Posts by Doctor Syntax 40558 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"I don't see anything daft about keeping the data under UK control. At least the UK legal system has some control on it."
The UK legal system has bugger all control over HMG's abuse of data. The only legal system that had any hope of such control was the EU's. Why do you think the ERG tendency now running HMG wanted to take back control? You didn't really think it was you who would be getting control did you?
This is the crux of any tracing system. It must have an effective testing regime to confirm putative contacts. In fact, to be useful, it would be nothing more than the front-end to a testing system and the current target, assuming it's ever actually met, is probably an order of magnitude short unless the infection rate is got down to manageable size before introducing such a system.
"This is not just about you and your personal choices."
No, it's about HMG's choices. Several European govts have opted for a choice that respects privacy. Germany even abandoned its first choice to do this. One then has to ask HMG why it made this particular choice.
It might be simply the ruling ERG's xenophobia leading it to wish to do the opposite of Europeans. It might be an unthinking data-fetish.
But from our PoV it's simply UK govt., having a long history of not being trustworthy in terms of privacy, doing yet another thing which is not trustable in terms of privacy and asking us to trust them. There's nothing to stop them reconsidering like the German govt. did but my expectations are low.
"If we make any changes to how the app works over time, we will explain in plain English why those changes were made and what they mean for you."
"We've changed how the app works to share all the data already collected with anybody in govt, local govt and those who want to buy it. What it means to you is that all the data has been shared; you can delete it from our servers if you want to but it's too late. We said we'd tell you about changes, that's what we're doing now."
"we're quite lucky that our migration process includes time to get that crap in to a better managed state"
Why haven't you done that previously? If it can be done when it's put into cloud it should surely have been possible to do then under your your direct control. This sounds like a management failure.
"the current environmental issues"
This is the council that, some years ago, had some representative appearing on local TV news bragging about how some new venture had brought so many new jobs to the area followed a few weeks later by another representative appearing on local TV news to bewail their traffic problems. The fact that there might be a connection between jobs and traffic never occurred.
It's also council whose approach to environmental issues is to cut down a lot of its trees wnilst being quite aggressive to those citizens who opposed that.
"The FCC’s logic is that since China Mobile – the world’s largest cellular network operator – was found to be a security risk because it is majority owned by Beijing, then any other telcos majority owned by the Chinese government must ipso facto also be security risks."
The rest of us think exactly the same thing about US-owned corporations.
"and all (personal?*) income taxed at the same rates, whether salary, pension or dividends"
And employee benefits. That's what permies always forget when they make these suggestions. As soon as the availability of sick pay, employee protection rights and so on are taken into account they'd realise that they're not comparing like with like.
"A simple set of bands of income tax for all income is a much fairer system"
Absolutely fine - providing you then treat employee benefits as taxable. Once that's done the tax rates can be lower so those not getting benefits pay lower tax rates whilst the overall tax take remains the same. The distribution of taxation between groups of workers would be broadly the same as at present providing the benefits are valued appropriately.
It does seem that these sorts of proposals are getting closer attention* than the tradition anit-social media and advertising networks have done in the past let alone existing "think of the children" telecoms surveillance. Maybe some of this attention will start to spill over into other areas.
* Maybe one factor is that this is being proposed at national and, indeed, global scale so it's a lot harder to hide than one at a time individual primary care trust data slurping contracts.
All such schemes are dependent on widespread testing just to get started. HMG's testing target is 100k per day by the end of this month. It seems from current progress that the number actually delivered is a fraction of the claimed capacity and I expect that if the claimed capacity is 100k they'll declare the target met even if reality continues to fall well short.
However, let's assume the delivered tests actually meets that target. The current policy is that frontline staff and their households are entitled to a test. The number of households is estimated at above10 million. I wonder if anyone has worked out that even if only the staff let alone other household members are to be tested this is going to take well above 3 months. To test the existing households within a reasonable period of time the target is about an order of magnitude short. If lockdown is eased the number of qualifying households is going to increase so the testing capacity is going to have to increase further.
Now let's assume that this scheme is under way. It depends on the testing regime picking up a large proportion of existing and new infections. Without this there is inadequate data to start the system and most positive contacts will be missed. This means that the existing UK testing capacity is unlikely to be able to bootstrap the system in any useful manner.
Let's further assume that the system is up and running on an adquate footing. What happens when the positive contacts start to flood in? We must assume that a proportion, probably a majority of reports will be false positives. How should those receiving a warning react? Are they to assume the worst and go into self-isolation? What's the economic and personal impact of such unnecessary periods of self-isolation? The reports are going to have to be followed up with tests to avoid this and the testing system will have to be able to cope with this as well or TPTB will need to be prepared to switch testing strategy from frontline household members to putative contacts.
It seems likely that such a system is going to depend a testing system adequate to bootstrap it effectively and, unless the infection rate is low enough when it's introduced, a testing system adequate to not be overwhelmed by testing those with positive contact reports. It's certainly not going to be a means of easing to load on testing, nor on getting infection rates down from current levels.
Nokia Communicator of fond memory.
Like theOtherJT above I used mine for remote support although back in those days it wasn't SSH. Just use the built-in modem and VT100 emulation to dial into a modem.
Check the overnight jobs with their logs conveniently emailed to me (hint - email doesn't depend on the intertubes, just pipe stdout to mail username leaves it ready to be read by elm).
Fix problems for a client 100 miles from where I was working; he just unplugged his fax and plugged the modem into the same line.
"a bit of tape and string"
Ah, but this one required a push and the basic Heath Robinson engineering principle is that you can't push with string.
Actually, I don't think that principle is true. I've just been tieing up some fruit bushes. The garden twine comes in tightly wound cylinders which are quite firm. You can push with string.
Excellent improvised engineering "solution".
Improvised, yes. However it should have been replaced by a proper engineering solution. Something like the reset switch being connected in parallel to relay contacts with the solenoid powered in parallel with the CD-ROM drive's eject motor.
And thanks to Howard for the reminder of Mitsumi.
"(why are we 20 mln face masks short? Well, last week we provided 32 mln masks)"
This, of course, isn't unique to politicians. Anyone in an administrative position is liable to do the same. They're asked about outputs and reply about inputs; the media really ought to call them on this. The underlying reason, of course, is the old reality distortion field: messages from the front line always get passed back with a bit of a favourable twist at each step and with enough steps the twists add up to 180 degrees. Providing the minister's private office keep them busy they don't get near enough the front line to find out for themselves.
Obviously it's so important that clinical trials should start immediately and equally obviously the keenest proponent of the scheme would surely be the first to volunteer. And none of that blind control nonsense either. That's for all these scientists who take forever to tell you things. Just get on with it.
Zilog had their own range of servers which were free-standing boxes, none of this rack-mounting malarkey. We had several standing in the server room, each with its console standing on top. The displays of the big servers were stable, those on the small servers had a permanent shimmy. I assume there was some stray field from the servers that didn't quite match the frame rate of the displays.
IME, living maybe even closer to the main AM transmitter, Third was more or less inaudible below the howls from the line oscillator harmonics of any TV set in the vicinity. What was worse, Third wasn't even transmitted from that site. It was, according to my cousin-in-law who worked there, transmitted from the even closer TV station on a low power with an aerial suspended from one of the stays holding the mast up.
Back in the '80s we didn't need to get up to discover it was snowing. We could lie in bed and hear cars crashing into the gate-post across the road. We were on a site on the inside of the corner. It took scarcely any snow for some drivers to fail to make it round the corner properly.
First server in the building (Z8000/Unix v7). TPTB decided that it could be located in a cleaner's cupboard small room next to the lift shaft. Experience gained led to its being rapidly located to the library.
The other computer and lift shaft episode was much, much earlier - the computer was probably an Elliot - from the company where my Dad worked. It had to be located on an upper floor of the building so it was decided to haul it up the lift shaft. The rope failed. According to Dad the man who'd tied it on* fainted which might have run in the family; his daughter was in my class at school and fell off a biology lab stool when "blood" was mentioned.
* For added irony his surname was Crane.
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