
Anyone who things an API is not a creative work (in the broadest sense, although I believe "creative work" is a technical term in coyright law) ... has never designed a complicated API.
47 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Nov 2012
Several of those top problems can be completely avoided by using a better programming language or third party libraries.
The "Improper Input Validation" problem, however, is tougher. Coding proper input validation for non trivial cases (such as string to integer) is tough. There might be only one correct format for an input, but there are many ways it can be incorrect. When I write (TDD) test cases for input validation code, in almost all cases I need considerably more (an order of magnitude more) test cases for the classes (equivalence partitions) of incorrect inputs. Getting junior, less disciplined or rushed developers to put that effort in is not easy.
There's more going on here than simply "using Power Shell". Unix has had a "powerful" shell since forever, yet has less frequent and harder to perform attacks. Are the attackers using Power Shell to perform operations that are easy because of weaknesses in the system? So the message should be "easy to exploit weaknesses" rather than "OMG Power Shell"?
"If APIs and interfaces can be copyrighted"
They can be, and this has always been the case, as the court ruled. But the doctrine of Fair Use allows use of something even if it is copyrighted. If I interpret the situation correctly (IANAL), Fair Use allows use of APIs and interfaces. And, IIRC, Google was found guilty of copying some implementation, which would not be part of the API.
It has, apparently, been the law in Britain since 1974
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53
...where a question seeking information with respect to a person’s previous convictions, offences, conduct or circumstances is put to him or to any other person otherwise than in proceedings before a judicial authority—
(a)the question shall be treated as not relating to spent convictions or to any circumstances ancillary to spent convictions, and the answer thereto may be framed accordingly; and
(b)the person questioned shall not be subjected to any liability or otherwise prejudiced in law by reason of any failure to acknowledge or disclose a spent conviction or any circumstances ancillary to a spent conviction in his answer to the question.
Not so hasty, fellow atheist.
As TFA and the CoC itself says, those rules are taken from The Rule of St Benedict, which was (and stiil is) the Rule followed by Benedictine Monks (and those who would emulate them), not general rules for Christians. Naturally, Monks held themselves to stricter standards than general members of the population.
It has subsequently been suggested THAT is the problem that causes SO to feel "unwelcoming" to "women and POC": because they have received negative statements in the past (due to explicit or implicict misogyny or racism), they are extra sensitive to negative statements.
This is system is probably far worse than the reported accuracy measurement. The measurement compared with software with a layperson. The alternative to using the software is not a layperson deciding whether the criminal will reoffend; the alternative would be the judge, when presumably has training and experience in such things, and so should be more accurate than a layperson.
"What's wrong with explicit opt-in consent *every* time they want to use your data, saying exactly what the use is?"
The problem with any system that provides patients with a choice about use of their data (opt-in or opt-out) is the danger that the set of data allowed to be used might not be a representative sample of the population, and so any analysis done using the data would be skewed. So, imagine that well-educated middle aged men with bad eyesight and poor social skills are the most likely to be sceptical of allowing data sharing. Your sample will be skewed against people who are well-educated, or are middle-aged, or are men, or have bad eyesight, or have poor social skills.
A system that provides all the data and which is trustworthy is the best system. The tragedy of the care.data farce is that government have behaved badly and so lost trust by trying to run it as a money making opportunity, rather than a public health care improvement or research opportunity.
"there’s no evidence that the leaked data has been misused"
What reason would anyone have to break in to access such data other than to misuse it? Given that knowing much of that data would constitute misuse . Or are there guerilla free oncologists out there trying treat patients locked into 21st Century Healthcare's methods?
Although the Government tries to ensure that National Insurance Numbers are unique, their uniqueness can not be guaranteed. And you can not guarantee that an input National Insurance Number is free from typos when adding a record for a customer/client. So any database that tries to use a National Insurance Number as a primary key is doomed to fail, eventually.
If a database can not use a National Insurance Number as a primary key, the justification for recording the National Insurance Number at all disappears, unless the database must be used for tax or benefits payments.
"there is no indication the billionaire überpatriot intends to visit our shores."
Yes there is. He wants to become President of the USA. And the President of the USA visits the UK quite often:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_visits_to_the_United_Kingdom
Obama has visited 4 times, Bush Jnr 5 times, Clinton 7 times, Bush Snr. 3 times.
"Don't sign a contract..."
IANAL, and I guess it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but a contract requires an exchange: if you do some work, they have to pay you. And if the contract itself does not specify that you will be paid, it is an unfair contract term. You can just ignore it. Let them waste time and money on consulting a lawyer who will set them straight.
"Demand curves slope downwards"
Interestingly, and *not* contradicting your broader point, there are some social psychology experiments that demonstrate that the curve slopes upwards in some cases. IIRC, it is when the buyers have poor information about the quality of the available products, and so assume that a higher price means higher quality and thus a more desirable product. I recall reading somewhere that the cheapest bottle of wine sold restaurants is not the best seller, but the *second* cheapest sells best.
"Chiropractors don't have an M.D, they are "D.C."
Maybe where you live (the US?), but perhaps not true everywhere. If they apply the rule has "having an MD awarded anywhere in the world", it will be just a matter of time (if not the case already) that you can buy a "MD certificate" on-line from a dodgy jurisdiction.
The quacks might even justify this to themselves as a noble work around of rules set up by the evil Big Pharma establishment to keep them out.
"they are simply wage slaves and out of a job if they don't bend personal principles to fit their employer's desires"
In the short term, true. But you do have some choice about your employer. You can take your labour-power elsewhere, unless you have been made redundant and/or there is a recession on.
You are confusing patents with copyrights. Understandable, because people and organizations that want to extract unearned rent (such as Oracle, here) often try to confuse them by using the term Interllectual Property as an umbrealla term to imply they are the same thing.
"Nothing like three different decisions/opinions/strategies to work around to help a project along."
Can be handled, I'm told, by taking the line that only your immediate boss can give you orders, regardless of how senior they are, and that everyone else must go through them.
I guess that smart TVs will die out soon after the manufacturers "end of life" their early smart TV products.
We are used to a TV being something that, once bought and installed, contionues to give years of service. When the TV manufacturers decide to pull the plug on the servers providing the smart TV service, customers will be up in arms that the manufacturer has in effect stolen their TV from them. The fallout will be either plummeting demand for smart TVs, or the manufacturers deciding that providing the ongoing support for them is not worthwhile.
As a lad I read battered Penguin editions of the shows. They had some monochrome plates in them. I've always wondered whether watchable recordings existed. Sad that they don't, except for the last.
IT trivia: IIRC, one script refers to an electronic digital calculating device as a "computor" rather than "computer", because the conventional spelling had yet not been settled.