Posts by Doctor Syntax 40557 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
And didn't the US set up a new data protection ombudsman recently to "protect" EU data held in the US? Not law, mind you, just an "agreement" and a "promise"
Did they actually get round to appointing the actual official rather than a deputy? In any event, what was the department responsible for that? Wasn't it Commerce?
"So screw them. ICANN should just move all registrations in the EU to registrars outside of it."
There is an alternative. The rest of the world stops regarding ICANN as guardian ruler of that joint enterprise, the internet. They treat one of the existing DNS root mirrors as the definitive root, make any changes to that and point the other mirrors to it.
US businesses will have to go along with that if they want to be seen by the rest of the world. The most that would be left to ICANN would be to mirror the new root and just keep up the face-saving pretence to the US public of being in charge.
"Which is exactly what we'd imagine you would allege if you were trying to deflect attention away from the fact someone on your staff bungled and put the wrong files on the public internet."
Actually, no. I'd expect them to quietly fix the problem and do everything possible to avoid publicising that it ever happened. Are any of them called Streisand?
"I'm sure these people realise that once you pass laws where you can obtain data then the people whose data they want will just move it somewhere they can't get it."
I don't think they do. The thought patterns of legislators are such that they must believe that if they forbid something everyone wanting to do that will simply avoid their efforts. The history of taxation or banning of alcohol, for instance, has provided centuries long evidence of this in the form of smuggling and illicit distillation.
Living inside a bubble where a host of employees including the most senior officials are doing their bidding* seems to convince those who've reached the top of the government tree that they really are all-powerful.
* Or at least persuading them they are.
"I imagine this will involve a lot of banging my head against a wall at least until GDPR kicks off, but I'm going to keep badgering them out of principle."
Maybe the best approach is to lay it on the line for them: "Do you want to deal with it now or would you rather wait until GDPR applies?".
"Some sort of cross between taxi and car share seems viable."
What do you want out of a car? A reasonably clean vehicle available when you want it? With your own car the degree of cleanliness is what you decide is what's worth putting in the effort and availability is assured by not competing with someone else for the vehicle. Can you guarantee either with the taxi/car share model, especially if you want the car to go to work in at the same time as most other people?
"And that year, it will be pointed out that although 50% of the cars on the road are human driven, those 50% are responsible for 99.9% of the deaths."
That makes an assumption as to the relative driving abilities of self-driving vehicles vs tired and drunk humans. That remains to be established.
I also note that some people showing users ( or running training) will omit steps, because they are "obvious."
I used to find this was a problem with schoolteachers. If it was a subject that fitted your thought patterns, no problem. If it wasn't you got left behind trying to puzzle out one thing when they'd moved to another.
"Could just shove that down the back and take a photo, then enlarge it - and get something readable."
Our gas service man tried that with the pilot assembly the other day. Still couldn't read it and went to get his torch. Took my glasses off (short sight) and found it perfectly readable by Mk 1 eyeball. Sometimes you can go over the top with technology.
"But I've lost count over the years of how many times he's handed me his computer and only half a browser window is visible below all of the various add-in bars and other shite he's managed to install."
In my case it's SWMBO and tabs. "I keep on clicking [the close tab icon] but nothing happens". That's because there are way too many tabs open for the one with current focus to be seen closing.
"Adults have the intelligence and experience to think this out of course"
Sometimes. Not always.
"Slowly showing them how to do stuff"
The key word is "slowly". Far too often people demonstrate stuff too fast. The watcher needs to be able to watch what's being done, what the consequences are and also take in the explanations of what and why. That's a lot of information to assimilate and it takes time.
"Or the user disables it and then demands IT come down and fix it"
Laptops are portable. Perhaps a rule that for all laptop issues the laptop should be brought ti IT, not the other way around. It might have a substantial effect on the effectiveness of telephone support.
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