Posts by Pete B 301 posts • joined 7 Oct 2009
"I did tell the receptionist but they weren't interested, I did mention Data Protection but she informed me that GPs were exempt."
I'd have a word with the ICO - GPs most certainly are covered by the Act, so you've got a breach, refusal to correct an error and demonstration of insufficient training all in one go here.
I've never thought Apple were that bothered about the Enterprise with MacOS; all the things you take for granted in a Windows Domain are either not available at all, or you have to use Third Party tools to provide them. Seems like Apple offer the absolute minimum that any company will accept and no more.
How does this square with the US CLOUD act? As far as I can see it and GDPR are pretty much directly contradictory - as a US company Amazon would have to follow any requests under the CLOUD act, which could place them (and NHS Scotland) in breach of GDPR. It appears the only way to 100% avoid this is to use an EU headquartered Cloud hosting company?
"Added to that, HR have told us that we have to use up all our accumulated leave by the end of May, or lose it. Since I didn't go anywhere last year I still have most of a year's leave to take, so I'm off for the whole of May. With nowhere to go."
Not sure where you're based, but the UK have put into law that you can carry over holiday for 2 years.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rules-on-carrying-over-annual-leave-to-be-relaxed-to-support-key-industries-during-covid-19
We had an argument with our insurers after a building fire where smoke permeated through the Data Centre, leaving very obvious carbon on all the kit: Our insurers wanted us to have it cleaned and reuse - we pushed back asking for a warranty from them against any future early failures (and consequent losses) - at that point they decided to buy us all new kit. Shysters the lot of them.
"Whoever wrote the security policy that said manufacturer released security fixes need to be applied within 14 days clearly never worked with Microsoft :-("
And whoever selected Windows machines for the job clearly never read the EULA either - they are simply not suitable for life-critical systems, which yours appears to be.
"...only personal fines on their owners would have any effect"
In theory the ICO has the power to collect from the Director(s) in the event the company goes insolvent without paying the fine - they need to start making use of it, and possibly some additional legislation should be passed barring anybody with any outstanding fines from being a company director.
"If I plug my iPhone into my MacBook, I get a slightly faster connection than if I plug an ethernet cable into it."
Bet it's not faster if you're trying to upload files - that's the bit that seems to be missing most to me; unless you go full leased line route then you get an asymmetric connection which is based on the premise that all users are consumers of data and not creators; particularly with mobile working this is proving less and less true as time goes on.
And that's why I have my own diesel generator with a week's worth of diesel. As you say Gas C/H won't work without mains, but the current required is laughably small, so you don't need a big genset if you just want to keep the lights and heating on.
Can you imagine the QA inspector not noticing that the circuit board doesn't match the scheme they're inspecting against?
I can well imagine our QA inspectors not noticing if the board was actually a turnip, based on some of the "passed QA", "Returned Faulty" products I've seen.
Yeah, but if he reads the small print you'll find he didn't buy it at all - he will have purchased a limited license to watch it that can be revoked whenever they feel like it.
It would make for an interesting case under Small Claims Track - generally the judge in charge of these takes a pretty reasonable view of the facts, and I'd think there's good chance he'd find for the plaintiff claiming back the money he'd spent on things that have been taken away from him; unless Google were prepared to submit in evidence exactly how he fell foul of their T&Cs. Judges don't like to be told they can't know the reason for things!
"The second problem is that the large corporations can evade the issue by threatening to exhaust the resources of the regulators. Every megacorp case in the UK so far has resulted in settlement via downward negotiation of penalties."
Another argument in favour of making Directors criminally liable.
"Yeah the original Mini whose glove box would decapitate children in the front seat in an accident, that was definitely designed by young people today."
Not entirely sure what you mean by the original mini, but if you mean the 1959 introduced model I can assure you no children were ever decapitated by the glove box since it never had one!
When you log in to Sophos Central there's a banner across the top saying
"Endpoint Protection doesn't support macOS 11 (Big Sur) yet. Please don't upgrade until we announce that we support it. An EAP is available now."
Since pretty much all vendors seems to be slow to develop versions for new release of MacOS I assume that either the number of Macs in the workplace is too small for them to prioritise, or Apple make things so difficult that itm genuinely takes third party's that long to deal with the upgrades. (I've seen issues with the following off the top of my head recently - Adobe, Kyocera, Sophos, Brother, Konica.
He can be pardoned without being convicted - eg Ford pardoned Nixon explaining that "the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former president of the United States," were Nixon to be brought up on charges.
"We have a client that is so close to the exchange they have a direct line and do not pass through a street cabinet. As such there is no FTTC service available. An ISP did suggest we arrange for a cabinet just outside the exchange and ask OpenReach to loop though it. Wishful thinking."
Oddly enough that's exactly what they did with us - although we're rural we happen to be ~200m from the exchange so on old ADSL2 the circuit went direct to the exchange. When they enabled FTTC they re-routed our line via street cabinet ~ 300m the other side of the exchange, so the total line length has now gone up significantly. Still get 70/20 though - I find the 70 down is enough most of the time but the 20 up is very limiting.
Yes there is a way to campaign:
"You should contact the Cabinet Office at honours@cabinetoffice.gov.uk, naming the individual and explaining the reasons why you believe their honour should be forfeited."
You could also try starting a petition to the government and see if you can get it raised in Parliament:-
https://petition.parliament.uk/
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