Posts by Doctor Syntax 33045 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
This morning it was working well. It clearly wasn't put together by the usual crowd. The only annoying thing was that with the longer pages trying to navigate down a list of radio buttons to the Save and Continue button by down arrows flipped the selection down to the next box.
I've got one like that. A childless couple took in the husband's nephew. In a society of small farms and no welfare society except the parish poor relief or, later, the workhouse, a family depended on the next generation to take over the load. Sometimes it was a middle or younger son. The deal seems to have been that that son would be the one who inherited the farm; older son(s) would marry and be set up with their own farm. I've even seen a will which mentioned an indenture which seemed likely to have been a formal agreement on those lines. It can show up as a late marriage. That happened with my 5x great-grandfather's family where one son remained unmarried until the father died (and then married very soon after) although even younger sons had married. Sometimes it went wrong. Same 5x ggfather's only younger brother was clearly the intended as the successor but died a few months before 6x ggfather. The vicar's Latin inscription in the burial register showed that even he was upset by the turn of events.
Any one used to dealing with historic census returns learns to treat the answers with a degree of caution. It's not unusual to find a couple in their 50s or 60s with daughters aged about 30 and 2. I also recall one family who lived on the canals who were always, it seems, born wherever it was they were moored at the time of the census. And the 1841 census has a 5 year old Queen Caroline.
Responses on other official documentation can be equally misleading. I recently came across one man who declared himself as "Gentleman" on his marriage register but three years later was a gamekeeper.
"Although misinformation is nothing new, the topic gained prominence in 2016 after the US Presidential Election and the UK's Brexit referendum, during which entirely fabricated stories (presented as legitimate news) received wide distribution via social media,"
Yes, entirely fabricated stories presented as legitimate news happened well before that in whatever paper BoJo was writing for at the time.
authorities have quickly moved to rule out free speech as a defence.
The DoJ’s announcement features a canned quote from Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman, to the effect that: “Stealing credentials and data, and publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech–it is theft and fraud”.
I'm not sure an AG's view, Acting or not, counts as ruling out a defence. That's the judge's prerogative.
I read the same thing yesterday in a review of the latest KDE Plasma. So long as they haven't broken the alternative cascading menus it'll be OK, otherwise I'm not looking forward to it landing in a distro I use. Why do UI developers insist on fixing what isn't broken and leave the irritants in place? (In KDE's case, restore the ability to specify using just the corner to unhide a panel that was removed in KDE 4.)
"Let's assume a particular market sector of "subject to the GDPR"; because how are you controlling and securing data access if your letting home users store the data on their personal equipment?"
How do you control the salesman who has all his contacts written down in his private notebook "just in case"? Because that is also as much a potential breach of GDPR as having it on a personal laptop or personal phone. Data is data whatever its physical representation.
"The shoemaker's children and all that..."
Alternatively, "Eating your own dog-food". This might be the service they provide to customers. If the manglement can't see what's wrong with the service they provide to themselves they're not going to see what's wrong with the service they sell.
If I wanted. But it's not how email should work by default, is it? It's style over substance marketroids and the like who made HTML email a thing. A better solution would be to bounce it all and let the offenders learn. There is absolutely no reason why email should be sent in HTML. None.
It sounds as if your IT is either outsourced or lining itself up to be outsourced whether it intends that or not. In-house IT staff, and especially manglement, need to realise that it's what the rest of the company does that pays their wages and that it's in their own interests to make sure that they support that fully.
An IT department that's so disconnected that it might as well be in India is likely to find itself out on the street and replaced by one that is in India. Getting out of the the office/cubes and going to talk to some of the users is a Good Idea.
Macs and mail! I occasionally receive emails which appear to be blank or allegedly include images which I can't see. Then I realise they're from Mac or iGadget users and have defaulted to sending HTML mail that's partly or entirely invisible to a mail client that's set up to be secure, i.e. expect plain text.
The clue's in the article: "The current contractor has acquired the intellectual property and know-how to maintain and develop the system over the last 15 years to reflect the varying requirements of the NICS departments and their associated bodies."
"And companies still want to flog their wares"
So why do they persist in pissing off potential customers by shoving unwanted ads in those potential customers' faces?
Actually I know some of the answers to that. 1. The advertising industry is very good at selling adverts to punters, especially those who think they're such special snowflakes that the populace will actually want those ads shoved in their faces. 2. The advertising industry has willing collaborators in marketing departments whose status is determined by their advertising budget (or vice versa).
I suppose there's a grin of truth in what he says. If the company isn't being run in accordance with company law then the relevant govt. body, Companies House might take an interest. Of course the exact nature of that interest could depend on whose actions are responsible for it not being run in accordance with company law.
It raises the usual questions about top management:
Do they believe what they say?
Do they believe we'll believe what they say?
Do they think we won't care even when we don't believe what they say?
Do they care whether we care when we don't believe what they say?
None of the alternatives show them up in a good light but I've never been able to determine which is the case given that the only external evidence is that they keep spouting bollocks that only an idiot would believe.
What may well give rise to suspicion is running an expensive service and providing modified equipment. But to go further than that needs evidence of conspiracy. Offering over-priced goods and services is not in itself a criminal conspiracy. Were it otherwise I'm sure we could all think of many businesses both inside and outside the IT industry who'd be in line for prosecution.
The question here is whether they have evidence of a conspiracy or does the US system allow indictment on suspicion alone as well as allowing indictment of someone who's not even within their jurisdiction?
"Do you understand the difference between assumption and fact?"
Do you? Let's start with some of the basics. Everyone is assumed to be innocent until proved guilty by due process of law.
Do you think that rule exists to protect the guilty? If so, you're wrong. It exists to protect the innocent. If you set it aside then we're all at risk.
You may argue that it makes it hard work to proceed against criminals. I know, I was one of those working hard at it. Nevertheless, that's the way it should be.
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