Posts by Doctor Syntax 40471 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
If that was a company that I was trying to buy something form I'd have asked them directly - on a sales phone number, not IT support MD's friend's niece's boyfriend - whether or not they were interested in my business and if they were they weren't going to get it if they blacklisted my email address.
Almost nobody goes to jail the very first time they do a bad thing.
There was a fairly high profile news report a few months ago of an innocent man whose conviction and life sentence were recently overturned after he'd spent 19 years, IIRC, in prison for an offence he didn't commit. The most recent report I read was that he was homeless & living rough which, in my book, still doesn't add up to having been freed. That's a hell of an experience to justify your use of the word "almost".
if a police officer with access chooses to look up someone they know just because they're curious, that person is not likely to be charged or imprisoned, but they have been harmed.
Again, a report from recent months in the UK. A police civilian worker, not an officer, had access to confidential information about an operation and passed it on, the information eventually ending up alerting a criminal.
Read up on the killing of Charles de Menzes. What happened was a system failure. The system was devised by Cressida Dick. On the day in question, it was operated by her. It involved a misidentification, failure of surveillance officers to notice that a tube station was closed. Cressida Dick did not resign. She was not dismissed She was promoted to become the head of the Met.
Might as well add, "If you're innocent, you have nothing to hide" to that.
To which, of course, there is stuff that you're contractually obliged to hide. On a personal level it's part of the contractual terms for many web-sites that require log-in access. In a work-related context it includes any commercial-in-confidence material you handle and material subject to regulatory or statutory control.
So to do this enable them to just lock up everyone who isn't law enforcement. Most of those locked up would be innocent but if all thse guilty were locked up it would be a success.
Is the above acceptable to you? I trust it isn't.
Starting from the position that it isn't acceptable where do we draw the line?
Would it be acceptable to you if, for instance, all your communications with your bank for your perfectly legitimate routine day-to-day transactions were monitored? And any online shopping you do? If it is then why don't you post here all your online credentials that would be included in those communications? Or would that be the wrong side of the line? Where do we draw the line?
My daughter works from home in clinical trials. Her online communications and, of course, her PC, will certainly include commercial-in-confidence stuff but I'd also expect them to include share price sensitive data which is subject to financial regulation. It may well include medical data of trial subjects which will be subject to privacy protocols over and above GDPR. Would it be acceptable for law enforcement to be able to pry into that? If not would she and her comapny have to get some special dispensation. Or would this be the wrong side of the line? Where do we draw the line?
But let me make a wild guess: you have never, in any part of your career, been part of what you describe as law enforcement.
Great article, the diversion into Z8000 history is much appreciated. One system builder was Onyx with the imaginatively name Onix OS (Unix 7th ed, of course ported by the company who also did the original port of AIX)
Zilog built whole systems. I suppose this must have been the result of Exxon's ambitions. I went on to work in a shop that had two different models. One of them had a disk drive just under the top cover that gave it a rotating external magnetic field so that text on the monitor of the terminal placed on top of it would wobble all the time.
You are quite right, of course. But it needs long term thinking and upfront investment to set up such an archive. The CEOs who listen to the cloud salesdroids may well only be thinking a few years ahead to their next move or even no further then the end of the next quarter.
"We are always innovating on behalf of customers, which means we must sometimes make the difficult decision to pivot when we believe our resources should be invested elsewhere to better serve them,"
In what way is it on behalf of customers to bin the investment customers have made in the service?
From the customers' PoV the message is clear: you can't trust somebody else's computer.
If the employees don't have to pay the higher prices to live in commuting distance of the large city in which the HQ is located the employee then they can more easily afford to live somewhere with a suitable workspace.
I know of one such Dublin-based company where the employees can live and work at home anywhere in the world e.g. West Yorkshire.
I blame Apple. They got rid of the the big-name founder, Jobs, and it didn't work out until they brought him back. Now all the investors and boards are looking at their big-name founders - not to name any here - and are scared the same thing might happen if they go down that route.
"work out what parts of the project can be subcontracted"
IME, which admittedly is not in India, it's more a case of work out which parts have to be subcontracted because they're specialist and the main contractor doesn't want to build up in-house expertise for a relatively small number of use cases.
HMG has set a target for motorway charging points which is, to put it mildly, not ambitions. When it was reviewed it was found that it wasn't being met.
Why do you think they abandoned their targets recently? It wasn't that such brilliant progress was being made that they weren't necessary, was it?
Go back and read "prompt access to chargers". How do you get that if all the cars on the road are EVs? Yes, I know right now it's relatively few but if provision is made for what's planned then the plan is going to come apart and private vehicle ownership will be restricted to a relative few. The knock on effect of that are that if at present, many depend on ICE vehicles to get to work what happens when those are taken away? That alternative has to be planned for.
TL;DR We need something that scales.
"Chargers (particularly AC ones) should be ubiquitous... supermarkets, cinemas, restaurants, work places, libraries, hospitals..."
How many chargers at such locations? If you say lots, who's going to pay for them? If it's just one it will work for you if very few others have EVs. Once everyone has an EV you're going to be lucky to find one available when you need it.
Certainly a charging time akin to refuelling an ICE would be a great advantage although about 3 times as many connections would be necessary but you then have to worry about getting all that power to the filling station.
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