"Your humble vulture"
Vultures humble? Surely not.
33002 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"you still haven't done anything that addresses the problem which is that it is 1) a profitable and low risk form of crime and 2) leaving servers unpatched is cost effective. Change that balance and the problem goes away."
I haven't done anything to stop it? You are the one that's complaining about a mechanism to stop it. If you go back, look what I suggested and have a little think about it you'll realise that it makes patching servers cost effective. Keep the server patched and you don't have a problem, leave it unpatched and you do.
Where's your suggestion to change the balance? Something slightly more severe than a slap on the wrist? Probably still cheaper that paying a good admin to keep an eye on things.
The suggestion that "next week it will be something else" is pure fantasy on your part. What was suggested would need legislation. Legislation does not get changed to "something else" in a week nor does it get changed easily.
And you still haven't said whether you prefer the authorities to break into the system to remediate which was what the article was about.
"A company wants to publish information embarrassing to the government de jour"
The issue is malware. I think you're stretching the definition of malware a little more than warranted to include publishing information embarrassing to the government.
The alternative being posited was for the authorities to step in invasively to fix servers. Do you prefer that?
A better option would be the power to instruct the operators (the business owners, not the techies) to take it off-line forthwith until it's rectified. Add a backup power to tell the operator's ISP to remove internet connection if a response isn't forthcoming. Such a power would cover DDOS botnet members and the like. The downside is that it would give ammo to the "This is Microsoft" outfits but they need to be dealt with in any case.
I turned down a client wanting me to go permie as development manager. I don't think they realised how close I was to their mandatory retirement age and in any case one reason for being freelance is to continue in tech roles instead of following a career path into management.
Having said that it was the development manager they hired who finally persuaded me that retirement would be better than working with his complete lack of understanding of development or management. Thank goodness!
"not to have to buy your own tools for the job."
Back in the days of developing or supporting database applications on Unix servers this wasn't necessary - the tools were all there. In other situations buying/having the tools can be your USP:
Early in 2000 I was slumming on Windows whilst minding a new Y2K Unix box that was capable of looking after itself. My client received a new contract. It required this new, shiny XML stuff of which they'd no experience - and neither had I. As a freelance I could make instant decisions that would have taken them weeks about buying both training and the requisite tools for the job if they were prepared to give me a contract for their new contract. They did so I did and then they had a similar contract and another... They eventually caught up but it was a good investment on my part.
"The paramilitaries in NI will use any situation to justify violence and boost their criminal activities."
For a long time they've been denied that opportunity but BoJo has handed them that one.
To some extent PSNI seem to have been handed the dirty end of the stick. it's a variation on the owing the bank money situation: you break COVID restrictions; you have a problem, 2000 people break COVID restrictions, the police have a problem. However, you're right in that the politicians who went to the funeral have to shoulder some of the blame.
"You may have realised that the British government has put potential future trade with the US which is thousands of miles away above real actual trade and social stability with one of its own countries in its own union."
And failed because Biden is pro-peace process so isn't likely to be impressed by the mess that's developing.
The UK biomedical community start putting together a scheme to get the Oxford vaccine manufactured before government in either the UK or the EU got their act together. For better or worse HMG insisted on AZ when they got involved which is turning out to be a mixed blessing for them (AZ).
It's not possible to determine whether things would have been better or worse here than in the EU if had been left to HMG alone but it would have been worse than has happened, at least as regards vaccination.
"No it didnt. Germany started negotiating against the EU for vaccine. Other members going off and buying from Russia and China which is the very competition you say was avoided."
And yet we wanted to take back control so we wouldn't be bound by the EU in exactly the way Germany and the others aren't.
Yes there's a problem with inept politicians but the EU doesn't have a monopoly on that as numerous other countries have demonstrated, including our own with Track & Trace. We got lucky with vaccination largely because of the actions of the UK biomedical community.
If you look carefully you'll see the EU nations flapping about doing their own thing to a large extent and, were we still in the EU, we'd also have had that option.
Where we got lucky was that the local biomedical community got together and presented the govt. with a fait accompli comprising the basics of a vaccination programme. Where we got unlucky was old mates being put in charge of Track and Trace and I doubt any lingering influence of the EU can be blamed for that.
Just make the USPTO responsible for everyone's costs in the event of a patent being invalidated. It might take a few payouts by them before they cottoned on to the need to sort themselves out but it would quickly result in fewer but better patents being granted. By collecting fees without financial risk they're incentivised to choose quantity over quality.
I find this odd looking at it from a UK perspective although admittedly my experience is with criminal courts. The jury is the tribunal of fact. An appeal will consider if the original trial jury was misdirected about the evidence in front of it, including errors about the admissibility of evidence, but won't make further findings of fact unless new evidence has been unearthed since the trial. Evidence of FRAND known to the defence at the time of the original trial wouldn't, on that basis, be considered new. I suppose this arrangement allows the lawyers to milk the system but it seems to be a system ripe for reform.
OTOH if not raising FRAND in the original trial was to Apple's advantage why didn't PanOptis' raise it?
"That resulted in Meg getting a ton of employee negativity from anyone with history there. The more history, often the more negativity. It doesn't take to much employee survey demographics to show that the most negative comments came from those that were older and more years with the company."
Let's translate that. The more experienced the worker the more able to see what was wrong with the company. If Meg was being logical her next step should have been obvious: take advantage of that experience by listening to it and acting on what she heard.
Far from the logical solution you suggest this appears to be a classic case of managers who insist on being told what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.
"The company will consider all of its options on appeal."
A good option is to realise you lost & are going to continue losing and issue a statement that it was all down to a former manager who is no longer with the business. After all,the number of people no longer with IBM's business makes it entirely credible.
And does that require an actual date of birth as opposed to over x years old? ANd why not cite it as part of the request?
It's an interesting situation. US federal law may require them to ask some minimal question. I'm damned if I can see any US law applying to me, here, which compels me to answer.
"It's students who are about to submit which are at the biggest risk, unless they've followed the advice of their university library SMEs in both letter and spirit."
After KCL immolated their storage without assistance from any malware TPTB were very insistent that in future users should rely on the very services they'd just banjaxed rather than keep their own copies.