Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: Well that ruling has a timespan of about 30 days in the UK

As things stand Parliament has passed a law that the UK will not leave on October 31st without an agreement including the continued observation of GDPR.

Re: That was nice

Parameters are particularly susceptible to interception which is why this kind of session handling has been frowned upon for years.

Re: That was nice

How's this supposed to work with a stateless protocol like http? The cookie is required to map browser requests to the server session.

Re: That was nice

The ruling is quite clear: consent must be explicitly given so such messages are invalid. This shouldn't really surprise any once as it has consistently been the position of the courts.

However, GDPR is currently being revised and it wouldn't surprise me if some cookies become legitimate without consent as long as there is a list of them with their purpose and lifespan. It's not as if this hard to do, though I've seen multiple, ahem, "developers" fail to provide a correct list and explantion of a website's cookies. Note, that failure to do this correctly could go beyond GDPR and enter the realms of fraud.

The notice that somehow the BBC News homepage is better when you're logged in is, indeed, pretty Orwellian. The Charter almost explicitly mandates against this because the desire is to provide a universal service.

Re: Why is it even an issue on SE?

I am a moderator but I don't have time for it, which tells us all we need to know about crowd-sourced moderation. My time is devoted to answering questions on my software.

I like SE. I have found lots of usual information on it and I hope I've helped others and I think that the software gets a lot of things right that other forums have failed and the credit system isn't completely flawed.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of crap there.

Re: Is this just an English thing ?

If you think our social constructions (girls wear pink, boys wear blue, for example) are biological

I don't, which is why I didn't say it.: those are roles. FWIW pink used to be considered the male colour.

As someone else has pointed out, it can be helpful to use "sex" for biology and "gender" for grammar, but I did point out that the two should not to be considered the same, though they are generally correlated for animals in many languages.

But I don't agree that gender can be self-assigned and I'm not at all a fan of the attempt to normalise sex-change medicine. I won't necessarily go out of my way to point this out.

But by and large, I find these CoCs are little more than a conscience-salving by an IT industry that has allowed itself to be cowed by some well-organised lobbying and American tort law. And it's always easier to sign up to a CoC than actually do anything significantly different.

Re: Is this just an English thing ?

They to refer to unspecified individuals has been used for hundreds of years. Gender is a fact of biology that will survive any linguistic fashions. It's not the same as sexual orientation and distinct from any grammatical representation. The rules for any particular language are arrived at by consensus of the speakers, which means that changes by diktat are rarely successful for anything other than spelling, because the speakers have an innate sense of what is right or wrong for the language.

Re: Email?

In general, you're absolutely right: state-issued identities are really useful in many situations as they largely solve the problem of trust.

But, I think the problem is that some of the implementations are leaky, because they are supposed to be used for things other than simply signing documents electronically. Unfortunately, I think we have to assume that if there is opportunity to collect metadata (party A signs an agreement with party B) then the opportunity will be used and the data at some point will be exploited.

In the UK, of course, this would never be open to government abuse as the service would be awarded to the biggest donor cheapest contractor most reliable contractor (oxymoron when it comes to IT outsourcing).

Re: Email?

S/MIME is not considered to be that good, which is why in many goverment sanctioned situations, it's not acceptable.

PGP is a better approach but suffers from the problem of all decentralised systems: who do you trust? Though, it's not as if CAs haven't been compromised in the past.

Re: Email?

In this case I would expect examination of the headers to be important than a signature. Most UK companies should be using TLS in which provenance can be established.

The wording of the e-mail makes fairly unequivocal reference to agreement and does not look like an invitation to treat or to solicit an enhanced offer.

Re: "while working on Rupert Murdoch's organ."

He was sacked for working at The Times when he could no longer cover up the shit he was making up. Of course, it's exactly the same kind of shit that The Telegraph laps up, which is why, even as Prime Minister, who might be considered to have more important things to do, he continues to be paid to write opinion pieces.

Re: Not coping well with Brexit

An interesting and almost certainly an accurate comment, but at the risk of finding myself with a bulk delivery of downvotes do you apply this comment to both sides of the Brexit debate or perhaps just the "leave" side?

In 2016, it was definitely the Leave campaign that saw the opportunity and ran with it. There was never really much of a positive, emotional campaign to stay. This wasn't helped because the various parties with an official position of staying saw little political advantage in working together and the two largest (Conservative and Labour) had large, vociferous minorities that wanted to leave. So the Remain campaign was lacklustre and focussed on economic assessments. I think the idea was to repeat the election campaign of 2015. As the referendum loomed there was more stick, with some overblown claims about the economic consequences (unknowable because the form of leaving was unknown).

As for ad hominem: Cameron was an idiot for not following up on his speech on becoming leader of the party and standing up to the anti-EU fringe and eventually caving in; Corbyn was unconvinced and hence unconvincing, he really doesn't seem to care what Britain's relationship is with Europe as long his great socialist dream comes to fruition; but Bojo is an entitled and self-serving arse who saw an opportunity for personal glory.

For me, with parents who remember the Second World War, the overriding argument for the EU is the peace that it has brought members, including eventually Northern Ireland. There are plenty of others but it's a good place to start.

Re: When to move abroad

You should remember that the UK joined the EEC in the 1970s largely to insulate itself from the effects of globalisation. The UK also drove ideas like trade liberalisation and financial deregultion. The first hit low-skilled manual labour in the manufacturing sector particularly hard, the second made it easier to move money, and hence production offshore, which is the main reason why British Coal collapsed. The UK was also an enthusiastic backer of EU expansion.

But even the low-paid have been net beneficiaries of EU membership. Workers from over the EU came to the UK to do jobs that Brits couldn't or wouldn't do – there was negligible job displacement – which was essential for agriculture and the NHS. Tax receipts also far outweigh and current and future claims (pensions, healthcare).

But for around 20 years many people have seen their standard of living stagnate or decline, and it's not surprising that in an era of change, people saw the agents of change as the cause. This was helped by opportunistic and scrupleless politicians blaming the EU for anything unpopular. It wasn't the EU that caused BSE and it wasn't the EU that introduced zero-hour contracts, or the banks to collapse, all of which can be traced to lax British regulation and oversight.

But if I could point to a single thing, apart from the condescesion in the face of indignation, it was Germany's decision in 2015 to break EU law and open the borders to migrants. This decision, independent of any moral arguments (I think Cameron's idea of taking people directly from camps had more merit and is probably what we will eventually do), gave populists throughout the EU the argument they needed to point the finger and fan the flames of discontent.

Re: Not coping well with Brexit

Maybe, but people choose what they want to believe and so often it's the snake oil salesmen, because they tell them what they want to hear. Getting rid of Johnny Foreigner and leaving the EU will put food on table and help their football team win the league.

We need to outsmart the liars.

Re: Not coping well with Brexit

Best deal would be to stay in the Single Market and Customs Union.

But parliament didn't screw anything up, it just did its job. The executive fucked things up by making incompatible promises and trying to sideline parliament, even after the Supreme Court told it that it couldn't.

Re: Not coping well with Brexit

Actually, the chances of a recession everywhere are increasing. Here in Germany, the number of companies who've put people on short time is up to 6% with quite a few more expecting it in the next few months. It turns out that loose monetary policy doesn't help at all when companies don't want to invest.

As for the government keeping it's promises: well, Bojo has already lied to the electorate multiple times; he's lied to parliament and now we find he's lied to the Queen. I wonder if he's prepared to lie to the electorate again?

#LockHimUp.

I found out the other day that my S10e has Dex. Cue HDMI adapter and foldable keyboard and you have, to intent and purpose a desktop, including MS Office if you want.

Kind of disappointing to see Google putting less support into this, so go Samsung!

Re: Damning...

For starters, Parliament _isn't_ sovereign. The sovereign is.

Lady Hale and the rest of the Supreme Court would beg to differ as they made precisely this point in their judgement, which is now de facto law.

The Glorious Revolution and the Act of Union, amongst other laws, effectively put an end to the sovereignty of the Sovereign. Otherwise, why would the Queen be more or less obliged to accept the advice of the government?

Re: Damning...

While I do not believe prorogation was the democratic way forward, the precedent of involving the legal system to resolve a constitutional matter will likely cause issues in the future as the Government no longer has the final say

Lots of other countries have government decisions (and even laws) overruled the courts. In fact, it's a critical aspect of the separation of powers. Otherwise, as the Supreme Court argued, the government can decide it's had enough of parliamentary scrutiny. That door has now been firmly closed: the executive made a power grab and failed. Not only that but the attempt was ruled unlawful: do it again and criminal proceedings could be initiated. More unchartered territory but that's what the much-vaunted UK constitution is supposed to be good at dealing with.

Personally, I'd like to see Bojo done for Contempt or Parliament and Corbyn be sent down for being a waste of time. Then we might actually see some stuff being done.

Osborne to be the next Tory leader?

We now have a lame duck government, but not parliament, ie. the government is forthwith wholly accountable and dependent upon parliament and Bojo can either resign, can his bluster or beheld in contempt of parliament and be led off to the Tower of London. The Supreme Court has just confirmed the sovereignty of parliament. I suspect that there is already a motion to take control of the agenda tomorrow and presumably to use the powers of the fixed terms act to look at selecting a caretaker government.

The patience of the other 27 member states isn't boundless, but there is also no desire among them for the UK to leave without a negotiated settlement. The terms of the last extension explicitly stated that future extensions might be granted but only if there was a substantial chance of them leading anywhere, including the chance of any deal being approved by parliament.

Bojo blew it, and now we'll get to see that all his brinkmanship was just showmanship. Time for someone else, who can find a majority in parliament by including it in the process, to take over.

But not if it's your only point. Actually, the argument got even worse afterwards when they admitted that all business of parliament also went under the wheels of the clown car.

Turns out, it wasn't cheese they were selling but bleached sewage.

The court didn't make that judgement. It said the government didn't even bother to provide a reason for stopping parliament doing its job.

This is parliament taking back control. Isn't that what this was all supposed to be about? Note, no need to appeal to the European courts over this either.

I agree with you, but only in that Parliament should have charge of the negotiations. That will make passing any deal (or revoking Article 50) much easier.

All court cases are retroactive, but laws are generally (there are a few exceptions) not applied retroactively. Blair, unfortunately, was not found to have acted unlawfully. And, beause he kept his majority in Parliament, it wouldn't have mattered that much if he had been.

What it tells us, is what many have been saying for a while: that the government was getting bad legal advice because it was partial. They should have kept Dominc Grieve as AG but he wouldn't tell them what they wanted to hear.

May wanted to sideline parliament in the negotiations and got told that she couldn't.

Bojo tried to pull a fast one and is quite likely to end up personally in court.

Re: #Sarcasm?

So who were Leave taking back our Sovereignty from?

The serfs, of course!