all of our communications for truthiness. What could go wrong with that?" Wait, didn't some government just persuade you to vote against your own interest and vote for theirs instead?
So this is news? It was not expected?
I suspect a lot of casual storage has moved to the cloud. It used to be that the lusers had a 100Mb disk stuffed to the gills, then they moved to a 1Gb disk with 100Mb of data scattered around ... but in the cloud a 1Gb disk would support about 15 lusers (the hibernation and tmp files stay at home).
Our "Strong and Stable" Conservatives have been cutting funding for the Police for years, there are fewer police on the streets so what do you expect will happen?
The police force have a job to do and they are trying to do it with less money and fewer staff - that's our current policy isn't it?
So which company is selling this technology to the cops? We're heading towards Privatization of the Police - after all it's worked so well for the Trains, the Post Office, Electricity and Water ... the people running those services are making lots of money.
Try buying commercial insurance ... while you have a point for one claim like this, their rates will now go sky high and the insurance company will plan to recoup the expense by increasing rates policy wide.
If an insurance company offers a $1,000,000 liability policy for $20k a year and sells 100 policies and gets one claim a year, then they make $1,000,000 a year. It's Christmas, triples all round chaps!
It would be interesting to learn just how they managed to fall for this. Did an email arrive in the PHB's account which was then forwarded to the accounting department with a note say's, "Pay this please"? Did the PHB do it, or maybe they never even saw it?
How many other scams have they fallen for? Do they even know?
My wife was a school teacher and taught the computer lab, she had a problem with the kids nicking the balls from the mice at the end of class - she put an end to it by telling everyone to turn their mice over at the end of the hour so that "she could could inspect their balls".
These days she'd probably get prosecuted for saying that - it's a good job the technology has moved on!
Those were the days! When networking was just a coax cable strung around the office ... I set that up at home years and years ago, eventually upgraded to Twisted Pair, and last week switched to Fibre optic but I've still got a MicroVAX on the network. It's connected via a DECnet adapter, to a coax to 10BaseT switch, to a FO adapter - what fun!
These hacks have been going on so long and happening so often that I suspect most people have just given up caring, it's "Hack Fatigue" (kinda like Brexit fatigue) you read the News and just say, "Oh No, not again, again."
What's the common factor in all these incidents?
It's The Internet, we're doing this to ourselves.
"You do realise this is EXACTLY how politics works within the European Union, don't you?"
Of course, in England we would do it differently, we'd use the campaign funds to attend a five week course on home router security at a five star hotel in the Bahamas, security affects the whole family so the wife, kids, and girlfriend would attend too.
if by "soon" you mean "already" ....
These stories always amuse me, the comments section goes bananas in shock but the fact is, this has been going on for years and they've only just noticed. We live in this world:
Bought a ticket for the concert on-line? They have your details and know who you are.
Did you tweet that you are going to the concert? They have your details and know who you are.
Do you have your phone with you? They have your details and know who you are.
Did you drive to the concert and park locally? They have your details and know who you are.
Did a friend post on FB that they were going with you? They have your details and know who you are.
And you're worried that they took your photograph? Did you miss the novichok guys getting photographed everywhere?
This is NOT news - I've been seeing these hack attempts for years. Our mail-server holds all emails that have a suspect attachment - *.ace, *.ade, *.adp, *.bat, *.chm, *.cmd, *.com, *.cpl, *.crt, *.doc, *.docx, *.exe, *.gz, *.hlp, *.hta, *.htm, *.html, *.inf, *.ins, *.isp, *.js, *.lnk, *.mdb, *.mde, *.msc, *.msi, *.msp, *.mst, *.pcd, *.pi, *.pif, *.reg, *.scr, *.sct, *.shs, *.uue, *.vbe, *.vbs, *.wsc, *.wsf, *.wsh, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.rtf, *.rar, *.dot, *.jar, *.arj, *.lzh, *.iso, *.xz, *.xlxs, *.r0*, *.r1*. *.r2*, *.z
Problem partially solved ... I'm thinking of adding *.pdf to the list but for the moment I've remove Adobe Reader from every computer and installed a third-party reader.
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