Posts by Just Enough 746 posts • joined 4 Jul 2014
I don't care much if they don't understand it. Just as long as they have taken guidance from those qualified to understand it. MPs cannot be expected to be experts in all fields.
It's once they start to reckon they know it all and "have had enough with experts" that the trouble starts.
I can't imagine why Boris & Dom would want to delay. They, and their backers, are gagging for Brexit chaos because it'll provide cover for no end of "adjustments" to laws to suit themselves. Tweak to tax legislation here, little snip to employment rights there.. .. Just temporary, you understand, until everything is stable again. It's very important that millionaire investors are confident they can still make money, and equally important that workers work harder. Sacrifices have to be made for the good of the country.
However, you are right about Dom spinning it to their followers. If they'll buy "checking my eyesight", they'll buy any old bullshit.
Yes. Let's give Facebook a justification for their current tracking and an excuse for expanding it. That couldn't possibly be abused in the future because of their past rigorous record of observing personal privacy and data regulations.
If there is one organisation I'm less likely to permit tracking me than the Government, it's Facebook.
"only hiring attractive women"
I am offended by your assumption that there is a universal measure of attractiveness. What what you, I, any of GitLab's customers, or their interviewers, might consider attractive differs. It is therefore impossible to make it a basis of a selection process. You are insulting all those alternatively-attractive, because they don't conform to your received norm of attractiveness. Please withdraw this statement immediately.
You've also managed to insult every existing GitLab saleperson by suggesting that they were hired based on their appearance and not on their sales acumen. Please withdraw this statement immediately.
Avoiding possibly insulting someone is hard if people are going to pick apart your every word, and decided they're going to be offended on someone else's behalf, isn't it?
There comes a point in any email where you have to stop worrying who you might be inadvertently excluding. If you're non-binary, should you feel offended by not being mentioned or considered in this email? Well not any more than amputees, both those without fingers and/or feet, those with a high tolerance for heat, those suffering hot flushes, those with a phobia about emails, those who do not drink alcohol, those who have strict dietary restriction that make social functions a minefield, those socially anxious who hate functions, those who are house bound and cannot attend, and those who must return to their kidney dialysis on Tuesday evenings. All of these individuals are totally ignored, without a second's consideration, by this email.
All these people are different from most others. They know they are different. Sometimes that sucks. But they don't demand that the rest of us must forever look out for instances where we are not acknowledging they are different. Otherwise it would become almost impossible to say/write anything without constant caveats and qualifications.
Please note that when I write "say", I mean to communicate in some form, and am in no way excluding those of the mute community or those who, through personal belief, choose to not speak. And when I write "write", it is not my intent to exclude those who are illiterate.
It's the same story as IT audits. Make sure there's something obvious for the auditors to find, and report on. Preferably something you've already told your boss about months ago. If the auditors don't find something to report, they're liable to inflate something irrelevant into an issue that they can report on. The last thing they want is to have nothing to report on, and nothing to justify their fees.
However, I'd hate anyone to think that this tale is just another example of Y2K panic where nothing happened. Nothing happened because a lot of time and effort went into ensuring it didn't.
Use a script blocker. Globally block, as a matter of course, the google and facebook scripts running on all websites. Otherwise you may as well be browsing with them peering over your shoulder, taking notes.
Ten years ago, people would have reckoned your tinfoil hat was on if you did this. But their presence and surveillance all over the internet is insidious.
"blame the users for not doing their security training"
Where's it say they did that? The reference to the lack of security training was from a 2018 audit, before the hack, and is a perfectly legitimate point for a security audit to make, among a number of others.
"Why am I not surprised?"
Because you didn't read what was said or didn't follow it.
"include freedom of movement as part of the deal and it will be business as usual"
This will not happen, simply because it will be the UK, as usual, wanting the benefits of the EU without the obligations. The other members of the EU are not idiots. You want to be a member of their club? Then you pay your membership fee and follow the rules like everyone else.
"high calibre engineers, scientists and doctors from around the world"
What makes you think high calibre people are interested in coming to a country that is busy cutting its own throat and is amply demonstrating that foreigners are not welcomed? What makes you think they are not already welcomed in practically any other country in the world?
Alas, a lot of action TV and film now has fallen to the curse of "giving the characters emotional, relatable depth". This means there is no dire situation our heroes can find themselves in where it is not appropriate to stop and discuss their domestic and personal problems and, most importantly, how this makes them feel. Fortunately the bad guys and impeding doom they face have the decency to stop shooting/impeding while this discussion occurs. Yes, they're trying to kill you, but there's simply no excuse for oppressing someone's right to free emotional expression.
My advice to your clients is get the advice of a IT professional who takes security more seriously. An exploit will definitely be found at some point in the future that is not esoteric and difficult. It will be automated, requiring no effort on the part of those distributing it. No one will care whether your clients are a high value target or not, they will worry about this after they are infected/compromised/hijacked.
Meanwhile, expect companies to stop releasing Windows 7 compatible software. Expect their Windows 7 applications to stop getting security patches. This includes manufacturers of anti-virus.
The only hope those who want to stick to Windows 7 have is that they become such a small user-base, that virus writers stop bothering with them. That isn't going to happen over-night, and as of tomorrow they'll be making themselves increasingly vulnerable targets.
"Banging your fingers on a desk will cause RSI and make arthritis worse"
So don't bang your fingers. I doubt the force you hit the desk with plays any part in the keyboard working.
I am reminded of touch typists I've worked with, who learnt on typewriters. You sometimes had to politely point out that they didn't have to hammer computer keyboards to make them work.
So the lesson here is everyone is a threat, no-one is above suspicion. Anyone could be a ISIS sympathiser, a communist, a terrorist. Close the borders, detain everyone, search them, ignore their rights. We must all live in fear and surveillance.
All this must happen, otherwise the terrorists have won. (And Donald may not get re-elected.)
I used to love Asimov as a teenager, but as I got older I became more conscious of his flaws that largely spoiled his work.
His dialogue is clunky for a start. He has an annoying habit of illustrating his points and ideas repeatedly. So you often find characters explaining things to you at exhausting length, yet again, when all the time you were wishing they'd just get on with things. And his characters inter-relationships never sounded real. Just people talking at each other. He also couldn't write female characters for toffee.
There's no doubt he was a genius writer and visionary, but I find reading him frustrating now.
It's almost a certainty that our great grand children will find aspects of today's behaviour appalling, just as we find aspects of our great grand parent's. And it won't necessarily be the obvious ones that we may already have our suspicions about (e.g. use of fossil fuel, plastic disposal, meat consumption), it'll be things we currently consider entirely innocent.
Equally, there'll be things they get up to that would shock us.
And yet every generation still believes itself to be the pinnacle of righteousness, set aside from the indefensible behaviour of the past.
"it got a copy of the information with a promise from the crooks"
And if there's one thing you can count on, it's a promise from crooks.
I can't fathom why people still treat data leaks as if they're like theft of something physical. You can't "retrieve" your data. It's gone. It's out there, anywhere. And unless the crooks deleted your copy when they took it, and you have no backups, "retrieving" the data is a totally pointless operation, other than as proof they have it, and still have it. Which is not something you need to pay for. The crooks are happy to send you as many copies of the data as you need to prove they have it.
I wish The Register would stop writing articles about NHS England that presume that what it's doing applies to all of the UK.
NHS England does not have the data of 65 million Brits to sell. I appreciate the very real concerns highlighted, but if you are going to head your story with something that is so factually incorrect, displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of what NHS England is, don't you think it casts a shadow on the accuracy of the rest of the story?
"stop trying to pass them off as things which they aren't"
Have you ever mistakenly eaten one, when you thought it was the other? Didn't think so.
If you find that your delicate taste buds, or fragile carnivore virility, are threatened by the very idea of mistakenly eating a vegetarian product, I suggest you look at the labelling on them. Vegetarian products almost always go out of their way to make it clear they are vegetarian, because it's important to vegetarians.
There is nothing in the etymology of "burger" that stops a burger being veggie. And the term "milk" has long been used to describe liquids of all sorts with a milky appearance. The regulation used to limit these words to certain products of the dairy industry is a transparent case of big-business using law to protect their market from new comers.
Never forget that, no matter what they may say, large companies don't particularly care for free market economics. They'd much prefer monopolies. And if legislators can be bought to provide them...
The second last paragraph on this article puzzles me.
If 70-80% of Americans believe net neutrality is a good idea, why do Democrats need to 'persuade themselves' it's a vote winner? It seems an obvious choice. And why do they need 'cover' from those who 'genuinely' think net neutrality is needed? What makes their enthusiasm for it not genuine? Even if they personally don't care, does not the fact that most voters do care mean that they are merely doing the job they were elected to do? Why should this need 'cover'?
It's the Republicans that need to justify their position, not the Democrats. They have enforced a policy that the vast majority of Americans disagree with, all the while pocketing vast amounts of money from cable business. Yes, the issue has become divided on party lines when it shouldn't be, but that's because one party has pursued a blatantly corrupt policy. Of course they should be called out on it. Repeatedly.
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