Posts by Ben Liddicott

Re: Dear Facebook,

Nobody can do targeting. On holiday a couple of years ago, every time I checked out of a hotel I began to get ads for the hotel I just checked out of, in the city I just left.

It's almost like they are bad at their jobs.

Now let's get them to police hate speech. What could go wrong?

Re: The dirtiest four-letter word...

All you need to do is say "Sure, bring it round".

They never do.

Happy for you to go over to their place and fix it, but if it doesn't matter enough to bring it to yours, it doesn't matter enough for you to take the time to fix it.

Why on earth would this be a problem for GDPR?

It's not a magic spell, you can't just say "Abracadabra GDPR! To jail with you!".

You have to articulate in what way you think this does not comply with GDPR.

Indeed, the central theme of Christianity may be that all engage in un-Christian behaviour, and all require forgiveness, and all must make continual efforts to improve.

Re: Why the hell

Bugzilla was better.

Re: Adobe Reader used to be quite good

No. No it didn't. It was always terrible. I was there, I remember.

Money is Goods

Theft Act 1968, 34(2)(b)

“goods”, except in so far as the context otherwise requires, includes money and every other description of property except land, and includes things severed from the land by stealing

Re: Forced to support forever

Big, bulky, or heavy on tech equipment has been used in the aftermath of Wannacry to excuse (some trusts of) the NHS. But is this really the software we're talking about? Isn't it just a lot of accountancy software, admin systems, data storage, and these kind of systems? Aren't in-your-face-everybody-can-relate-to-that examples (like MRIs, even here on elReg) used to cover for just secretary boxen?

This.

Not quite.

Not quite: You cannot be compelled to testify *against yourself*.

If you are given immunity from prosecution you can be compelled to give any and all testimony and punished if you refuse.

Re: Citizens United

A "corporation" is the correct term. Corporate personality is what protects our right to form trades unions and charities, not just to form businesses.

It's a consequence of free association: Not only can I campaign in person and lobby the government in person, I can club together with like-minded people, and hire someone to do it for me. Not only can I say what I like (short of libel), I can club together with like minded people and make a film about it that says it better than I could.

The rule that allows people to club together to make a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton, is the same rule which allows Greenpeace to lobby the government, and the same rule which allows trades unions to donate to political campaigns, and the same rule that protects charities and businesses from having their property arbitrarily confiscated.

"Corporate personality encompasses the capacity of a corporation to have a name of its own, to sue and be sued, and to have the right to purchase, sell, lease, and mortgage its property in its own name. In addition, property cannot be taken away from a corporation without Due Process of Law."

Re: WebMD

Of course doctors did that even before the internet - they just called it a Medical Dictionary.

Re: "delivered selectively, out-of-order. and out-of-context..."

Correct. There is no such thing as unbiased. Media cannot report everything so must always choose what is important, which is a value judgement, which is to say irreducibly ideological.

Candidate A's lies are vital to report because Candidate A represents an existential threat to democracy, so every plausible story which undermines him is important. Candidate B's lies are just the usual peccadilloes of politicians no more worthy of reporting than Obama's breakfast choices.

To the extent there is any solution it is to read competing accounts, to see what other people pushing different angles believe are the important facts. This is the same reason trials have prosecution and defence. It's the same reason scientists try to tear each other's theories to shreds - though this usually takes at least a generation.

If you only hear one side you'll easily be convinced the other side cannot possibly have any merit. If you then conclude it's not worth hearing, there is no way back for you.

Re: How to handle leap seconds

Typical crystal oscillators are accurate to about 1-10 seconds in the day.

Most servers only update time via NTP a few times a day, and many only weekly or less or not at all.

The leap second is of the same order as the normal time skew which occurs on commodity hardware.

Nobody is suggesting you should allow the leap second to simply be added to the preceding second.

The proposition is that it is gradually adjusted over the subsequent hour or so, resulting in around 0.05% inaccuracy in duration during the period of adjustment, additional transactions, error comparing time elapsed to wall-clock time and so forth.

Re: it only takes only four lines of code and a local config file

If they can run code as your login they can get your password in approximately a gazillion different easy ways.

Adding a more complicated and difficult method to the list does not make your position worse because your position is already "completely owned".

Don't be daft. They want you to use Tor.

Tor is a honeypot and always has been. The point is to provide a false sense of security while simultaneously identifying people with something to hide.

For example: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/10/misuse_of_tor_led_to_embassy_password_breach/

TBB bugs are for the FBI. The NSA can de-anonymise any Tor user just based on their overall view of global network traffic.

Why would you think a project planned, founded, and paid for by the US government - the Navy[*] specifically - would protect you from the US government? That's some seriously wishful thinking there.

The question of legitimacy is all about what they do with the information. As long as the culture within the organisation does not permit it to be used except for national security, the ordinary person is safe. That ship has sailed in the UK - this is used for Serious Crime, which includes child prostitution. And fraud. And pot dealing. And copyright violation. And tax evasion. Pretty much everything which isn't a driving offence actually.

[*] The head of the NSA is an admiral of the USN. Possibly coincidentally.

Re: Lawyers

The way scientists do it is also adversarial.

Scientists are not disinterested, they have an enormous amount riding on their theories, far more than mere money. As such they can't be relied upon to find the holes in their own evidence.

That's why you need other scientists with competing theories to pick holes.

Darwinian processes are the only known processes to produce knowledge.

Re: Modus Operandi

Not any more. The puritans will leave no loophole unplugged.

Re: This is actually largely irrelevant

Except.... that if you pay for large scale enterprise support it costs nigh on as much as an MSSQL licence for the same feature set. Just like if you pay for Red Hat Enterprise it costs about as much as Windows Server.

And if you don't buy support you need staff who can support it, which also costs money. If you operate at IBM/Google/Facebook scale it's a saving to support it yourself, but otherwise even for large blue-chips it doesn't make sense.

Products are priced the way they are because that's the most they can charge without making their customers switch. Ergo, at any price point, everything is usually approximately equal value for money..

Nutty Nougat

Obviously.

Re: A bit off

Works for me on both Windows 7 and Window 10 calculator, both of which use an arbitrary precision arithmetic engine. I believe that's been the case since Vista.

What are you using? XP?

Re: It is our job to uphold the law

If I'm mugged at gunpoint, that's a crime in progress, but I'll be handing over my wallet all the same. If a child is kidnapped in practice you find that often people do what the criminals want first, then go to the police only afterwards.

Comparing on the one hand, paying an extortionist to retrieve irreplaceable property, and on the other, being too idle to shout "Oi!" at a casual thief, is just silly. They are different.

Law vs. real life

If you ask women out when you know they are not interested and find it annoying, that's harassment. Continuing to ask after the second clear "no" for example would generally count. Once, you are probably legally in the clear.

But in real life, you are expected to know whether a woman is interested before you ask her.

This is a social convention to prevent women having to bat away a hundred foolish questions every day. You should be able to pick this up from body language and facial expressions. However if you are poor at body language or you are still not sure, ask mutual friends their opinion before asking her.

If you get a lot of "no" answers, you should learn from that you are poor at interpreting facial expressions and body language, and stick to asking mutual friends first.

Re: UK libel law

No, the Mosley case was breach of confidence not libel.

Re: The question remains ...

This!

This!

This!

Serious, now. This!! FFS! THIS!!!!

"we'll harvest energy from people walking on floors!"

You know how walking on soft sand is harder work than walking on a hard pavement?

WHICH IS WHAT THAT WILL BE LIKE.

Because thermodynamics.

Re: It's like a fish taken out of the water...

DCOM not found in current versions of windows? What?

Nonsense.

Re: Let's impose a political litmus test before people can do their jobs...

If that's the kind of world you want to live in, the worst I wish you is that you should do so.