Posts by Paul Stimpson

I still have one of those in "Ye Olde Box of Crap" (TM)

Best DAB radio I have now is an RTL-SDR stick (from RTL-SDR.com) and a copy of Welle.io

"Perhaps this is a silly question - do we get to see the source code for the Microsoft program running on a Linux system ?"

That all depends on where they got the source code from. Pascal is right.

Example one: You write a piece of code that is all your own work on a Linux system - You are free to license that code under whatever license, open or closed source, you like.

Example two: You write a piece of code that is all your own work but calls to one or more external programs (say the program "grep" to search a log file for lines containing the string "Error".) Now grep is open-source licensed under the GPL but you are just running it as an external program (AKA "running it at arms length") so you are still free to license your code under any open or closed source license you choose.

Example three: You write a program and you incorporate code from a GPL-licensed program into your code. Say, you take part of the source code of grep and cut and paste it into your code or link to an open-source library and use its functions like they were your own. Now, you must open-source your code under the GPL as you're incorporating someone else's work that requires that into it. Note that compiler libraries are specifically exempt from this so using say the open source "gcc" C compiler doesn't automatically make anything you compile with it open source.

Re: Good, good.

"Your real problem will be whether your brightest and best fall into this scheme. It looks as if it will only benefit an elite."

...and by extension only the biggest and most well off companies and institutions. Small companies and startups who want to create new innovations are unlikely to be able to attract notable Engineers and Scientists.

"The EU will decide nothing, it will keep intra-EU roaming free of charge and let EU operators decide if they want to re-introduce roaming charges for travel to UK from Jan 2021."

Our networks probably won't decide it either. It will be the mobile networks in the countries we visit. I currently pay about £20 a month for my mobile contract and get unlimited roaming in Europe for a flat rate of £3 a day for each day I'm there.

If I go to Germany on business for a week and Deutsche Telekom start billing my provider a significant sum of money per minute/SMS/MB then those charges will probably be more than the £20 I pay a month, possibly more than the £240 a year I pay. There is no way my provider are going to suck it up if I am costing them more than I'm paying or if the £21 a week roaming fee doesn't cover it.

or "Jim" is working at a level of brilliance that has surpassed Simon's expectations...

Jim could have been working from home all this time and never come into the office, hence his survival. What if the bosses that had "unfortunate accidents" were out of work actors that Jim hired to pretend to be him and he's been playing the BOFH all along?

Time for a revenge "field trip" ?

Re: To Schadenfreude or not to Schadenfreude?

I shift work with frequent unexpected overtime, commuting delays and some foreign trips. Having a heating system I can turn on and off remotely so I'm not heating an unexpectedly empty house or coming home to it freezing I find a useful benefit.

I also find the ability to copy/adjust days and build my heating plan for the coming week on a nice touch screen interface a lot easier than wrestling with a horrible interface with a tiny screen and 4 buttons on the heating programmer.

"

Even if it is illegal to do, do you think someone can be prosecuted for receiving non-encrypted info sent out over the air?"

If you leave your door unlocked and someone enters and removes your property without your permission then they can still be prosecuted for theft. Your failure to secure your property doesn't constitute permission.

Under the UK Wireless Telegraphy Act, unless you are a person with permission from the government, like an Ofcom employee whose job it is to monitor radio compliance or you have permission from the radio transmission license holder you may only receive transmissions intended for general reception (licensed broadcast stations), weather broadcasts, CB or amateur radio. A side effect of this is that it is actually a crime to listen to a pirate radio station because they don't have a license and are therefore not covered by the broadcast exemption.

There is an Ofcom document that sets out what it is legal to use a radio receiver for.

Someone can absolutely be prosecuted under the Wireless Telegraphy Act for receiving something they shouldn't that was unencrypted and it has happened. An offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has probably also been committed if someone knowingly intercepts private messages intended for someone else without their permission. Add on a Data Protection Act charge too if the signal contained personal information because it was sent by a computer and miscreant in this case used a computer to convert it back into text.

That this person had an Amateur Radio License is an aggravating factor as they have done radio training, should know better and can't claim they bought a scanner off Amazon and nobody told them what they shouldn't do with it. They are in a load of trouble and, if prosecuted under the Wireless Telegraphy Act will be disqualified from holding an Amateur radio license or working for any broadcast station for 5 years.

+10 stupidity points for also putting it unsecured on the Internet so they got caught.

Re: 767

"It's another to take off knowing you're down to the backup system."

As the great rule of redundancy says, "Two is one. One is none."

Re: Maybe Google won't tell him why his app was "in violation"

Agreed that they may not know. It is very difficult to quantify why an AI did what it did if it was self-trained rather than a person writing the rule set.

Re: As I only live a few miles from The Hill...

"Verizon UK's Central London Data Centre next to a major rail network hub"

This isn't much of a surprise to me. Before privatization, a British Rail communications engineer told me that they had the 2nd largest telecoms network in the country. Lots of lovely straightish lines between major population centres that cables could be neatly buried beside. Selling dark fibre space to the likes of Verizon would seem to be a nice little earner for them.

Re: Which? have form!

Thanks for that PLT stuff Which?, from everyone who enjoys the hobby of amateur radio. You seemed unaware of the potential downsides but it had to be better because it meant not having to run cables.

When I was a student, my Landlord subscribed to Which and I got to read it. I was never impressed. I didn't get the impression that the people writing the reviews had really taken the time to get to understand the products they were talking about. They seemed to be prone to getting dazzled by looks and glossy-brochure claims.

I don't claim to be an expert on the things they were reviewing but, as an engineer, what I read didn't look like the words of people who gave sound evidence-based advice.

Re: Communication vectors

That is really clever.

/me disconnects all the fans in his PC. "Right, that's me safe. Oh bollocks! It's sending smoke signals now!"

Re: I have written to my bank

Looking back on it, what I wrote was an over reaction. I apologize and have withdrawn my comments.

Re: I wonder if...

Didn't Boris Johnson buy one or more water cannon trucks to use against protestors in London, in full knowledge that it's illegal to deploy such things in the UK. If he did, I wonder if they are sitting parked up and might have been borrowed.

Such ID transmitting devices already exist. They are, however, obscenely expensive (at least 2-3 times the cost of most craft) and fairly battery hungry. They also require an ID number which would mean having to go through the costly process of getting formal aircraft registration. Their weight and power draw would also affect the performance and flying time of, particularly lighter, craft.

Part of the problem faced by drone owners is the success of DJI. They have become such a market leader that their products, particularly the Phantom, are what the public thinks of when drones come to mind and their capabilities are assumed by the public to apply to all UAVs.

The heart of any drone is the Flight Controller (FC.) It manages the craft and converts the control inputs from the sticks into control signals that direct the motors. Unlike a model plane, where the stick movements can be directly translated into movements of the control surfaces, a drone can't fly without an FC.

Not all FCs support geofencing around airports. In fact, most non-DJI units don't. Not all FCs have GPS as standard or at all. It's not desirable on grounds of weight or battery life in some applications such as drone racing which is performed with small, very fast craft where agility is much more important than stability. Not to mention a lot of drone racing being done indoors.

Would any legal restrictions require onerous technical inspections to check the capabilities of craft? How do they know that my GPS-equipped FC isn't running old firmware from the pre-restricted days or I haven't unplugged the GPS cable? Would I need to have it re-inspected every time I did significant work on it?

As a user and author of open source software, I have concerns about where this might lead. If GPS and geofencing that couldn't be defeated were to be made legal requirements, that would effectively constitute a ban on all of the open source FCs as they either wouldn't have geofencing or any miscreant could edit the code or the no-fly-zone list to remove the restrictions. I'd hate to see a precedent set and it become normal for open source to be banned from whole classes of products because of what someone might modify them to do.

Re: 6. There were no drones

I also have doubts about what "industrial specification" means and what this craft might have been. If the person writing the statement knew their drones, it's fairly specific and there are a limited number of craft that such a description would cover. I suspect, however, that the person making the statement probably didn't know the subject and "industrial specification" probably means anything larger and more imposing looking than a DJI Phantom rather than a professional-use craft.

As a member of the multirotor (drone) flying community, I'd like to say the person doing this isn't representative of us. I don't know of anyone in our club who wouldn't grass the offender up if they knew who it was. I hope they are caught swiftly, made an example of by the law then sued into oblivion by the airport and airlines for their commercial losses. A court injunction prohibiting the person from owning or flying any kind of drone or model aircraft for life would also seem appropriate. The last thing that we, as a community, need is some knee jerk law passed because politicians and the Daily Mail think something has to be seen to be done. The things this person has done are already illegal under multiple laws. Those laws now need to be enforced severely and publicly.

"Simple answer, no access, take £1Bn out of the devource payment, what is the EU going to do ?"

Then countries all round the world will see we don't stick to our end of the bargain when we make an agreement and no longer consider us a good-faith negotiating partner. Just what we need when we're trying to negotiate trade deals for "Global Britain."

Re: Should they email you notices

In addition to developing the system, that requires them to pay for all the text messages. I used to work for a cable company and I know just how resistant to systems that can run up unpredictable, potentially-large charges they are...

Re: Ah, Californian Wieners

You make it sound like ISPs and transit providers are operating as charities...

As both a content producer and an Internet user, I pay my ISP and hosting provider for the service I receive, including the bandwidth I consume. They use some of that money to pay their upstream providers who use some of that to pay their transit providers and so on. Everyone is getting paid. If I pay for bandwidth, I expect to be able to use it and, provided I'm not using it for any purpose that compromises network integrity or brings law enforcement to their doors, what I do with that bandwidth should be none of their business. I paid for it. It should be mine to use.

How is it possibly anti-consumer or anti-competitive to guarantee that I can use the bandwidth I'm paying for to consume the services I choose? On the other hand, I would see it as massively anti-competitive for my ISP to push me towards a content provider they have some paid prioritisation deal with by making competing services perform so badly in comparison that I give up on them. It would be like the parking provider in town making me use only one entry and exit lane and park in the crappy spaces on the 5th floor unless I was going to the supermarket in town that had paid them.

From my point of view, this whole thing is about corporate greed from the ISPs, particularly the cable ones. Not content with the fee they charge me for the service I bought, they want to double-dip the content providers. Now, I do see this as anti-consumer. If content providers have to hand over huge chunks of money to ISPs, they will want to get this money back. They will do this by taking it from me, directly or indirectly. Things that were free will suddenly cost money. There will be "premium" access plans to things that were free. Paid sites' prices will go up, they won't buy as much content or they will end up plastered in advertising to recover the charges. All of these things will take away from the Internet experience of consumers, particularly those on restricted incomes.

What happens if transit providers see the ISPs get this and decide they want a slice of the action? Will ISPs who don't engage in prioritisation end up with it by default when Netflix pay their upstream provider but Amazon don't? I'm starting to feel like this is the thin end of a very large wedge. Hey, why shouldn't Cisco have a slice too? Their gear is switching it all.

Re: That's young for a CEO

He had been with the company 22 years, not he was 22 years old.

Sadly, these non-technical management types believe the Sales Account Manager when they tell them their encryption is "military strength and would take someone 8000 years to crack with a super computer."

No sales person is going to tell the CTO that their product is "a bit crap and, in a couple of years, some kid in their bedroom will be able to crack it in less than a weekend using a couple of CUDA graphics cards."