Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Didn't they . . .

"Nah, it's probably one of those bypasses you build because you got to build bypasses."

Then why can't Tintwistle have one?

Re: To be fair...

"a small raised kerb around it"

That would simply make the target bigger. Let's face it, if you can hit a boulder a low kerb is no problem at all.

Re: Move the bloody thing

"especially during snowy weather"

I don't remember there being much snowy weather in Bucks when I lived there. Not real snow like up North.

Re: Technically the stone is an obstruction in the public highway

"Stick a couple of keep left arrows on it and officially deem it a bollard."

Way back I used to drive between Belfast & the in-laws in Carrick passing the entrance to what was then Jordanstown Poly. Opposite the entrance there was one of those islands with plastic bollards illuminated from below. Almost every time I passed the bollards were squashed flat; I doubt that when they were replaced they ever lasted more than a couple of weeks & usually less.

Re: The compensation culture at work!

"If you drive a car into something that is not moving and hasn't moved for 11,000 years then don't attempt to blame anyone else."

But its brake lights weren't working.

Re: Of course I haven't looked for any photos

"Oddly said lamp doesn't seem to currently be in place"

Street lamp? You think we should pay to run street lamps? Not any more we don't.

PP Bucks County Council

Re: The compensation culture at work!

"a two foot bolder in the dark is hardly the same as a pedestrian or a cyclist"

From the pictures on the Beeb it appears to be either chalk or to be painted white so it's a good deal more visible than the standard dark-clothed pedestrian or unlit cyclist.

Re: HR involvement

"At least on the LHS of the Atlantic..."

And on this side too. In my case what would have passed for HR in my first instance would have been fully part of the "no promotion" approach. To be fair, in the second it may well have been the local HR who got me the good release package - we always considered ourselves a little semi-detached from the big organisation. But on the whole, if there's a serious conflict with HR stuck in the middle they're going to ensure they're on the winning side.

Re: Priorities and empowerment

"When I asked the management to prioritise the ten projects, six of them were assigned priority one, three priority two and one priority three, which didn't really solve anything."

Never leave wriggle room. You should have asked for them to be put in order.

Re: Priorities and empowerment

"Where does this new task fit in to the list?"

Or the alternative: "what do you want me to leave out?"

Re: RE: Air gapping

"NOT if you do it from the very beginning."

Just so. If security is important you really should start that way.

"Having 3-4 air-gaped physical networks in your premises is."

And not having them is even more expensive when you discover the hard way that you should have done it.

Re: Wonderful options available...

"Nope. Hospitals are a regulated environment, which means anything that runs there MUST... be approved by the government... The more custom the software, the longer and more costly the vetting process."

Nope? You make an excellent case for the software vendors not relying on an OS whose EOL can be dictated by a 3rd party.

@Olaf

As Thames pointed out the systems are networked to a central control so it's not a matter of air-gapping individual machines.

But the real problem is that it's been all too easy to install a single network, hang everything off it and depend on perimeter security. When you have PoS terminals compromised by laptops plugged into the network by HVAC technicians it should be crystal clear that that doesn't work. For years we've been told to program defensively; network designers should have been told to work on similar principles and connect clusters of machines that need to work together but isolate them from everything else.

Re: Requirements specification

Make that 15 years from time of installation.

@thames

There's a difference between air-gapping individual units and segmenting your network so that someone who might open an email containing an alleged invoice or someone servicing the HVAC installation can't affect each other let alone critical systems such as these.

It requires thought and planning. It probably requires more expenditure on H/W as functionality which would otherwise be provided centrally need to be provided separately on each segment. But if you take security seriously it has to be done.

And yes, I have worked in a situation where admin offices and production had separate networks and even different parts of production were subject to extra security. Security was taken very seriously, it was the first word in the business's name and they meant it.

"Well, no-one from Mountain Rescue was actually involved, and no-one other than her was ever in danger."

And have you thought what might actually have been involved if she hadn't been phenomenally lucky? But in some way, according to a lot of people here luck excuses stupidity so we don't have to consider the possible consequences to others of that stupidity.

Re: Fucking moron

"Well, no-one from Mountain Rescue was actually involved, and no-one other than her was ever in danger."

AFAICS the only reason Mountain Rescue wasn't involved was that she was rescued before anyone realised she was missing. It's not clear whether she told anyone what she was doing so it might have been a good while before anyone knew she was missing. Had she not been lucky enough to have been found a good many people might have spent a lot of time looking for her in the wrong place. But hey, it turned out OK by sheer good luck so it doesn't matter that she did everything wrong she could have possibly done.

Re: Fucking moron

"Pretty lucky really."

Very lucky. Because if she'd not been found there'd have been a big turnout of mountain rescue volunteers. Given that she'd diverted from her previous plans they might even have been turned out in the wrong place and spent even longer than they otherwise might by looking in the wrong place.

"even a presence (a single office, with a single employee) in the USA is enough to get press ganged into helping the US Government."

Really?

"Sorry, we don't have anyone with those skills here but if you really insist I could try. Have you got a spare in case I break it?"

"American tech companies to do global business. Companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, MS, Amazon....But Amazon and Apple rely on physical premises"

Who says they have to remain American?

Apple depend on physical premises in China where stuff is made but they don't even own those premises. They may have a large vanity building in the US but they'd probably find a purchaser for it if it became preferable to move offshore.

Amazon has distribution centres and data centres all over the world. Why should the US ones be more special than those elsewhere?

Global businesses can go where the legislative environment suits them but if they're big enough simply threatening to move is sufficient. HSBC has been mulling over moving out of London for years - it keeps the UK regulators from making any moves that would really upset it.

"taking note of what they considered defects or excesses in that framework"

We're in agreement that legal frameworks can have defects and excesses. The question here is whether the All Writs Act is one of those.

"Search warrants have been standard law enforcement tools for a long time, and they generally are issued one or a few at a time, in conjunction with specific investigations"

This is quite true and it's right that they should be case specific. In fact this is one of the problems with bulk interception - it doesn't have the specificity and safeguards of a search warrant; it treats everyone as a suspect and thus tramples on the presumption of innocence; that presumption is one of the safeguards of all those who are innocent.

But this wasn't about a search warrant. It was a warrant issued against a third party to compel them to do something, ostensibly just once but clearly, to anyone with a whit of judgement, as a precedent. And the end point of that precedent-setting trail would likely be a tool usable against any Apple device and corresponding tools against other devices which would treat everyone as a suspect etc.

Re: Perjury is a crime

It's witnesses who give evidence under oath. Lawyers just make unsworn statements to the court. So the question arises whether "just one" was evidence (how much evidence would be presented in a warrant application?), a statement to the court or PR external to the court. Only one of these risks perjury.

"Apple's great success at effectively outsourcing their lower level OS to BSD while sticking to the API's and GUI that end users actually care about"

I think I can see the problem MS might have applying that to Windows these days.

Re: A hollow victory

I tried this uBlock Origin of which you speak. It stopped the weather forecasts on the Beeb site from working. That was the end of it. ABP with the box unticked continues to work fine.

"So if you leave the computer running and go to bed, you being served ads... using your electric and your bandwidth."

Turn it off when you're not using it. It's using electricity whether MS are sending it ads or not.

Re: $22bn

"Unless they think the kind of people who block ads are the same kind of people who also love them and click on them and buy from them..."

They think everyone really loves ads and can't understand how or why adblockers got into browsers. Maybe they think they're some sort of malware.

Re: Balance of Trade needed here?

"I propose that DARPA, GCHQ or some other appropriate government agency (or agencies) encourage Western hackers to write and deploy locker software that attacks ONLY computers that ARE Russian."

An alternative. Stop routing traffic to or from Russia one hour a day this month. Next month two hours a day. The month after one day a week...

Re: "Share on Facebook the most viral stories on Entertainment Weekly"

"You could do it via a MongoDB-backed Node.Js application that uses Cortana to generate text prefiltered by Watson."

Fail. You missed both DevOps and Hyperconvergence.

Re: Seriously?

"Just what in hell's name do they (or their deranged lawyers) expect to profitably gain by this?"

They expect lots of users to sign up without reading the ToS. And they're probably right.