Posts by Ken Hagan

"if they were the last, then a shit provider would be better than no provider."

If they *were* the last provider, no-one else would have a decent connection either, so who would you be talking to?

Re: Claim They Did Nothing Wrong...

Shits always did lie. In the past, they often got away with it. These days that is increasingly difficult and we get to hear about it.

In the short term, lying is a good strategy. Eventually people catch up, though. In a large society, it can take quite a while for that to happen, but modern communications are shortening that.

Re: twopenny-halfpenny politicians

"your laws start and end at Dover "

And here was me thinking that they started at Lands End and ended at John o' Groats, and included any internet facing hardware in between. Now I find that the Westminster parliament is actually just Dover Town Council on vacation. Oh well, at least I found out before the elections tomorrow.

Re: Who else is there?

If the whole of Europe stops advertising online for want of a GDPR-compliant ad broker, such a thing will come into existence within months, if not weeks.

If it isn't Google, that's Google's problem.

Re: XPS

"No DocuWorks program? You can't see your monthly payslip!"

You should have submitted a freedom of information request to the tax authorities. (If *they* don't have copies of your payslips then they will probably be motivated to have a chat with your employer.)

Re: Lavatory!

... or even when it isn't.

Re: There should be a few rules for SO

"2 - Don't ask the querent why do they want to do that, why would anyone want to do that, then refuse to answer anything at all because it's stupid to want to do that."

This one is in the wrong list. Asking the wrong question is a sufficiently common mistake that pretty much every *good* respondent should be prepared to ask "Why do you think you need to do that?" and every questioner should be prepared to elaborate on the bigger picture of what they are doing. Furthermore, in the interests of community hygiene it is occasionally the case that anyone daft enough to *want* to do X is exactly the worst possible person to tell *how* to do X. Sooner or later, someone *else* will have to maintain (or worse, *use*) this person's code.

Issues of style are, to a lesser extent, covered by this principle. It is *unkind* not to mention to a noob that their current style makes them look like a twat. Using those exact words is, of course, also unkind but we shouldn't shy away from the sentiment. We should just try harder to find kind words.

Re: Follow the yellow brick road...

That seems quite plausible to me. If they've found something that makes a big difference but which doesn't show up under electron microscopy or similar methods, then they might reason that saying nothing at all will give them a couple of years of protection whereas publishing will give the competition ideas that might bear fruit in less time than that and which aren't covered by the patent.

"E.g. to check on the origins of a suspicious email? "

Given the large numbers of people posting here who report that they've pushed complete crap into the WHOIS database and got away with it because there is exactly zero budget for checking user-submitted data, just exactly how do you use the information to check on anything? Particularly when the only thing you know about what you are checking is that is seems suspicious. It's like asking someone "Are you a crook?" and expecting a useful answer.

Re: Is a mining rig still worthwhile?

Given that all such mining is basically a pyramid scam, I feel bound to point out that if you have to ask such a question then you are probably coming too late to the party.

"Another thing that's totally absent from this discussion of "APIs for legitimate researchers" is the idea of providing an API that will only supply anonymous data."

And on a related topic, an API that can only be used by legitimate researchers?

Blimey! Have Facebook finally implemented RFC 3514?

Re: 'no solid plan for what to do'

"Being in California, if they've got no European offices then what can the EU do to them? They can fine the various registries that do operate here, so maybe ICANN still think they can get away with it?"

Half right. Being in California, they cannot be touched. However, without *any* legal presence in the EU, they can't touch European registries. ICANN are basically dead in the water. The internet will carry on running on empty for a bit and whilst ICANN sob to their friends (they must have some) in the US government, the rest of the world will develop an ICANN-replacement that they can live with.

It's like a Hard Brexit, but for Internet Governance. Enjoy...

Re: Just emptied my account.

"They have to respond by a deadline if they want to bounce it, and they won't. So it will be paid into your account, and not reversible because it isn't a fraudulent transaction."

So any non-fraudulent (ie, you have the balance in your account) movement of funds out of TSB towards some other bank will clear in the usual time, but TSB might end up with an even bigger mess on their hands as a result.

Hmm ... That sounds like something that a lot of TSB customers ought to know.

I think "anti-girlfriend mode" accurately describes both the user demographic and the probable limits of its effectiveness.

Re: A close shave a week and a bit ago, it could have started WW3.

It is also an established historical fact (because it happened to some Russian bloke) that the occurence of just one event that looks like a nuclear attack is sufficiently implausible that people go and check before hitting the launch button.

Re: Windows 7 < > Edge

I *have* upgraded to Win10, but like many other people I know, I found that Edge stopped working (early in the New Year) with a number of sites I expect to use and so I reverted to IE because it still works. (Obviously on a machine that isn't supposed to be "as customers see it", I'd have installed a proper browser and wouldn't bother with either of Microsoft's pieces of polished turd.)

Once Edge is finished, I'll give it another whirl.

"From a bank, and subject to interest."

You can't force them to sell, and if they know your intentions then they may just hold out for a higher share price. Alternatively, they may just kick you out at the next AGM.

Re: Odd thing about millenials...

"....the ones I meet from other countries" ... have already been subjected to some kind of selection process, since they are meeting you. Maybe they are ones who are smart enough to be in jobs that involve foreign postings, or rich enough to enjoy foreign holidays.

Re: It's bad to say....

"But I like going round the house and knowing router is 10.0.0.1. Main PC is 10.0.0.2. 2nd PC is 10.0.0.3 and so on. Can't very well do that with IPv6 can I."

You can: https://www.edge-cloud.net/2013/08/07/ipv6-link-local-addresses-as-default-gateway/amp/.

As a bonus, fe80::1 is only 7 characters.

Re: It goes from bad to worse.

If I'm reading the article correctly, neither US nor EU users are affected by the move, so it is difficult for me to see who would actually be suing and in which jurisdiction they think they'd have any kind of standing.

Re: This is just Censorship

"Relying on your politicians to remain intelligent and competent is really not a good method of governing if the past several thousand years of human history has shown us anything."

Relying on your citizens to let bygones be bygones is not a good method of running a legal system either. That's why your legal system explicitly spells out notions like "spent conviction". There has to be a balance and, in this case, NT1 went one way and NT2 went the other, so it clear that there *is* a balance. It is a happy (and instructive) co-incidence that this judge was asked to decide on two cases at the same time and felt able to decide differently.

Re: Well this all raises a pretty good point

"If Oracle want their trademark, let them have it. And thus, let it die."

This is what Oracle would like and, strangely enough, I find myself in their camp on this occasion.

Start calling it ECMAScript and people stop confusing Java with JS. Publishers get to re-issue old wine in new skins (yes, I know that's the wrong way round) merely by search and replace on all their JS textbooks. Oracle keeps all references to Java-anything to itself. Oracle's lawyers have to find another way of being annoying.

"You're forever a statistic, worth a few pence to Facebook, and a few quid to everyone else who buys data."

Who is "you" in this context? If FB don't actually have a registered user as an anchor, they must be inferring the existence of non-FB people. It is an open question whether that inference is correct. It is entirely possible that some of "you" is distributed amongst your social near neighbours and "you" don't exist within FB's world model as an entity in your own right. Equally it is possible that "you" are distributed amongst several shadows and FB don't realise they are the same person.

Lastly, and with reference to the earlier comment that FB offer to delete all that they know about you if you use a page on their site to "sign in and hit delete", this would only delete what FB know about the person they think you are when you do that. Since we don't all come with UUIDs stamped on our foreheads, that may not be all they know about you and it may be stuff they know about someone else who they've confused with you.

In this public debate, I think there is a real danger that every just believes the claims FB make about their omniscience. These claims are made by FB to sell their services to advertisers. We can't disprove the and FB can't prove them and FB have no incentive to under-estimate their own cleverness. Therefore, it would be wise to assume that they are probably exaggerated.

Re: So, three years on ...

"Oh, sorry. It isn't supported on Azure."

Yet. Obviously, the winning cloud provider will have a scheme whereby third-party suppliers to the DoD can pay them lots of cash to make their product lines compatible with the DoD's preferred cloud.

Ten years on, the cloud provider has the additional advantage during the bidding for renewal that almost every third party's products are compatible with their cloud but (quite possibly) not the opposition (or, at least, not demonstrably so). So they get the renewal. Repeat ad infinitum.

Who pays? Well, the successful cloud provider makes a shed-load of dosh from the third party suppliers. Those suppliers pass on the costs (now anonymised) to the DoD, which forks out using tax-payers cash. So, er, I guess it is US tax-payers who pay.

Initially. Of course, the next stage is for it to become a requirement all across NATO.

Free market economics: it's great. Someone ought to tell the US government about it. At the moment, they appear to believe in the magic money tree.