Posts by Doctor Syntax 42540 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"We are continuing to investigate these images and have strengthened our existing safety systems to further prevent our services from being misused to help generate images like them"
It's "help", if course. Spokespeak translation: We didn't actually generate the images, all we did was help.
"I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder."
But who's going to tell them? Well, I suppose anyone. The better question is "Who's going to make them do that?". If we had a good answer to that we'd be well on the way to getting out of the woods.
OTOH two can play that game. Find a city where the lease is nearly up or at a break point. Walk away, closing the office completely. No taxes being paid, not even broken ones. No footfall for shops and cafes. Make sure other cities know what happened.
Is it just the US where this tax-break thing happens?
"Especially sites which require 10 to 20 "Legitimate Interest" areas of data processing to be unchecked individually, in order to opt out of tracking. Or worse, sites that list 200 or more advertising partners, and having to uncheck every one individually."
Looking at it another way, it's good of these sites to make it clear that you will want to leave now and never go near them again.
"I'm convinced that the framers envisaged a default of no tracking with options to allow it if acceptable, with clearly explained consequences."
This should have been how it was framed. No doubt there was a lot of lobbying to make it as it is now. It's time the EU held a review with the specific objective of deciding whether to make on-consent the default.
OTOH it it's still sort of working and there are a number of users still poinding away on it a reboot will require a longish warning period to get them logging off including the trip with a 4x2 cluebat to deal with one of them. Even then the server process might need a staged shut-down. Don't just hit the power switch and hope everything will be OK when it comes back. Even if it cleared the original fault you now have more problems than you started with.
The reality is that nobody could understand it and there was someone saying "It's more than my job's worth to let him poser down.". To be fair to that attitude I remember a box with a lot of drives which, according to legend, had a reputation for not coming back up once they'd been powered down. This led to major fretting when a re-do of the mains supply was needed. I think the UPS saw it through that without actually being powered down. Then there was more major fretting when it had to be relocated. In the end it all came back up OK.
"That line blurs a bit if the problem lies in one of the common runtime libraries but I still don't think we can blame the OS unless core functionality is impacted."
Common runtime libraries shipped as part of the OS - irrespective of what the OS is - are core functionality if applications depend on them. The entire purpose of an OS is to run applications. Where else would you put the blame?
"some other ancient bit of software that they refuse to give up under any circumstance."
That'll be the control software for some humongously expensive piece of hardware whose long defunct manufacturer confidently wrote to run on the then shiny new version of Windows. They could, of course, give it up but that would involve a large, unplanned write-off and and a large, unplanned project to replace it.
"more than 1,300 malicious servers"
Assuming the culprits don't run on prem these must have been hosted somewhere. I wonder what mileage there might be in prosecuting or victims suing the hosting companies as accessories. A bit of KYC in the hosting business might go a long way in dealing with this.
And smart money in property investment would be looking at just such opportunities while converting those city centre dinosaurs to housing. At some point things must rebalance with those who want to live and work in city centres and those who want to live and work outside city centres can all be satisfied.
With the various sanctions* placed on Huawei would it be legally permissible to pay royalties? And if it wouldn't and the patents are essential to 5G where does that leave 5G implementation legally? Interesting quandary.
*Even if present sanctions don't cover that it would still be possible for the US to add more.
all of our GDP plots seem to have "who gives a shit" as value for all points beyond the 50-years marker or so
Realistically, projections that get anywhere near that point would be worthless anyway. Predictions tend to fail as soon as the next big unpredictable event comes along.
"For some time now parents have delegated responsibility for the upbringing of their kids to other people."
Deep into the distant past that has included grandparents and older siblings. It has also included the community in which they lived. It's natural human behaviour. One problem here is that not only has the community suddenly expanded, it has allowed its less desirable members to be unchecked.
