Posts by Nick Kew

How big is the global blacklist? Could add long delays for users on slower connections, and perhaps overload the server's pipe.

Re: PGP ?

Actually orthogonal to the legislation (as I read the article).

It'll mean you can't sell gnupg in Oz. And if you sell a tool that implements PGP, you'll have to be prepared to cooperate with the stasi.

Basically what it seeks to prevent is not unbreakable encryption, but rather making unbreakable encryption available to the Great Unwashed.

Those of us who can use gnupg are the tech equivalent of people capable of manufacturing drugs or weapons. You don't wipe us out, but you come down heavily on a person who supplies them to anyone else.

Ironic that it was an Aussie (Eric Young) who originally wrote the software that later became OpenSSL, back in the days when that would've been illegal in the US.

The security hole isn't really what's claimed: ability to forge a From: address is baked in to SMTP, and it relied on Damian having sysop privileges.

It's the mail system that first accepted the message then bounced it. Anyone who's suffered a Joe Job knows the hard way how inexcusably broken that is - and has been for the last 20 years or so (since mail abuse went from prank to spam). Either reject it or accept it; don't bounce!

Re: bad legislation

The paragraph quoted in the article doesn't imply breaking crypto (nor of course does it imply the contrary). It *could be* a perfectly realistic bill dealing with situations like the FBI-Iphone row.

Flat-earth George has now moved on: wikipedia tells us he's now Aussie High Commissioner to Blighty. Damn, he should be a Barry Humphries character!

Re: Obviously Not American But...

Any technical fault may takes repeated visits to get fixed,

That's hopelessly over-optimistic.

It assumes you can contact them in the first place. And their customer service is inspired by Kafka.

Re: Where To??

They cannot move the conference to the UK because the visa issuing department will reject most of the applications.

... which would be a big improvement for unfortunate victims like Sklyarov or Hutchins.

Not sure where to suggest. There are a few countries with more liberal track records re: the 'net, but such things are subject to change (e.g. Oz, Germany). Perhaps a venue with a well-developed hospitality industry but busted government might suit. Greece, for instance?

Re: Boot full of IT kit

Erm, different markets there. People who need help with wheelchairs or luggage are orthogonal to the question of who drives them.

My infirmity is my eyesight. I think I'd be reasonably safe (though not legal - despite holding a full, clean licence) driving in good conditions, but lethal in the dark and wet. No problem lugging a heavy load. The fact that self-driving doesn't solve every problem doesn't mean it's not a potentially-excellent solution for some disabilities.

Re: Which raises the question

That's easy. A formal launch now becomes a legacy for the people currently in charge. Consider Hollywood blockbusters of a generation or two hence:

Thanks to the Space Force, founded by Trump, we have space dominance.

Re: and?

If they told the government, then within hours they'd be exploiting it themselves, for who knows what nefarious purposes!

Speaking from ignorance here. But I'd've thought that, as with any big organisation, there's both good and bad. Not everyone in the US government would have a clue what you were talking about, let alone exploit it.

I'm sure there's someone they could've told who would just have filed it.

If the client side javascript can scan localhost, I guess that NAT firewall isn't too much use against browser-based attacks.

Verily, it has come to pass. The world has routed around misguided security.

@DJV

Not like SCO. SCO was undead. Long-drawn-out undead. Lots of cases, and a lingering bad smell.

ICANN has, by contrast, picked a no-nonsense jurisdiction and opponent, and is getting through the process remarkably quickly. Seems to me like looking for a quick, clean loss.

Re: H2G2

Indeed, H2G2 - and some of those truly annoying robots - are what sprang to mind as soon as an example of "chatty" was given. Of course people wanted to shut it up.

Re: It's just a test.

They'll be deploying stuff like the "right to be forgotten". Along with the same technologies that our own and other governments are requiring of them to deal with forbidden contents (under labels like "extremist" or "paedo") around the world.

@DougS

If it was protectionism, they would ban all non-US sources rather than just two countries.

It's all done in small stages. First Kaspersky (um, surely a globally leading Good Guy). Then various Chinese bigcos on varying pretexts. Now a little more.

For non-US western companies there's a different approach, and it's outsourced. Use bogus patents to cripple Blackberry, leaving it a Suit-dominated company which can no longer innovate and dies a natural death. Lend a helping hand to Nokia's self-immolation.

Tariffs didn't happen all at once either. Divide and rule. If they'd hit their friends and allies (Canada, Mexico, the EU) at the same time as they hit China, the world might've got together and stood more united.

Depends where they get caught. If they'd travelled to the US, they might look anxiously at various foreigners, from Dmitri Sklyarov to Marcus Hutchins, NOT convicted of any such wrongdoing yet suffering harsher treatment.

Re: Peaceful protest

When I've been on a peaceful protest, I've always done so fully expecting to be identified - and that's based on last century's technology (and police on horseback in big events). Not going to let that bother me.

The big psychological hurdle was going on an event associated with the loony left. That put me off for years, before I felt strongly enough about something to overcome natural revulsion.

Re: The stupidity of "business method" patents

GPS was a known future technology as far back as the 1980s.

I did some work in the late '80s on a system that was presumably prior art to the patent in question. It used a pre-GPS positioning system (non-global) and pre-GSM data network to monitor and track vehicles. Originally for security (we were part-owned by Securicor, whose business was secure transport of very-high-value loads), the system was expanding to include users like utility companies, who would use it to identify and call a nearby van when Mrs Miggins called to say she smelled gas. From distant memory, taxi companies were another target market, but I'm not sure whether any were signed up in my time.

I left that job in 1989. I'm pretty sure the company migrated to GPS sometime in the 1990s.

Re: No hypotheticals

@GnuTzu - the problem with bug bounties is that they attract a lot of hopeful junk. A rather poor signal-to-noise ratio among the reports. That puts a burden on the developer community. Fair enough for a company paying its developers, but not good in the case of volunteer developers in an open source project.

This is mitigated if whoever offers the bounty also takes it on themselves to pre-filter submissions and forward only those that look real. But not every hopeful is capable of reading TFM and submitting their "bug" to the right place. And a rejected wannabe might submit directly to us, with the hope that we accept it and they then turn round to the bounty sponsor and say "look, it was real".

SSL slows down low power devices.

Not just low-power devices!

HTTPS is far, far worse than that. It buggers up web caching. The effect of that on web traffic is like taking 1000 people off a commuter train and putting each of them in a car to clog up the roads!

Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

So you Brits were running your economy off of LSD for years? That explains a bit...

That goes back to the Romans. And we're not the only country to do it in modern times, though some (like Italy and Turkey) saw their £ fall so far as to eliminate any purpose for the S or D subdivisions.

Re: "Where is the evidence to suggest that would happen?"

The NI "Troubles" had their roots in the civil rights excesses practiced by the Stormont government in the 50's and 60's

Erm, which century? The Stormont Government only came into existence in 1922, as a response to the "troubles".