Posts by Doctor Syntax 40413 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"It's not really user generated data; it's data generated by the vehicle system, and there's no reasonable presumption such a system would wilfully lie if working as intended."
There is, however, an unreasonable presumption that the system will work as intended and that nobody will get at it to make it lie.
"The code states that all passwords on new devices and products are unique and cannot be reset to a factory default"
Not the best solution I'd have thought. A better one is that the out of box state is non-functional and requires a password to be set to become functional. A reset reverts it to out of box state.
I take Pen-y-gors' point about a remote reset by a hacker. The solution there would be that setting the password requires physical access to the device, say press a button on the device and you have a minute to set a password.
Someone places the device where they can't reach it and it gets remotely reset? There problem which is considerably better than being everybody else's.
Hancock also shrugged off Cherry's statement that legal opinions suggested the immigration exemption would not be permissible under the GDPR, saying simply that "there are always legal opinions about everything".
Indeed there are and the place where these get resolved is in court. Maybe the prospect of a fine of 4% of HMGs revenue ought to concentrate his mind. Perhaps someone should ask the Chancellor if his budget contains provision for this.
"Earliest forms of life on Earth had very little to do with oxygen, IIRC."
The organic compounds which living organisms are built of do contain oxygen. What the earliest forms didn't do was use molecular oxygen as part of their energy systems until, as you say, the blue-greens evolved photosynthesis which produced it as a by-product.
"No unsolicited scripts. What a surprise."
Now think what the BOFH would do in that situation. He'd tell a Brit commissioning editor that Netflix were interested but taking their time and there was a small window of opportunity if the editor could make up their mind before the pubs open.
"So how does normal people with a complaint about a website or something on it trace the owner ?"
Through the registrar and/or the hosting company. However, to get them to take notice the matter would have to be illegal in which case the police could take it up or contrary to the registrar or hosting co's T&Cs. In the latter case you'd almost certainly also need to be lawyered up to have an effect.
"Can't speak for .org.uk though."
My registrar seems to think either applies. I'm not sure what happens if .co and .org have different owners. I have a .org and the corresponding .co is owned by a completely unrelated business. However, if they want the .uk they're welcome.
So at what point are you a real web publisher who should a public address and "just a individual website" ?
There are quite a few issues wrapped up in that.
If you are an individual registering a domain you will be entitled to keep your details confidential. You're not obliged to do so.
If you register your site for commercial purposes you lose the entitlement. That would, AFAICS, include operating as a sole trader. On the whole you'd probably not want to hide your identity unless you're a cowboy; regular traders want people to contact them.
If you're operating a business as a Ltd company you'd register under the company name and the registered address would be the appropriate address to use. However Companies House would register the names and addresses of the officers of the company (director, company sec etc) although the addresses given are often enough the registered company address. Even if you want to keep your identity confidential you can't if you're an officer of the company; it has to be on the company returns, those are public as a matter of law and as such they're excluded from any protection GDPR provides.
"Perhaps now is not the time to tell someone that I own a second-level .uk address"
If you're setting up something like example.uk there's supposed to be a UK residency requirement. Presumably it's up to the registrar to check. example.co.uk wouldn't need residency. Ownership of example.co.uk would give you preference in gaining example.uk if you wanted that as well.
Maybe you owned the .co.uk or .org.uk version and then gained the .uk on those grounds and nobody thought to check?
"Can companies and publishers decide that it is outragous that the address of the manufacturer of something you bought be available to you or the address of a newspaper office be available to complaints"
This has nothing to do with addresses of manufacturers or newspapers. It's to do with personal information, the addresses of individual people who have their own domain, that's all.
"What bothers me is how can the EU dictate how ICANN runs the global internet?"
Look at it from the rest of the world's point of view. How can the US dictate how the internet is run within the EU borders or, indeed within the borders of non-US countries in general?
ICANN depends more on global consent than it does on the US's contract. The RotW could, if it so wished, get together, clone ICANN's root registry and then treat the clone as definitive. Given ICANN's governance problems which have been reported here a number of times it's slightly surprising this hasn't happened already.
In reply to your question, what the EU can dictate is what businesses, including registrars, can do with respect to the privacy of individuals within its borders. It can levy fines on any entity with a presence within its borders for breaching its legislation. That affects all EU registrars. It also affects any multinationals with offices within the EU. There's nothing in the EU legislation which would effectively prevent a non-EU registrar from publishing PII information on whois; nothing, that is, except it would then be competing with other registrars who don't and it would limit any subsequent expansion into the EU itself. So, although the EU can't dictate how ICANN manages the internet globally the control it exerts within the EU means it has to be respected. ICANN has finally faced up to that.
The Managers solution? 4 "Progress" meetings a day, designed to distract your train of thought and waste 2 hours a day.
At the first meeting ask (bulldoze your way into the talk if necessary) "Do you want me to stay in this meeting or do you want me to get the job done? Yes or no."
"The really good ones even have doughnuts."
Not the really, really good ones. Once upon a time in more generous days my team occupied the area next to a meeting room which was extensively used for lunch-time meetings. We became connoisseurs of meeting menus. The high point was one provided with Cointreau crèmes brûlée which had gone untouched.
"Possibly you are under the inexplicable supposition that your attendance at a workplace meeting serves a useful purpose. Yet in practical terms, all a meeting achieves is a mass downing of tools by its participants for the duration."
In the case of some participants having them down tools for the duration is a useful purpose.
I always found that the meeting at the start of a project was the most useful one. It enables you to look round, identify the (maximum) two other people in the project with whom you'll get the actual work done, identify the several other people who'll be in the way and wonder who the rest are.
"Technically, it is possible, as in restore every backup to a machine environment capable of understanding the data structures (both in database and application terms including all business logic) and then removing the offending data and then rebacking up the data."
Alternatively, take m0rt's excellent advice, posted an hour earlier. Or mine saying much the same thing with less detail posted some weeks earlier. Why does this chestnut keep coming up? The solution should be obvious.
"Except in the marketing analytics teams where all the toys are going out of the pram!"
I'm firmly of the opinion that their toys should be taken away from them and only given back when if they can prove they can be trusted with them. That goes for the whole of marketing, not just analytics. Toys, of course, includes anything on which data might be stored, including phones and paper notebooks; note Mr C's comments about checking for unstructured data. And insist that any future projects be only granted funding when detailed plans have been scrutinised by a grown-up.
"Do you need to get explicit consent from each of those employees to hold their data? Do your customers' employees have the right to be forgotten with respect to your help desk system?"
It might not be authoritative legal advice but CYA: assume "yes". The same thing applies to you customers, of course. Have they thought about such things? Have you prompted them to do so?
"Even a remainer should be able to understand that"
Oh, we understand all that. We just don't believe that the pixies will be along immediately afterwards to scatter the magic dust to ensure that lots of people don't lose their jobs. It might even work out after a decade or so but by then we'll be a decade or so behind all the other economies.
Alternatively we'll have been let back in on condition we give up the £ and a few other concessions which will be seen as worthwhile. There'll be no Leave opposition to that as nobody but nobody will ever admit to have voted leave and the outcome of the referendum will be seen as a huge statistical puzzle. BoJo and the like will be insisting that this was their essential idea all along.
A third alternative is that it won't happen as either it will mean the collapse of the Good Friday agreement with a hard border in Ireland or a collapse of May's agreement with the DUP as the alternative is a hard border down the Irish Sea.
"I also guess that Dyson himself has a lot of money stashed in tax havens, judging by his enthusiastic support of Brexit."
Dunno about his stash but his manufacturing is done overseas. Why should he worry about any problems Brexit causes British manufacturers? SEP.
"And there is also the fact that technically what your car just did might have invalidated your insurance (on the basis you are not allowed to leave a running vehicle unattended, granted electric is a grey area in this case)"
I don't know if you've noticed but the guy said a Nissan Leaf. Your Humber Sceptre would have to run its engine to warm up. An electric car doesn't.
"Yes, lets have more wind turbines everywhere."
The wind turbine which sits on my horizon and has had a number of outages in the past hasn't been turning for several weeks. Apparently the owners have gone bust. The various outages of the past seem to have been typical of the design so the fleet has cost more to run than it could make. So we now have what is, in effect, a derelict wind turbine, one of several. Who's going to be responsible for removing them? Or are they just going to sit there rotting until they collapse?
"A would disagree that EVs are subsidised because while petrol is taxed, the environmental impact is not factored in."
Governments tax to obtain money. Some of that is even spent on building and maintaining roads, not that that's always immediately obvious. Governments could claim green credentials by exemptions for EVs but only because the fleet was small enough for the tax not taken to be counted as small change in relation to the rest of road taxation. As soon as the loss of taxation becomes significant then it has to be made up somehow, either by taxing something else or by bringing taxation on EVs into line with other vehicles.
Couldn't happen? It happened to diesel a few years ago; there are still people complaining that they were suckered into buying a diesel car because the fuel was less heavily taxed and now they're paying more.
"'m quite sure someone from Redmond could RDP/SSH into an Irish machine and do from there everything an Irish technician would do."
If the machines are so badly protected from outside access then there's a problem. I've worked on sites where security of personal data was taken seriously. It was segregated on its own LAN. It was only accessible via the production systems that actually needed it (and operated by people with security clearances) or from the computer room. That approach to data security was the essence of their business. I'd expect any large business dealing with personal information to do likewise if it wants to be trusted.
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