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I think it is possibly their reaction to the propagandists plus pointing out that maybe some people do not have to pay £300+. Kaspersky have a long history of digging out the original perpetrators – pinning responsibility for the Stuxnet usb worm back on the US was one such action.
However to get back to your point. I can only draw analogies. I am deeply conflicted whether (for example) Metasploit should be praised or condemned. On the one hand metasploit provides tools that enable security audits of business enterprises. On the other hand it provides script-kiddies with prime examples to use on the low-hanging fruit in the general public. The annual Black-Hat convention falls into a similar camp but there have been major advances as its result e.g. sandboxing browsers etc.
Bottom line it is probably a slightly different example of the NRA’s mantra ‘It is not the fault of the weapon, it is the fault of the user’.
I finish by thinking that it is acceptable provided the public falls into thinking that the Internet is a modern Wild West and they had better come well protected.
The latest Wannacry analysis by Kaspersky makes it even more likely that this was a ‘common crim’ attack rather than actions by a Nation State such as North Korea. Their analysis shows a number of quite major coding errors:
” Most of the whoopsies make it possible to restore files with the help of publicly available software tools. In one case a mistake in the malware’s read-only file processing mechanism does not allow it to encrypt read-only files at all. Instead, the malware creates encrypted copies of the files, while the original files remain untouched and are only given a “hidden” attribute, which is easy to undo.”
It makes one wonder about some of the other evils attributed to DPRK as a convenient scape-goat. I am not condoning other obviously evil actions by the NORKs just complaining that sometimes the propaganda gets in the way of rooting out the real villains
It’s all theatre. It adds no extra security. The same applies with The argument of having more bobies on the beat. It doesn’t actually have any effect on crime rates, BUT it does make people feel safer to know a local policeman is patrolling. Theatre that all it is.
From my experience security is 99.9% deterrence. Push someone to look for softer targets. It is why I put up security cameras – not to actually ‘catch’ someone but to persuade thieves to look elsewhere. I’m unconvinced that you can lower /eliminate police presence with impunity. For example under the May regime’s cuts violent crime is up 24%. link
The US has a very different system, and one designed to protect the rights of the common citizen. Evidence is never concealed unless it is deemed capable of causing a genuine demonstrable injury to the rights of individuals or the course of justice. Straight out of their constitution, it is a law designed to support press reporting and to prevent the State concealing facts from the public. It is an intrinsic part of their checks and balances system. Obviously it can harm reputations, but the Constitution would rule that it is better that the public at large see things for what they are.
It is very different in the US.They may speak English but their mind-set is totally different, and in essence follows the ‘Devil take the hind-most’ rule. It would appear that Tiger is now a valid ‘hind-most’ target.
@Planeman, the Police really do not care about the actual ID used. They are looking at your willingness to cooperate, your nervousness and your whole attitude. If there had been anything wrong with any of those then your Cycling Club Membership would suddenly have become inadequate and grounds to detain you until you are able to provide an official form of ID.
A bit more than security through the motion, its more about reading body language.
Les if you want a guess it crashed in the middle of a jpeg and concatenated because it did not know where the next bytes should be obtained. Look up jpeg file format (or almost any other image format and you will find it highly dependent on the header. Mime files can be even worse as they are structured to be able to handle video chunks of unknown length/ Lose the bit with the chunk and heaven knows where it will go afterwards (least-ways that is the case with mpeg etc). Frankly I have never bothred to learn much about the mime format which adds another layer of transliteration. I do not need to know and life is too short. Mime wiki
Bottom line give up – you are on your own!
We have a very strange situation at the moment where ‘consumer’ confidence is high, but ‘household’ confidence is slumping. link I would guess that white-goods/electronics/clothing companies are ones that respond to ‘household’ confidence with fire-sales to stimulate demand.
It will be interesting to see how this is loss of household confidence is reflected in the election.
CNN recently stated that the UK young are no longer politically apathetic but angry at the way their living standards have been eroded more than any other group over the last ten years. Whether this will get them to vote is anyone’s guess. A lot of people in this part of the world are talking of voting strategically to damage her lead. i.e. Greens+Labour. voting for Lib-Dem, and Labour+Lib-dem voting for Greens. Maybe elsewhere in the country similar decisions could be made which favour Labour.
I do not think this election will be quite the walk-over May thought when she did her election u-turn! Whichever way things turn out, I think fire-sales are going to be the retail flavour for the rest of the year.
You are jumping far too quickly on the theory sounding the latest bones. What about the DNA evidence for Out of Africa?
Its all in the age and shape of the bones and their proximity to modern humans. Out of Greece looks like it could be a real contender, but would of course upset a lot of people who have pinned their careers on a different finding. link. If ‘Out of Greece’ holds up it will be a bit like finding out that Dark Matter is nothing but imaginary Dirty Fairy Dust.
DNA evidence on its own is subject to interpretation. We do for example share much of the DNA of mice, there are only 300 or so genes that are different but no-one knows which are the bits that are really important in making us ‘human’.
Just to return to Steve’s comment about 4K. I find it interesting that a way has been found to convert old movies to HDR link. However what I found most interesting was the obvious improvement in quality that is obtained with HDR.
@Steve If you are interested in human history the latest finds of old bones seem to show that ‘real’ humans evolved in Eastern Europe not in Africa (African finds are too ape-like in comparison). My personal guess is the bit of the Arabian Gulf between the Arabian peninsula, India ans maybe Africa which has become submerged under the sea. Link. If correct it also has the interesting effect of combining together many of the religious myths (Bible and Hindu etc) that are shared by regions on its boundary.
Hmmm -it reminds me of the HP print format commands which sometimes takes place when a malformed ‘print to’ (say print to pdf) takes place.
However it could be an ASCII transliteration of a JPG image. I’ve never seen this before but I’d postulate that you might get it if the jpeg header was stuffed — the firsr byte tells the pc the image format FFD8 for JPEG (compared with 4D42 for bmp). I think for JPEG there may be another SOI marker at another byte offset but this is I think non-standard. Carp smart phone cameras (Samsung in particular) have been known to produce non-standard images from time to time. Here is some info on the corruption caused by a Samsung Galaxy S2.
Obviously if the corruption is caused by the camera a file resend will not fix it! The photo would need to be taken again.
SOI=start of Image – Duh
I think the “OK” verdict for the Macbook is about right. My No.1 son is an Apple Fanbois through and through but he is getting to the point where is he is thoroughly frustrated with Apple. I think he is driven towards that by his desktop workstation and its carp lack of internal upgrading capabilities. He is actually thinking of dropping Apple and moving back to windows.
Apple’s walled garden is starting to become a real source of frustration to some players.
I also have to comment upon previous posts here, regarding immigrants who first came here, having children who looked ‘different.’ I remember the first black family coming to my old village.
I hate to be pedantic, but I’m going to be. The first immigrants here eventually became what we consider to be the white, indigenous group. There’s no such thing as a native Brit.
Dwnne may be offended by that – the Celts were probably here before anyone (ex the Neanderthals) They were also in Cornwall, Brittany Portugal and a bit of Alsace according to recent DNA/linguistic and research.into old bones
My remark was a poorly constructed appreciation for everything Lee does as we would have nothing without him! I’m sorry if it came across in any other way.
Avalon Hill Squad Leader (small unit WWII strategy & tactics) was my twenty something game of choice – bit too hard core for most people 4 hours+ with mistakes being brutally punished.
Can you trust the person not to have a nasty on his machine? It all sounds awfully suspicious. Send him a note and ask for a resend as your copy seems corrupt.
An FOI will get nowhere with BA. The Airline is now owned by a conglomerate that includes Irish and Spanish airlines.
with respect to an FOI on MOD not a hope – they are well practised ar fending off questions to hide their many bags of worms. It would get rebutted with the ‘commercial confidentiality’ opt-out. I suppose there is a slim chance of something being revealed if you can get on a broadcast Q&A panel and ask Theresa May – how many Government bodies outsourced their IT in 2015/16 and can we be absolutely certain that they will not suffer the catastrophic failures we have witnessed with BA? (there have been two this year) Unfortunately I would expect to see the same ducking and evasion we saw last night. Every question was answered in a similar way “We will not tell you any facts, everything will be decided by some mythical committees, and then we will ignore their recommendations a la TBLiar”. “But don’t worry we will strike a strong and stable pose while we dither”
I hope that was all just election BS otherwise I’m up for fleeing to New Zealand – the UK is doomed!
Tata’s IT salaries are here: (0.012 Rupees/£) . From the comments they do get sick pay
Approx/year:
Systems Engineer £6000
IT Analyst £9500
Associate Consultant £18700
Based on my (dated) India JV knowledge I’d say competitive with top quartile and 25% ish of UK
The [edit] should go after c) – I have no idea what went wrong!
Incidentally the ‘cheaper’ Indian labour is all in getting few if any retirement/sick/holiday benefits, they actually probably get a fairly good contract salary.
We obviously get into the realms of speculation as BA and Tata have been very tight-lipped about what actually happened. (Staff were warned not to talk) .So I’ll just lay-out observations:
a) Tata (an Indian conglomerate) have the responsibility for managing the IT operations of BA. i.e. outsourced to an Indian Company. Tata moved in their own people to take over UK jobs, in other words the location may have been the UK but Tata brought in cheaper labour who would have been unfamiliar with the UK hardware/comms – link
b) If nothing goes wrong, operating a data-centre is just a routine job. Long periods of boredom interspersed with some running around at month-ends or doing system restores etc. The real job of running a data centre kicks in when things break down or go wrong.
There should be a plan for every eventuality that will take down a data centre, with a hot-site being the primary route if and when the poop hits the fan. There should be regular rehearsals to ensure that everyone knows what to do – there is often a tome that handles the step by step procedures. A good tome will have PlanB sections for when these do not work. There was no Plan-B i.e. Indian outsourcing failed to deliver.
[edit]
Some limited data here.
and of course outsourcing brings its own problems in communication. link. Note comment about staff not being able to understand the fellow at the other end of the phone! It is bad enough ringing the BT help line but I’d hate having to do it for a fan full of poop!
c) Even if there was a total UK failure, for reasons unrelated to Tata (unlikely) why did this bring down the whole world network? The only reason I can think is that failure in the UK somehow brought down the Tata Corporate Cloud. implying very naff integration of the two. Total speculation based on the Tata glossy as there is no detail on the BA operation.
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