Posts by Sir Runcible Spoon 5770 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
Remember, some requests are impossible because they are contradictory rather than actually impossible.
For example, I want to be able to access the company's secure document area from anywhere in the world, from any device without having to log in, but it also has to be secure from everyone else.
Or: I want you to put a back door into your encryption process that only I, and a couple of hundred other government departments, can use.
""We do not publicly disclose our prosecution policy in relation to specific offences as to do so may allow offenders to adapt or restrict their behaviour to conduct which falls short of our prosecution threshold.""
Fucking what??
So, by that logic, you wouldn't publicize the policy on prosecuting murder because people might then know how to avoid murdering people?
Very Kafkaesque.
Fortunately these days I tick a couple more boxes as I am bald/ginger and northern.
I never thought I'd see those attributes mentioned in the same sentence as the word 'fortunately'. The world is indeed a very strange place :P
Also: Bald & ginger? Do you get your pubes out at interviews then or what?
I'm surprised they didn't go the other way and reduce the men's salaries. They would have cut costs and then issued bonuses all around the board.
That's an interesting thought exercise.
I predict the more qualified would move on, leaving the men who would struggle to get employment elsewhere behind.
If we are to assume the women have the same kind of skill distribution as the men (equal skills) with the same percentage of those skills throughout their ranks, then there would now theoretically be more qualified women in the company than men.
These women could then push for pay raises* as they now stand out as being the best the company has. At which point the men would be (on average) lower salaries than the women. Role reversal.
*I don't think this is the only way it could play out, just thinking out loud. For example, I don't believe women get as many pay raises as men (in general) because they don't push as hard for them. This also applies to the men who aren't daring/confident enough to risk losing their job because they pushed for too much.
Since most of the people I know who work in IT are generally of the honest, outspoken, persuasion, then people who self-censor are not going to fit in well.
Perhaps that's why they are under-represented in IT? It might also explain why there are so few politicians who understand technology.
I wonder what happens to the system when a company has struck the correct 'balance' between all the various groups and end up having to turn qualified people away just because they would end up with too many of one particular group.
At the moment that seems to be what's happening to white, hetro, males. What will the headlines be when that happens to a 'homosexual, gender-transposed, person of colour foreign national, with beliefs in one particular view of how the world is run who is also short and fat*'?
*I'm adding height and weight in here too as they'll be next on the list. Do we/should we add ginger hair to the list? HHmm..tricky one that.
"The fun begins on p52"
Check this bit out..
18 U.S.C. §7. Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction of theUnited States
The term “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States”, as used in this title,
includes:
<snip>
(4) Any island, rock, or key containing deposits of guano, which may, at the discretion of the
President, be considered as appertaining to the United States
So by that logic, as the UK is an island and there is definitely guano here, then at the discretion of the US President he can deem the UK as a US Maritime jurisdiction.
US Law is a violation of all that is good in this world.
If he was selling to France and the rest of Europe, why the hell did he supply anyone in the US?
If he hadn't done that he wouldn't have committed a crime in the US (I know this doesn't mean his details wouldn't have been passed back to Interpol etc.)
edit: after re-reading the article it doesn't state the US investigators ordered anything from this guy at all - so not sure what laws he's broken in the US?
"You can be upset all you like, but it comes down to common sense"
Remind me again how many times this guy was stopped? Whilst you are at it, perhaps you could point out where they *ever* found anything incriminating. He's a human rights advocate and he is being bullied by the state, and you think complaining about that is griping?
When they come for you no-one will speak up.
When creating your dummy image, ensure to associate common file-types with explorer.exe
Also, use KeePass and keep the database file in the cloud or at home (where they would need a warrant to get it) or basically somewhere where you have to phone someone to access it for you to give you the extremely long and impossible to remember password.
we're cutting rates by 10% and/or changing your contract terms effective immediately. Agree by 5 PM or pack your stuff and go
Whilst no-one is indispensable, there are definitely people who make a difference to the bottom line of the company. Applying this kind of approach across the board is very dangerous as it creates a trigger point.
A trigger point for a contractor is pretty much the same as a renewal situation - you are either happy with the terms or you bugger off somewhere else. If you have in-demand skills then something like that is likely to raise warning flags about future behavior.
A company did try that with me once, 10% pay cut for all contractors etc. I used the opportunity to negotiate a 10% rise in my day rate :)
Another time a company decided to amend all the notice periods for all contracts. As this was just before Christmas it came as a bit of a shock to see a contract termination notice in my inbox. Needless to say they were surprised when they presented the updated contract and I told them they had the rate wrong :) That one resulted in a 12.5% increase.
"After the change, despite taking more responsibility for no extra salary, I was dropped back into the middle tier pot "
That's because you'd already set the expectation quite high. You can't exceed expectations if they are always expecting more. It's just a con (as you are obviously well aware).
All company systems/guidelines/policies, whatever, first and foremost have to *serve* the business.
I've seen many large companies struggle to keep their agility because they become so reliant on their policies and procedures that they are followed to the letter. People inherit these guidelines who might not really understand them (and how to change them for the better if the company or circumstances change) and the result is a 'computer says no' type of mentality that cripples the business.
It should be simple. If the process is no longer serving the business, then it is the process that needs to be updated (rather than forcing the business to follow the process).
I'm not an expert in this area, but rootkits etc. might be able to fool the system (and thus the monitoring) on the system it has infected, but it still leaves traces. It talks to C&C devices, processor usage doesn't always match process usage of CPU (although that could be fudged as well I suppose if they're really clever).
One of you security layers needs to be able to analyse traffic from all the hosts on the network and spot anomalies*.
Each layer you can add makes the type of malware capable of bypassing *all* of them pretty rare. Never rely on one layer to tell you what's going on. Security is like Ogres :)
*This can also be fudged by well written malware of course.
Nearly sounding like an end-user there! Let's do this properly. Submit an RFC as a non-standard change for CAB consideration, raise SRs as required on the back of that. Wait for six weeks. Send an email wondering where the change went. Wait three more weeks. Give up
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAArrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....thump.
You pretty much just described my day. I come to El Reg to take my mind *off* work you sod :P
"Obligatory request for Pterry icon."Seconded, again.
Since you mention it, I think it is high time we started a campaign. Haven't had one in ages!
Rather than overtaxing the El Reg staffers though, perhaps we could propose some kind of 'unsung genius' icon that could also apply to Douglas Adams?
There are several icons that are hardly ever used - just re-purpose those - how hard can it be?
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