Posts by Doctor Syntax 42407 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
'But it's only when the mighty Apple announces it will allow ad-blocking that it suddenly becomes "an issue".'
That's not surprising. What sort of device do the advertising hipsters use? Suddenly adblockers have become visible to them or at least so much more visible that they can't ignore them any longer.
"On the second point - I'd love to think I'm uninfluenced by advertising, but as far as I know there's a great deal of research (not to mention advertising spending) that says otherwise."
Just how much of that research goes on working out how NEGATIVE that influence is? And if there are any numbers on that don't you think they'd be buried deep where nobody, least of all the clients, can find them?
"Before you assume that ads that aren't clicked on are wasted, have a bit of a read up on things like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect"
And before you assume that they aren't wasted consider the possibility that the effect might be negative.
"Car adverts are a good example"
Indeed. A very good example. I bought a new car a couple of years ago. Within a very few weeks I started getting texts and marketing calls from the dealer (or at least from the dealer's marketing agency). Did they think the brand new car they'd sold me was such crap that i was going to go out & replace it? And if it was did they think it wouldn't have been a claim under warranty backed up by solicitor's letters? Despite telling the callers to stop it continued. It only stopped when I got hold of the MD's email address and informed him in no uncertain terms that although they'd get the servicing for the remainder of the warranty they'd get no further business from me ever because of their pestering.
Mere exposure certainly works but not as intended.
You've missed out a whole set. The people who are so pissed off by being pestered that they'll go out of their way to avoid the product being advertised, even products or services they're already using. In this case the money spend on advertising isn't just wasted, it's counter-productive.
I doubt the advertising industry has any numbers on this. If they have I'd be surprised if they shared them with the clients.
My blocking ads might actually benefit the ultimate advertiser (the business with the product to sell) as they don't get the opportunity to gain my undying aversion to whatever they're pushing.
"But given that advertising does change sales numbers, that cannot actually be true."
What metrics do advertisers have to gauge the effect of advertising?
Say you advertise to 100 people and one of them comes along and buys whatever it is you're flogging. What do you know about the other 99?
You may assume that they're not in the market for the product, that you found the one who was and therefore you were completely successful.
This, however, assumes a lot. There might have been 10 people in the market for the product who'd have found their way to you but your ad pissed off the other 9 so that they've gone elsewhere.
You may be a little less happy with this outcome but it could be worse, 5 of those 9 might have been regular customers who are now somebody else's customers instead.
Does the advertising industry do any research on this? I suspect not - it might frighten off their clients. I remain convinced that the only products and people to whom the advertising industry successfully advertises are themselves to the clients.
It's just the opposite. When the US govt. created a legal framework enabling it to stick its nose in wherever it pleased whenever it pleased the assumptions that underpinned Safe Harbour, fragile though they may have been originally, ceased to be valid. From then on the whole situation has been in a state of limbo. The arrangement looked very dubious at best. Although the European Parliament called for it to be scrapped it continued in its little box like Schroedinger's cat. Now the ECJ has opened the box, the uncertainty has been resolved and we have certainty. The cat's dead.
And as for European politicians blaming everyone else? Well they have exactly one direction to rightfully turn the blame. It's not themselves, it's the US govt and its agencies who undermined Safe Harbour in their greed. There's nobody else to blame and there's nobody else able to fix it unless we ditch the European declaration of human rights and reduce out own rights to those of US citizens. Somehow I don't think that's likely.
Oh yes, they'll drag out the terrorist card again. Remember what is it the terrorists are trying to destroy: our civilisation with its values. Do we really defeat them by destroying those values ourselves?
"Because nothing meaningful will change"
Things have changed. Data subjects of EU companies can, with a reasonable expectation of success, start raising cases with their data regulators if thay (the companies) rely on Safe Harbour. And although the model clauses fig leaf may require another trip to the ECJ they're likely to fail as well.
"You suggesting that the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is an untested and unclear civil regulation Nigel?"
Actually I think the OP was unclear as to what these clauses said.
If the alleged clauses are telling the CRM companies customers that they're at their own risk as far as damages and the customer agrees I can't see that being illegal.
If they say "we're no longer certifying Safe Harbour" it would appear to be a no-op because the ECJ has pretty well said it doesn't exist anyway and the customer has problems vis a vis their data subjects and their regulators.
If they're repudiating model clauses and the customer accepts then the customer is similarly in trouble but then even if the model clauses were still in place they could still be in trouble once a data subject takes another trip to the ECJ.
This should be a wake-up for their customers. It's reminding them that if any data loss occurs in the US they're solely responsible to the data subjects. But if they (the EU customers) were relying on Safe Harbour then that's already gone; as soon as any data subject takes it up with the relevant regulator they should expect to find themselves in trouble. And if they're relying on some model clauses or the like then such a move would repudiate those so again they'd be in trouble.
Swim to France? Walk out through the channel tunnel?
Of course with the uniforms not there everyone in the street could be suspicious. That street sweeper. The kid on the skateboard. The postman. That newspaper vendor. The pizza delivery for sure. It's enough to make a man twitchy. Very twitchy.
"Can someone please think of the medium sized companies who'll suffer? No, me neither."
Yes, actually.
Any medium sized company that uses a US service for payroll, pensions, HR, CRM, marketing... They're all sending personal data abroad.
A few months ago I looked at several SIP providers to try to find one that didn't rely on safe harbour. Some said explicitly that they did on their web sites. One who I emailed said they didn't but on their web site relied on another UK company who did. Maybe I should repeat the exercise now, reminding them of the ECJ ruling.
'He said clarity was urgently needed for “the many medium-sized companies that are now feeling insecure”.'
Clarity is there: don't send personal data to somewhere where you can't trust the government.
What's muddying the waters now is Model Clauses and the like. If Safe Harbour failed anything else will fail for the same reason because the underlying facts of the matter haven't changed.
Politicians need to realise that there are some binary choices: you can have back doors or you can have secure systems, you can poke your nose into everyone's affairs or you can be trusted. You can't have both, you have to make up your mind and accept that you must go without the alternative. At present they're behaving like little children believing that if they clause their eyes and wish very hard they can get whatever they want.
"These include better use of scatter/gather features of the NIC or DMA "
Which NIC or DMA?
If you tie the S/W to specific H/W, e.g. a particular model of NIC then you lose the ability to plug in different H/W. If you provide for alternative H/W you end up with a modular structure which has its own overhead. I'm not saying that something which has grown at the rate the Linux kernel has is going to be the result of a whole series of ideal decisions (I can think of a few I disagree with) but if you try to do everything there are going to be trade-offs.
"The Linux networking stack is, well, sub-optimal, to put it kindly."
A general purpose OS - or general purpose H/W for that matter - isn't optimised for anything in particular. It has to be a jack of all trades balancing performance against security, ease of use, multi-tasking & whatever. If you want optimisation according to some specific criterion you use something special purpose. You want real time response you use a real time OS. You want to mine Bitcoins you use ASICs.
" If you dream about going back to the Holocene, you are probably out of luck, but it looks like we might yet manage a balmy Anthropocene that might be compatible with human life."
If you follow your own link to the Holocene definition we're not going to go back there because we're still in it; it's still the standard term for the current interglacial.
Anthropocene is still only a proposal & its proposers don't seem to agree a start date between the earliest Neolithic (which makes it pretty well a replacement for the Holocene) and the industrial revolution. A definition as vague of that smells more like marketing than science.
"the CEO in Germany steps down - right thing to do"
That's it, it was the right thing to do.
The head's taking the blame and resigning, whether or not he had been directly involved is an old tradition. It looks like Winterkorn knew that and he deserves respect for honouring it.
It makes a good deal of sense for the organisation as a whole and not just because he takes a good deal of the opprobrium with him. Taking responsibility is one of the things top management is paid for. If the senior management knows their jobs will be on the line they will not foster a culture of plausible deniability, they will want potentially serious issues passed up the line where they will then have a chance to quash them. The organisation becomes better managed as a result.
Horn seems to be trying to push responsibility down the line. It's not a good idea. He's undone some of the good that Winterkorn did by walking, he's fostering a culture of plausible deniability and he wasn't even believed.
From https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1529/assessing_adequacy_international_data_transfers.pdf
"Where the country (or territory) of origin of the information is outside the EEA it is important to remember that the DPA is not intended to provide a different level of protection for the data subjects rights than that provided by the data protection regime,if any, in the non-EEA country of origin."
"As the exporter is effectively the controller of the data they already carry that liability which would fall under the EU jurisdiction the customer and/or controller are in."
I know. The trouble is that AFAICS the Commission is now trying to throw this over the wall. The data subject is to be able to claim from the importer.
It's a big mess. As a data subject am I supposed to be bound by an agreement between my supplier and a third party? If the theory is that this is going to be covered by small print or by some 3 pixel high, pre-ticked, well-hidden box it's going to fail on the basis of unfair terms and/or lack of informed consent. The trouble is it's going to cost someone a lot in legal fees, time and trouble to take all this to court and get the precedents set. Possibly a data protection regulator with teeth is going to call BS on it in that the circumstances that invalidate safe harbour also apply to such clauses. Would that be the ICO?
"Clause 5: the data importer agrees and warrants.. that he has no reason to believe that the legislation applicable to him prevents him from fulfilling his obligations...?"
If I were a US-based data importer I don't see how I could stand over that clause in an EU court*. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
*And in my time I've written a lot of stuff I had to be able to stand over in court.
"Those who needed the Safe Harbor rather than any of the other exemptions can no longer do so, but presumably can now sue the Commission for any costs in relocating to Bulgaria or Argentina and losses during the transition that are directly attributable to not correctly implementing a directive."
How so? The safe harbour provisions pre-date the PATRIOT act which has made them invalid in the eyes of the ECJ. So if anybody is responsible for compensating anybod it must be the US govt. Good luck with that.
"That the same key reason why the ECJ ruled that the safe harbor provisions dont apply will also cover Binding Corporate Rules and Model Contract Clauses."
And it will end up back in the ECJ with a similar decision.
At the very minimum the data exporter should be liable to the EU resident, not the importer, with the case to be heard in an EU court.
I think the guy needs to understand a bit about law. Legislation is what legislatures produce - statutes. Courts interpret those to apply them to the facts of specific cases. So the ECJ's decision is not legislation. There's been no recent legislative shift. The most recent shift was in the US. It was the PATRIOT act.
What the ECJ has done is interpret existing EU law in a case in which the facts include the current state of data protection in the US in the wake of the PATRIOT act.
It should have been quite clear for several years that any time anybody took the Safe Harbour to court it would be found wanting. It's amazing it lasted so long.
If the idea is that the interface should adapt to the display/device type why did the go to the trouble of trying to build a one-size-fits-all interface for 8? Alternatively, if they realised after the reaction to 8 that this really wasn't such a good idea, why didn't they revert the desktop aspect back to what had been more widely accepted for 10? Will there be another iteration in a few years time?
"Would you want to be a witness being interrogated by a hostile lawyer, and knowing that possibly thousands of people are getting their kicks watching you?"
Having been a witness many times I agree with your sentiment. However, according to the article this only applies to the courts of appeal and supreme court. If these are anything like their UK equivalents they deal with points of law. The witness evidence has been taken in the lower courts. And if these hearings involve the likes of Prenda law they should be way more entertaining than the those lower courts.
