Posts by nichomach 808 posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
I know what you're getting at, and have experienced being in those interminable "I'd better cc EVERYONE" email chains, but there is little more annoying than being in the middle of a complex task that requires concentration and having someone rock up or phone with something completely unrelated that they expect you to deal with there and then. Make an appointment and I'll clear the decks for you and you'll have my complete attention. Rock up out of the blue, and I'll be less forthcoming.
And that's why reductio ad absurdum is treated as a logical fallacy. Scenario: You are developing a technology to invigilate exams. This depends upon facial recognition. The people being invigilated may be black or white, but you only test on white people. Your product discriminates against black people because it can't recognise them. You didn't *intend* to adversely affect them, but you should damn well have tested your product to make sure that it didn't, and if you were unable to ensure that it didn't, you should not have certified that product as ready for use. That is casual racism; you do not intend to be racist, but you are, because you either do not consider the issue, or ignore it.
As I noted elsewhere: "That presumes that the ICO's role is to protect citizens' data. Observation would indicate that in most cases it's to explain that they're not going to."
We provide a batch file that does a backup of the stuff in users' documents/pictures/videos folders. They are told that anything important should go on the network (actually into our CMS). Do they use the former? Sometimes...but not often. Do they pay attention to the latter? Three guesses, but you'll only need one...
Not that I don't think this pillock should be prosecuted, I certainly do, but the contrast between their lightning-swift reaction to one guy on his own breaching RIPA as opposed to their glacial pace and unwillingness to act against a couple of big companies like, say, oh, BT and Phorm is somewhat noticeable.
See, the problem isn't that you mixed the words up, the problem is that you attempted to lecture someone else who picked up on that and had a little (non-malicious) fun with it. Don't blame other people when you pwn yourself?
...Oracle are on the cusp of crashing; they are so abusinve to their customers (honestly the Redmond Beast is a fluffy teddy bear by comparison), and there are so many other options out there that they might be hitting the tipping point where people simply won't use them anymore. Oh happy day!
Couldn't agree more. Last "genuine" ink I bought was appallingly bad; loads of gaps, wouldn't print some colours. Bought some generic stuff off Mamzon and it works much better. I still get the "you are not using genuine HP ink" message, to which my response is "You're damned straight I'm not, you thieving %#@£s!".
"We welcome this response to our request for thoughts on exceptional access to data – for example to stop terrorists."
Or check what people are putting in their wheelie bins. Or whether their dog left a mess somewhere. Or whether you're a furry. RIPA powers were supposed to be used in "exceptional" cases too and now look where we are.
There were a number of third-party TCP/IP stacks that worked with Windows 3.x and LAN Mangler (Beame & Whiteside leap to mind), but Microsoft did provide a TCP/IP stack for WFW (I believe it was labelled a beta when it shipped, and I don't know if they ever shipped a release version) which worked OK.
The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing
Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2021
