Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: "repeated the same disable component, save, re-enabled component, save process"

By the time you've installed the updates it's back down again.

Re: Sometimes you do what you have to do.

A Jake Austen ending!

Re: Operating competently, Interacting appropriately, Behaving ethically and morally

"demonstrably not useful"

For some values of useful. Some people are clearly using it. What value they get is debatable.

Re: Let me see now...

"In what universe is that a basis for a lawsuit?"

One in which, amongst other things, lawyers now require payment in advance.

This, I think is the problem. He sees the users as his customers, not as his product. The tick-selling seems to confirm that.

Advertisers seem to be treated as someone along for the ride and if they don't like it they can just hitch a lift elsewhere. When even I start feeling sorry for advertisers things have got really bad.

I'd argue that self-styled greens have been responsible for a lot of the CO2 emissions over the last half century and more by opposing nuclear energy.

If it's a condition of doing business in the EU then they have a simple choice. Comply or don't do business in the EU.

Re: "Meta expected to disemploy"

In my day it was redeployed © Harold Wilson.

Re: Bit one sided

Or how long it takes for the computer assisted census to get finalised. Of course that might be needed to be able to generate several well spread-out press releases.

Re: 2023

"They made compilers before they made operating systems!"

True, I used their FORTRAN compiler for CP/M. But does anyone from those days still work there?

At a guess - they have to invite competitive tenders. A monopoly supplier doesn't have a competitor so that wouldn't be a competitive tender.

A former colleague did some work with DWP. His simple comment? "Not the sharpest knives in the box."

Re: How do you stop?

Motion blur?

Re: It's all somebody else's fault

" It's the harm, abuse and criminal behaviour that happens behind closed smartphone apps that is, with the tech firms carefully and mathematically provably looking the other way whilst it happens."

The smartphone apps are simply a way of criminals communicating, not of being criminals in the first place. They're criminals. They're already intent on breaking laws. It's sheer folly to believe that you'll inhibit them from breaking laws by either giving them more laws to break by installing illicit apps or do more than inconvenience them by making then communicate by other means.

With that, the lack of upside out of the way, let's look at the downside.

The criminals are in the minority. It's maybe difficult for those whose job it is to investigate crime to get their heads round* but it is so. The majority of app users are not only innocent but have a right and a need to communicate securely. People not only have things to hide, they have things which they are obliged to hide. If you don't believe me look at the T&Cs that you happily clicked through when setting up some perfectly legitimate online service - such as your bank. If you don't find a requirement to keep your password secure somebody has been negligent; but that, of course, is just a trivial example.

If you use a smartphone for work any such traffic is likely to be commercial in confidence at the very least. For someone like my daughter, working in clinical trials that's also a trivial aspect; her communications will very likely have information which concerns patients' personal and medical information covered by a slew of regulatory and statutory restrictions. The data may also affect the sales prospects of her company's clients' products and therefore their stock prices and so is also subject to financial regulatory concerns. Oh, and jI forgot to mention, not only does she have to communicate with the actual medics looking after the trial subjects, her employers are multi-national and almost 100% remote working so online communication is the very foundation on which their biusiness operates. Of course her company's communications need security - it would be stupid to think otherwise. And yet it's proposed to make it impossible to give them the legal protection that legal requirements demand.

And similar concerns apply more widely. Now go back and re-evaluate your communications security needs. They might not be exactly the same as my daughter's but they're likely to be there, might be equivalent and you'll certainly not need to look very far to find others to whom secure communication is essential for their legitimate employment.

That's why tech firms are "carefully and mathematically provably looking the other way". They have to.

* Very many years ago that was my job and even today I will sometimes look at something and realise how it might be a scam, or could be used for one.

Re: They've tried calling me before

" I still don't get any tech-themed scam calls. It is weird to be disappointed by not having criminals calling."

The only one I got was one I found on the missed calls list. As you say, disappointed.

Re: It's how they fix potholes that makes them bigger.

Variation:

1. Council tar & chips entire road, potholes and all, sealing bottoms of all potholes

2. Eventually council fills potholes with asphalt.

3. Water gets underneath asphalt but can't get through the tar seal

4. Water freezes, loosens asphalt which is then worn away

5. Council does it's usual thing: nothong

Re: ACR - I used that. It's one of the few (2) apps I actually paid for.

There are limits to what you can do with those recordings, although if you make all parties aware beforehand ("This call may be recorded for Training & Monitoring purposes...")

I suppose those whose calls the OP would want to record would already have made that announcement so just make sure that's included in your own recording.

Re: "We can't undo the damage that has been done."

The trouble with this is that there are many, many postmasters, etc, who were eaffected and so many in government have decided that compensation is "not affordable", so just say some fine words, theatrically wring hands and delay until most of them are dead or burned out.

Have they? Why should the government decide what is and isn't affordable for Fujitsu? It should be a simple decision for Fujitsu - if they want more government business then they have to be able to afford it, including compound interest.

Re: Got to love capitalism: saddle the acquisition with the debt

"can the subsidiary break away from the parent without the parent being able to intervene?"

ARM China seems to have done something very much like that.