Posts by Doctor Syntax 40432 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"And PDF is supposed to be a standard format."
I'v been taking a few PDFs prepared for printers and reformating them for putting on a web site, with a bit of editing of the copy in one case. I'm starting to realise that while PDF is a standard container format what's hidden inside can be as mad as a box of frogs.
"I can see the advantages for smaller org's that don't have the muscle to sort out the infrastructure for themselves"
OTOH a small org might not have the cash flow to pay the subs reliably. If a bad month means you can't pay the sub and get cut off from an essential service the next month is going to be a whole lot worse.
"It wouldn't be Linux if it wasn't inconsistent and interminable bickering over licensing terms and conditions."
We FOSS folk take this stuff seriously because we can. It must be awful just having to put up with whatever rapacious T&Cs proprietary S/W vendors impose. But perhaps you're used to having to bend over.
"users get an unlimited amount of data but speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment "
What sort of contorted language can equate having an allotment of data with "unlimited". Apart from anything else, depending on the speed with which the allotment was exceeded the total amount of data that could be transmitted would approach a limit, that of the amount transmittable at the throttled rate over the period of a billing cycle.
We hear endless complaints about "up to" data rates; limited "unlimited" deals are far more reprehensibly misleading - the first involves the laws of physics, the second a deliberate action by the vendor.
"Hotel staff opening your door with a keycard is fairly different from that sort of forceable entry."
DEF CON attendees probably don't assume that unlocking the door requires official sanction. If there's a next year they'll probably ensure the locks only open for their own keys.
you can make a copy of the key before you sell your car (or house for that matter...)
Car is driven off very unlikely never to be seen again. Unless you have access to a tracker in it (which, in part, is what this is about) your key does nothing for you.
With a house you can, and should, change the locks when you move in. You never know who the previous owner might have given a key to - and even that owner might have forgotten. A few years ago my daughter bought a house. The owner said she'd handed over all the keys. The day daughter moved in, or maybe the next day, one of the neighbours turned up to hand over their copy of the key the previous owner's forgotten about.
"I noticed a couple of times that there seems to be a series on downvotes on commentards, just the odd one or two on *all* the posts. Which suggests that someone who takes a weird dislike to a particular set of articles or a bot that attempts to alter the appearence of consensus."
I think it works like this:
A posts something egregiously wrong.
B points it out.
A is upset at being caught out. As it was clearly wrong he can't really contradict B.
At this point most people would say the equivalent of "fair cop, guv", either publicly or, more usualy, to themselves and move on. A can't do this.
A now shifts the blame for the damage to self-image to B and goes through B's posts, sometimes systematically, sometimes not, and downvotes them irrespective of what they said.
Wear your stalker's downvotes with pride. It means that you were right and somebody hasn't forgotten.
"If it's not they'll pay the fine and find a way to keep on slurping up the info."
It's not just going to be a question of one fine (actually this is a civil suit so it's going to be damages); this is going to come up across multiple lines of business and multiple legislations. ISTR that this is already under attack in the EU in addition to a previous Schrems suit. India (India!!) is getting in on the act as well. You may think any of these are small in relation to the size of Google but cumulatively they're going to cut into profits unless advertising prices are raised. If advertising prices are raised maybe some advertisers are going to start looking more carefully at what they get for their money.
"Looks like we'll be following EU law for quite a while,"
Yes, because, apart from the fact that GDPR, like all EU law, becomes part of UK law unil Parliament says otherwises, the current DPA is based on it more or less - that more or less bit is the wriggle room HMG has given itself. Because, unlike ICANN, we have a vested interest in doing business with the EU (not that some people realise that) the wriggle room is going to give us problems because I doubt the EU is going to be so daft as to give us a Privacy Figleaf as they did with the US.
"Too bad the victims of his scheme aren't going to see a single dime of that money"
Not according to the report on the Beeb: "It also includes clauses that will see cash gathered by Prenda, and potentially more in damages, returned to the people who paid up."
"As in all surveys, the outcome depends more on who s believed to be asking the question, the context that the question is asked in, and the precise wording."
It would help if reporters given the results of such surveys insisted on getting and publishing not only the precise wording of the question but also of the entire survey - previous questions can influence this.
"Congratulations, Bernard. You are a perfect balanced sample."
Now the default password is not necessarily an issue.
Provided (after you use it) it says "For security reasons please change this password to your preferred password, and record the new one in a safe place."
Not quite enough. The default password should only get you into a screen that says "For security reasons please change this password to your preferred secure password, and record the new one in a safe place. YOUR DEVICE WILL NOT BECOME OPERATIONAL UNTIL YOU DO THIS." And enforce minimum standards on acceptable passwords.
"Sadly, we need design and implementation standards- backed up with laws and harsh penalties applying to manufacturers, importers, suppliers and system integrators."
Worth a thousand upvotes.
"Banks and other organisations are starting to tell people to be more careful"
I'm not convinced of this. Those I've dealt with persist in training their customers to be phished by sending out emails inviting them to click on links, some of which require logins.
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