Posts by Nick Kew

psychologically break him

Hmmm. I should've thought indefinite confinement would tend to do that. The embassy may not technically be prison, but his situation must rank with being confined to a cruise ship or spaceship for immediate hell, and without the prospect of release to keep a chap sane.

Um, the Nokia ringtone pre-dates Dolby by a couple of centuries. Even the more famous Dolby who gave his name Dolby labs and to big chunks of audio history.

Re: The title is too long.

Just be grateful we've left behind us the era when they'd have set light to their money and poisoned the air you were breathing.

We need the same treatment for electronic and recorded noises of all kinds in public places as we have for smokers. And then a bit more: deal with wide-area nuisances like amplified buskers and pubs with noise but no soundproofing.

Re: Starbucks

a daily <insert brand name> coffee

As far as I'm concerned, <insert brand name> coffee is something one has in the order of once or twice a month, when in town or when travelling. Are these people who drink the stuff every day real (and with money to burn) or mythical?

Re: Silly first name.

Spoken like a true sassanach!

Oy! That's enough anti-sassenach hate-speech. We're not all like that!

That french sexologist is clearly a canard. As is so much more of this Dabbling.

Re: common place

Indeed. Long, long ago I used to read Which? reports with lots of interest as a great source of information. Then I read one or two reports into subjects where I had some expertise, and saw a different side.

Basically, a lot of what's there is "how happy are the owners with a product"? That leaves a situation where owners of a cheap product take the view "yeah, it's fine, does the job, I'm satisfied", whereas those who take a serious interest in a subject and buy top-end gear remain sensitive to its flaws.

The importance attached to security would seem still to be something that depends heavily on ones perspective, so IT practitioners differ radically from Joe Public. Some journos are working on that divide, but I guess they still have a way to go.

Has anyone (here) studied the actual vulnerabilities under discussion, and where they fall on a scale of hypothetical to easily exploitable by a stranger?

Re: Early days of easy/cheap connectivity

The Sun (or otherBigName) with the expensive contract would be for users needing that reliable very-high uptime. For the rest of us, Linux or *BSD on commodity hardware has made more sense since about the mid-90s.

The difficulty back then was that the choice was between an expensive package like yours and something slapdash like the host in the story. It's only really this century we've seen the rise of cheaper hosts who also make it their business to know their arse from their elbow.

Re: 128K of ISDN

28.8? Luxury! My first modem was 1200 baud down, 75 baud up (enough for me, but not for a touch typist). And it got much worse from there when I had to switch from prestel to one of those new-fangled ISPs.

Re: Very platform dependant

Citation required.

Seriously, I'd be interested in anything reputable that purports to be an auditable test. I'd've thought it was one of those problems where you can prove a negative but only speculate on a positive.

Re: Why would you avoid using the HWRNG?

I read it not as "avoid using the HW", but rather "avoid relying on the HW". Subtle difference.

Of course for the purposes of a test run for an academic paper or even a back-of-envelope calculation ("Just tested it" comment above), results that avoid it altogether play an obvious role. For real life, you take all sources you can get!

The main issue with any proposed approach is the difficulty measuring entropy from a RNG. No matter how good your test and attack tools are, they could be missing a weakness someone else has cracked. Debian-vs-OpenSSL history kind-of demonstrates there's a genuinely hard problem.

Re: I've no sympathy with the Putin dictatorship

@DavCrav

On the subject of Afghanistan, I recommend reading "Caravans", by John Michener. Set in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of WW2.

Published in the early 1960s, so no question of hindsight about the Soviet invasion or what's happened since. But still seems to anticipate a lot of it.

The word "Taliban" isn't used, but their presence and influence is strong and clear. Though at that time, they hadn't been armed and internationalised.

Educated Western-facing Afghans feature peripherally, and have an interesting message for the protagonist (who is a junior US diplomat): these [taliban] are a problem that must be sorted. Please come and sort them, because if you don't then the Soviets will.

Interesting background to what subsequently happened. The only thing he really failed to anticipate is that when the Soviets went in, the West would respond by weaponising the real loonies.

Re: does the landlord refund you all the money you gave to pay the rent?

Within the limits of that analogy, wouldn't it be more like not being refunded for the new bathroom you fitted?

In the UK, a tenant doesn't get any recognition for improvements to a house or flat. Though a tenant might get charged for any alterations. And improving a place means means it's worth more, so expect the rent to rise. Even if you have a landlord who would naturally play fair, they'll have to have the strength to stand up to the agent who recommends the higher rent for the improvements.

Re: Tea with milk

My biggest bugbear: I had to give up drinking tea on First Great Western. Which, due to where I live, means most of my train travel. For the exact same reason of the atrocity they now give you in the name of tea. I once asked about the cup of water and teabag before rejecting it, and they told me something entirely implausible about that general-purpose scapegoat Elfin Safety.

As for coffee ...

I spent quite a few years in Italy, so I grew accustomed to good coffee. That left me in the position where, when in a third country, my English tastes meant I found the tea foul, and my Italian tastes did the same for the coffee. Not a nice situation. Though thankfully that has improved quite a lot this century.

Re: I'm torn here

@Pascal - do you really think this image is "using a girl"? It's about the couple who are the butt of the joke. That's precisely the twist: it's not at all about the girl who appears to have turned his head.

Damn, am I completely out of touch? I've just seen the image for the first time here on El Reg. Does that make my reaction to it more spontaneous than anyone else's?

I rather like it. A good chuckle. Catches an archetype.

Objectifying? Hmm, that's a bit of a stretch. Yes she's attractive, but only in the same way as women you'll randomly pass in your everyday business. All the more attractive for NOT being tarted up as a sex object. And she's not even in focus!

Sexist against men? Definitely plays on that stereotype. But too good, and too genuinely humorous, for that to be offensive, IMHO. The sexism would probably be gratuitous if it lacked those redeeming merits.

What about the girlfriend? OK, she's (also) the butt of the joke and could legitimately be p***ed off at the use of the image. Is that offensive or sexist? Surely no more than the ubiquitous image of the dumb male in advertising today.

If there's a real issue, it's whether the image is being used with or without permission of the protagonists, and (given the commercial use) were they paid royalties?

Re: The 1%

No, in reality it'll be a lot less than 1%.

It just looks more, because the really bad ones are something you notice, and stick in the memory.

You see the same in other walks of life: think back to last time you got infuriated by the tiny-but-conspicuous minority of idiot [select category of road users] doing idiotic/terrifying things, and compare the inconspicuous thousands just going about their business.