Posts by Doctor Syntax 40432 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
The initial imprisonment was for extortion against a particular victim.
The second was for "retaliation against a witness, victim, or informant", in other words against the justice system itself. Property does not enter into this at all. No wonder it's the more serious offence.
Not mentioned in the article but does he get to serve the remainder of the 37 months consecutive with the new sentence?
"The problem is that if you take the time to solve the security issues and make sure that you don't access too much data, your project is one generation late to the market."
That's why regulation is needed to level the playing field. That way, if you don't solve the security issues you don't get to the market.
Wasn't there a version of Sun's OS in the late '80s that fell over the first time it got to a leap year?
About the same time I'd inherited an application written by one of the company's directors. He was a COBOL programmer by trade who'd adapted to C by way of a number of macros that tried to introduce some COBOL idioms but that's by the way here.
One of the functions was only intended to run on a specific day of the week - Monday or Friday, I can't remember which. This fell over at the start of the new year. There was a page and a half of code which I couldn't understand to work out the day of week to check it was running on the right day. There was probably a relationship between my not understanding it and it not working.
The database in use was Informix which has a function for returning today's date in its internal date format: integer with 1 corresponding to the first of January, 1900. So run cal 1900 to determine what day of the week that was (Monday), calculate today's date mod 7and check for whatever result would be correct in the context of the program's requirement and job done. I never did work out what the page and a half of code actually did; I just deleted it.
"If a non-EU company decides it is easier to lock you out rather than comply with pointless regs"
If they decide EU business isn't worth their while then it's reasonable that they regard the regs as pointless although those of us in Europe don't agree. For a company that does local business in a non-European company that wouldn't damage their business. If, in future, they were to want to expand their business they'll need to reconsider.
However, for those in media who regard themselves as important opinion leaders it's a very high risk strategy. They can't really afford to drop out of such an influential region. Are they finally getting round to fixing it or are they still sticking their heads in the sand and hoping it all goes away?
"several UK online newspapers."
The entire Trinity Mirror group for a start. The first time I hit that I stopped partway through and emailed the paper telling them they were in breach. They wrote back and assured me that their group expert said they weren't. I wrote back again giving the URL of the ICO's page on the subject, directing their attention to the specific sentence in the specific paragraph. There was no reply and last time I looked nothing had changed.
Time to start the complaints to the ICO.
"GDPR is a pita"
It depends on how you've been treating personal data in the past.
If you've not assumed you have rights to spam everyone who ever bought as much as a postage stamp years ago - or even enquired about buying one - you're probably at least well on the way to being compliant.
If you made a business of buying and selling people's data then not only is it a PITA, it's one you richly deserve and should have got years ago.
"But what about the data retention law, from that very same EU? ... Wouldn't you say that this somehow contradicts with the GDRP?"
No it doesn't.
The reasons for this have been explained here numerous times; most recently, at least on my part, with complaints that we have to keep explaining it. So now I won't bother explaining, I'll simply tell you that there are provisions within GDPR for this and similar stuff. If you want a full answer to your question, go and swot it up for yourself. If you're tasked with GDPR compliance in your own company it's the sort of thing you should be doing anyway.
"I have to wonder why the legislation in the EU has any bearing or impact on websites operating in other jurisdictions."
It bears on anyone handling PII of data subjects resident in the EU by giving those people certain rights. Where the data is held or processed has no bearing; those rights now exist.
"And even if they have reasons to be compliant it makes you wonder what sort of scary crap were they doing before GDPR that means they have to block access afterwards."
Indeed. And if they hold problematic data they'd acquired before they started blocking they're still in contravention. If they haven't purged their old data the blocking means nothing. In fact, it raises a flag for someone who has use the site beforehand and fancies taking a poke at them...
"Bodhi Linux admins, however, took the rather extreme step of deleting their support forums entirely, just in case"
It doesn't reflect well on their ability to develop functional S/W. It's a long time since I looked at Bodhi and the memory I took away was style over function so I can't say I'm overwhelmed with amazement to hear it.
"...not finished?"
It's not being finished, it's being maintained. In S/W development maintenance is a never-ending process of chasing new requirements. In an O/S - and take your pick of vendor or open source project - those new requirements are largely innovations or updates in the H/W on which it sits.
Arguably it was finished by definition at 1.0.
Design documentation comes from the system architect. In collaboratively developed S/W the system architect's role, such as exists, falls on the maintainer. But in the maintainer's role is mostly reactive rather than proactive. He can determine architecture by admitting, leaving out or even removing stuff (in Linus' case he's already said he doesn't write much if anything any more).
Contributions of S/W are determined not by some over-arching view of what should be in there but by some developer (or, more likely in the case of Linux, their employer) concluding that something is needed or needs fixing*. Part of the traditional system architect's role it do determine what the requirements are for the system. The collaborative approach supersedes that part by having contributions arise directly from the perceived requirement.
Documentation is, however, a point that ought to be thought of more. One approach would be to require a documentation patch. For new functionality that could go into the primary documentation, for bug fixes it could mark an item in a reported bug list as being fixed or report the bug and mark it fixed at the same time. That would solve Linus' immediate problem except that it's a bit late to start that now.
* Occasionally a contribution can arise from someone providing a bounty.
"fines have no clout."
Fines which scale with turnover have clout. Your cleaning lady won't be spending 4% of your annual turnover, possibly several times a year, unless you have a serious contamination problem or a barely visible turnover. And when things get serious it won't be your cleaning lady who goes to gaol, it will be the senior local management.
"Facebook is worth nearly 1/2 trillion dollars."
What does "worth" mean? If you mean money in the bank you might have a point although the shareholders might want some of that "returned" to them.
If you mean stock market valuation then you have to account for the fickleness of the stock market. It's not real money, just a projection of the price at which recent transactions took place. A surplus of sellers over buyers will change that in an instant and feedback can amplify such changes. Sticking with your point of GDPR fines a 4% fine would cause at least a bit of a wobble. If there were a few cases ongoing and FB had to announce it was making a provision of an eighth of its turnover for possible fines the feedback loop might really start a plunge.
Actually, I was thinking not of GDPR which is done and dusted as far as legislation is concerned. But what of new legislation? A reconsideration of corporate taxation rules? What about the idea of having companies pay the data subjects for slurpage as discussed here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/22/cowen_technopoly/ ? Or, more likely, governments being governments, valuing the slurpage as a taxable asset?
And don't just think in terms of fines; we are starting to see criminal sanctions against company officers, e.g. in the case of the VW emissions business. Zuck and his friends really wouldn't like legislation that puts them in line for those (actually GDPR already does).
"start chipping away at their business model by restricting how Facebook can use the data. It might take that for Facebook to take the EU seriously."
At some point that's going to happen. Facebook will then find legislators treating it with the disdain it showed them. What goes around comes around. FB would be well advised to remember that.
"So I'm sure there's a lawyer tooling up right now for the improper dismissal suit."
If he was on contract for services* there would be terms in the contract for termination.
* Which seems to be the case as there was still a agent pimp recruiter involved 8 months after he started.
"They do not work and only serve to reduce social mobility."
My primary was a small local village school. Nobody there could afford coaching. Some of us passed 11+, some didn't. I expect it was the same for all the other schools in the catchment area although many would have been larger.
There were a relatively small number who went to a small fee-paying school run by the grammar school head-master's wife (!). I'm not sure how much that affected their actual chances of passing.
Getting into grammar school was an opportunity, if you took it, for social mobility. Some did take it, some didn't. I've no idea where I'd have ended up without that opportunity but following a professional career doesn't seem very likely.
"I've nothing to hide. I'm doing nothing immoral, unethical or illegal."
The two statements are a non sequitur. The fact that you're doing nothing immoral, unethical or illegal doesn't mean you've nothing to hide.
"Card info & name to make a payment. No you should NOT store my code on back of card."
Your T&Cs for the card mean that you shouldn't give out that code to anyone who proposes to store it. That means that you have got something to hide.
I wish people would simply drop this "I've got nothing to hide" stuff. It's just not true.
"had to build a basic set of flat pack shelves over the weekend and my 4yo lad was interested"
Similarly, a couple of years ago I was assembling flat pack stuff for my daughter. Grandson was a bit older but also wanted to help. We progressed from him sorting out and hand me the correct screws to fitting them himself. Back in the day I mixed an awful lot of sand and cement and concrete for my dad, helped support the long end of 8x4 boards being put through the circular saw etc. You have to pass this stuff on.
They were fond of those vague "remove" instructions.
And "replacement is the reverse of assembly" ignoring how awkward it is to hold some concealed nut in place whilst you get the thread started or how to do some tricky alignment. I think the Hayes garage must be a collection of disassembled cars.
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