Posts by Phil O'Sophical 7402 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011
The LDs have never stood much chance. They've typically collected the protest votes from Tory or Labour voters who couldn't bring themselves to go all the way to the other side, but now Tory and Labour are much the same, the LDs are to the left of Labour and Farage is collecting the populist protest vote because people really don't care anymore.
Then each client can have an instance of their AI agent arguing with an instance of the tax office agent about what they have to pay, without any expensive tax lawyers being involved. There's bound to be a way to monetize that,
If by "sinks the ship" you mean "crashes the whole system" that's possibly true, but most security exploits aren't intended to do that. They are more directed towards data access and exfiltration, or subverting the system for other purposes. For that it really doesn't matter if your exploit is in kernel or user land, it just needs to affect the part of the overall system which manages the resources it is targeting. Indeed, it may be easier to exploit a bug in accessible userland code than in the kernel.
Well, at least the copyright is up-to-date...
(probably automated)
That's risky. Copyright protection lasts for a certain time into the future, so claiming a 2025 copyright for something written in, say, 2020 means that you're claiming 5 years more protection than you're entitled to. When updating source code for products our corporate legal team had very tight rules about when the (C) notice at the start of the files had to be changed, and when it must not be. Automated updates didn't extend copyright.
Using a VPN for general connections (instead of bypassing geo restrictions) gives something of a false sense of security. If you connect to a remote site through "Fred's VPN service" you will have a secure connection between the client on your device, and the server hosting Fred's endpoint. From there the connection will be routed over the ordinary Internet to whatever bank/shop/mailserver you're using.
Just using a standard SSL connection, like HTTPS, gives you a secure connection from your device right through to the remote site you're accessing. A VPN adds little to that.
Obviously using a VPN like OpenVPN, Cisco AnyConnect, etc. for, say, remote work, where the VPN endpoint is on your employer's server and opens directly into their secure network is a different matter. There it is useful, because you have end-to-end security.
absolutely nothing stopping the English Govt. establishing its own .Gov version of Debian and requiring all Govt. departments to use it
But I can absolutely guarantee that every government department will then spend more money on proving why they must be an exception, and keep MS, than they would ever spend actually making the transition. People don't like change, and civil servants really hate it.
The saying that "a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on" applies now more than ever before.
That quote has its origins in a "post" (in a printed paper) by Jonathan Swift over 300 years ago, which really shows that there is nothing new in the world and this sort of manufactured outrage long predates the likes of Xitter. People will believe what they want to believe.
It looks like typical US-centric crap that assumes all phone numbers are in "1 (xxx) mmm nnnn" format, all addresses have a "State" field, etc. Obviously won't properly filter fields from, say, a French site with an "identifiant fiscal" or "numéro de sécurité sociale" instead of an SS number, or a UK site with a "Unique Taxpayer Reference", etc.
You can never, ever, correctly filter all such fields through a blacklist-type mechanism, there are simply too many options.
Most systems I've used required you to enter the old password as well as the new, to prove that you had the authority to change it. That makes it easy to apply a "too similar" check, at least for password n-1.
For the "no reuse of last 10" case it just has to hold the last 10 hashes.
Satirical criticism by such public figures (that people may tend to trust more than ‘legitimate’ news sources) can throw into question the legitimacy of the scientific research community at large, and the public can come to distrust (even more) or not take seriously what they hear coming out of the scientific research community,"
That's not due to the entirely reasonable satirical criticism, it's down to the scientific research community publishing results without checking them, and it is perfectly understandable that such behaviour results in distrust. The community needs to fix itself, not shoot the messenger.
Ten people?
I've worked in companies where there are more than ten people responsible for UI standardization in each department and even they can't agree with each other.
As for cars, they may standardize on a wheel & a couple of pedals, but beyond that it's a free-for-all. It was bad enough when every manufacturer just put indicator and light switches in different places, but now that they're infested with touchscreen UIs designed by people who don't even drive they are even worse. Hire a car at an airport these days & you'll spend so long just to figure out how to start the engine, turn on the lights and adjust the seat that you'll end up trying to read the user manual on your phone (because they don't even print them nowadays).
This is a lost cause. Even voting with your wallet won't help.
For decades the UK has rolled out toothless regulators which only really exist to give an appearance of "doing something"
Unfortunately the current government's solution is to nationalise the industries which the inept regulators have so signally failed to regulate (Thames Water is an obvious example).
That just means that the same people who were so inept at supervising the businesses will now become responsible for running them completely.
What could possibly go wrong?
Exactly. If you're going to snog your mistress in public you have to accept the risk that someone will see you. For some people, that's the rush, until they get caught. It really doesn't matter if it's a papparazo, a private eye, or a roving camera at a concert, it has nothing to do with an imagined surveillance state.
Why is it always the worker who must travel, beg, and prove? If in-person is so vital, send the manager.
In your haste to rant, did you even take the time to read the whole post you replied to? Specifically the bit which said "Who does what travel is irrelevant.". As the poster noted, what's important is the face-to-face meeting, not how it is achieved.
