Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: "a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

And especially if the PFY can make acceptable tea.

Re: "Make re-identification of de-identified data illegal"

And the Act also allows for personal penalties. How many of those have you heard of. Things need to be moved on: personal, not just corporate, jeopardy needs to become the norm.

Re: No....Not Really a "Straightforward Soution"....

None of the examples in the article falls into that category. However the concentration of data that the likes of Equifax accumulate could also be regarded in the same way. When a business holding that much data guards it so badly there should be personal penalties for senior management. It might take a few prominent cases of CEOs or board members jailed but not too many. Management needs to be put into thinking along the lines of "This stuff could be dangerous to me ".

Re: The article said it best.

"in this case I'm talking about data collected from participants with informed consent and ethical approval."

Which is a different matter if it's still being use within the scope of the original consent, even if there are multiple research partners.

"without any apparent sense of irony"

Not a problem. One of the requirements for working in BT is the ability to suspend disbelief (or alternatively, to suppress disgust - I failed at both).

Dammit. I never thought of that line. I'd just say "Could you hold the line a minute." If I'd thought to encourage them like that I could have probably kept them on another 40 minutes. Mind you they did ring back to say they'd lost the connection ...

A lot of would be exporters into the EU are now discovering the hard way how red tape works. Previously they weren't really exporting, just selling into a part of their home market that happened to have a bit of water in the way. Now they're really trying to export and it's more complicated than they thought, especially when it's some sort of agricultural product.

Re: Less than one character per week

"How long will it take to fix this issue?"

If I knew that I'd have fixed it already.

Re: In my experience...

"a cost-saving exercise (of the sort that always costs more in the long run,...)"

But for James it would have been a money making exercise.

Re: "he worked out the coding of the lock file [..] and updated the lock himself

AFAIK he'd paid for the package. The support contract was being sold on as an extra.

I'm quite used to the situation where a package is sold and a support contract is optional but selling a support contract and trying to lock the customer out if they don't keep paying is taking the piss in my view.

There were some interesting features to the S/W:

- It was supposed to be based on Informix. Some Informix tools were supplied for reporting but it wasn't written in it for reasons which became apparent.

- They included some files with .sql suffixes which were supposed to be the DDL to set up the database. They weren't even SQL although possibly their S/W would read them to add some tables. They didn't comprise the full set.

- They provided a bcheck* program to check the database. The supplied Informix package also provided bcheck. The bchecks were different. Either would complain there were "errors" if the alternative bcheck had been run first. The DB was OK, it was just that the two products were setting a flag or label differently.

- There were the usual Informix system tables which included indexes. It became clear that the system they provided couldn't have run efficiently with just the indexes listed. When I needed extras for reports I was writing I investigated further with bcheck and discovered that there were indeed more indexes, they just hadn't told Informix's sysindexes about them. Clearly they'd set up the database with some other tools and copied in the Informix system catalogs from a rather less fully featured database to keep the Informix tools more or less happy. I hacked sysindexes with SQL to add in some of the missing entries.

I'm pretty sure that what they'd done was use a C-ISAM package** of which there were a few - possibly even a FOSS one - to write the software, marketed it as being based on Informix and sold some Informix tools along with it although they didn't have a chance of working as well as they might. On the whole I think it balanced out as six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I've often wondered if it was the same crowd who flogged a warehousing system to my ex employers about the time I was being eased out. Some time previously we'd proposed adding warehousing to the existing stock and SOP system - it only needed a couple of extra tables to describe the racking an the additional screens to support it. That had been turned down. Some crowd claimed to be offering an Informix-based system running on VMS sold them a free-standing warehouse system. I knew very well that there wasn't Informix on VMS; we'd been one of the guinea pigs when such a thing was attempted and abandoned. They countered that by claiming to have the database source code It must have been the same thing - an application built on a C-ISAM package. At least I was out of it before I had to cope with trying to keep two separate systems giving their views on stock levels.

* bcheck was a diagnostic for the b-tree indexes.

** Informix Standard Engine, even in its pre-SQL version was based on a C-ISAM package of their own (AFAIK) devising.

Re: Diamonds simultaneously are/are not a girls best friend

It'll work and simultaneously not work. You'll only know if it worked if you got the right answer.

"By European standards the Dem party would still be regarded as Centre Right."

Only centre?

Re: Embarrassing Photos

Monkey? Richard Whitely would have seen your monkey and a still photographer and raised you a ferret on TV.

Re: my reading was that this is some jobsworth...

It's not an erroneous CC, it's a legally binding notice. The fact that it's possible to send out such a notice in this way doesn't make it any less legally binding. If you look at the PDFs they have a facsimile of s signature on them.

It would be well for those permitting their signature to to be used in this way to consider the safeguards they require - perhaps documents should require their personal release. (I've worked on a system that not only send out such "signed" documents. I was a sub contractor to the sub contractor to one of the usual suspects to whom the entire operation had been contracted out. OTOH I don't think the "signed" documents in this case carried the same legal weight.)

Re: Jeez.

They're official notices giving or withholding permission to do things which have large amounts of money depending on them. So much so that there are frequent casual allegations of corruption surrounding them - any thread dealing with local govt. here is apt to include a few - and I have memories of at leas one scandal that became national news. This is serious stuff. It's not somebody ordering a gross of boxes of paperclips instead of a box of a gross.

Re: This seems like a real legal loophole

The PDFs in the article are of notices sent to the applicants with the relevant official's signature on them. From the point of view of the recipient of an apparently official notice it should be assumed that it won't be rescinded as a mistake at some future date. The incorporation of nonsense in an official notice isn't a reliable indicator that it wasn't meant.

Re: This seems like a real legal loophole

"Judicial review seems like a slightly oversize hammer"

What alternative do you suggest, bearing in mind that the alternative has to work in circumstances where a reversal could meet legal challenges from interested parties?

Re: This seems like a real legal loophole

Anyone automating a legal decision-making process needs to consider that getting the design wrong can have legal consequences.

Re: Out of curiosity ...

I don't know about the justices concerned but I'm sure all the Oz politicians will have. Expect legislation soon although, as Gareth says, it'll be left laid around as a common law precedent to be quoted elsewhere.