Posts by Doctor Syntax 42273 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"However OTA updtaes does mean that you don't have to do as much testing knowing (traditionally there would be a big cost to recall a car for software changes at the dealership)."
I'm not sure what this means but if you're trying to say that testing doesn't matter because you can push bug fixes that might be true but the bug fix doesn't get installed on the cars which crashed, killing all occupants and a few innocent bystanders before the the fix got pushed.
"Unless you can prove it's totally lawyer-proof, C-suites can probably just counter they can lawyer their way out of nigh anything."
Some of us work in jurisdictions with better employee rights protection. There'd also be a risk of flagging themselves up to the ICO in which case it'd most likely be settled very quietly out of court.
There's also the fact that some of us work/have worked for businesses that take security very seriously and there it really does start at the top.
"The conference organiser's reputation will be that they might nag you to sell their conferences, but they probably won't try to drug, bug or infect you with malware."
Succeeding without trying is an option. Just how much cost do you think they're prepared to take on board to source promotional tat?
From https://www.circl.lu/projects/CIRCLean/: "The code runs on a Raspberry Pi (a small hardware device), which also means it is not required to plug the original USB key into a computer."
Last time I looked all my Pis were computers.
But a good idea even if the explanation wobbles.
"Who hasn't had an email from their banks with a "click here" rectangle for customers to log in and learn about some new trick with their account."
Me for some time now. I reported a number of these to their phishing report helpline. I eventually emailed that or some similar address than in the continued absence of any reply I'd discontinue the email address set up specifically for said bank. No reply so I gave them the chop. They don't seem to have noticed their emails bouncing.
You're dealing with marketroids & PR.
These are the folk who will keep sending out emails which exactly emulate phishing emails to customers and would-be customers. Emails, even, warning their customers of the dangers of phishing. They'll keep doing that until you prise their keyboards from their (hopefully) cold, dead hands.
Given half a chance they'll hoard customer details contrary to GDPR until they earn their employers multi-million quid fines.
They'll make every effort to force ads onto people who make abundantly clear by using ad blockers that ads are unwelcome and hence hugely counter-productive.
They lobbied Bambi's govt to make exceptions for existing customers to let them bypass TPS and make those calls despite use of TPS should send the same message as ad-blockers.
They're the biggest single risk to their employers in terms of pissing off potential and existing customers and in attracting GDPR fines.
You're never going to talk sense into them.
"I’m saying that when you have severe data breaches then individual should be liable for gross negligence or malfeasance."
GDPR and DPA 3.0 both have this provision but only with fines administrative penalties as punishment. As it's an administrative penalty (except in those countries that don't allow administrative penalties) there'd be no criminal record.
"And then I know a guy who moved like 9 years ago, and the council, BT, his pension provider, and lots of other people still send stuff to the wrong address."
We had that for some time until I phoned the sender and told them there would be a £10 handling charge on every item I sent back to them and if they didn't pay I'd have no qualms about taking them to court. It stopped.
"Unfortunately, the requirement to ensure data is accurate does not apply to all."
The requirement applies. It's just that businesses aren't always good at applying it. The more self-important the business the less good they are.
"Despite threatening to call the police on us as we had breached data protection"
In the circumstances my reply would have been "see you in court - as a witness against you for wasting police time".
"99.9% of the times I've called up any utility companies... there is literally zero need for them to personally have access to any of those details."
It depends what the call's about. If it's to do with utilities there can be a definite need to know as the physical network can be a problem. Recent anecdotal evidence is that the call centre doesn't know enough. Last week the road was closed for water main work almost at my gate with no notice. The call centre operator was sure it was a different road that was affected.
Yesterday the internet connection went dead. And then it died a second time. Checking the phone showed no dial-tone either. When I finally got back online I rung BT. The immediate response was to offer an engineer visit (at a cost of £85 if it was a false alarm); no no faults or work in the area. I went down to the village and found 2 Openreach vans with one engineer working at the cabinet and another down a manhole doing remedial work on the cable between the two. Call centre don't have access to that information or aren't able to relate location of work to physical addresses.
"Mythic Beasts who seem ok. They don't offer free web or mail forwarding which is a shame."
They offer both.
Log in and go to https://ctrlpanel.mythic-beasts.com/customer/home
Top left of the options is "Web and Email Hosting". The second option there is Web Mail which offers a choice of Round Cube and Squirrel Mail.
On the "Mail Configuration" page the first option on the "Add delivery address" panel is "Forward to".
Maybe you've discovered all that by now.
"leave them undisturbed for more than a week.and they will form an impenetrable tangle"
I've explained this before. It's how they breed. You know it's true because there are always more than you started with except for the one you were looking for which has been divorced and left the family home.
"Someone please make me feel better and tell me i'm not the only person that does this?"
No. Most recent was a pair of pliers. Couldn't find my pliers anywhere. Went out and bought a new pair. Used them. Went to set them down and realised I was putting them beside the pair I couldn't find on a shelf I'd searched several times. Tools have this mysterious ability to dematerialise, possibly move to a different place and maybe time and then return by some quantum jiggery-pokery.
"Represent your clients by all means, but don't think up excuses that make them look like incompetent idiots in technological savvy terms"
No need to do that at all. Said clients manage to do that all by themselves.
Take their "recommendations" for a start. You may be interested in whatever it was I made a one-off purchase of.
The chaos resulting from a failed delivery to an Amazon locker which results in a courier being tasked to come to the door to collect the item that wasn't delivered because they treat non-delivery as a return.
The spamming for feedback which, should I ever consent to click in a link in a spam, is only going to result in score that represents the negative customer service that is spam.
The failure to notice that an item hasn't legitimately moved out of (and probably can't be found in) the depot where it's recorded as having arrived at and should be delivered from.
The battery of estate agents' ads that follow any search for information about a specific place.
And more and worse besides.
"Spreadsheet Phil hopes that it will bring in £5m in 2019-20, rising to £275m the next year and to £440m by 2023-24."
Has there ever been a Treasury prediction that didn't look more optimistic the further it got into the future? And has any Chancellor ever presented the eventual result to Parliament with a comparison of the predictions of one, two, etc. previous years?
"Running a full backup will normally consolidate the transaction logs on a MS database (SQL, Exchange, etc) server. If you run incremental or differential backups, it doesn't."
I'm more used to Informix where you back up the logs separately. Also the restore of a full backup plus incremental takes you to a fully check-pointed position. You only need the logs since the last incremental was made to roll forward from there. And you were doing your incrementals every night or even more frequently, weren't you?
"I'm quite sure the local acting DBA was later called for a word or two"
The local acting DBA would probably have had a good response if he dared use it: "Why don't you send me on a training course?". That wouldhave put his manglement in a real quandary - if they did that they might have to pay him the going rate for a trained DBA.
"Why would database software be written such that deleting an ancillary file ( such as a log file of historic steps) cause it to fall over?"
Not familiar with that particular engine but one possibility is that it contains the log of current transactions, i.e. WORK that's STARTed but not yet COMMITted or ROLLed BACK. That puts the engine in a bit of a quandary as to what it's working on. The longer term need for the logs is to roll the database forward after a restore from backup and there ought to be a means of archiving logs for use as and when required instead of letting them grow indefinitely.
