Re: "if the data is safe from physical compromise then it's doubly so from virtual"
Obligatory XKCD reference: https://xkcd.com/538/
716 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Nov 2012
@Ian Johnston
"For example, if I, a Briton, went to Japan there are countless ways in which I could cause offence, despite an earnest desire not to do so."
Just don't forget to take off the toilet slippers after going to the loo. In particular if you are the host of the party...
That said - people there tend to be quite forgiving to foreigners and the laws are quite liberal. If you want to be arrested for slight misbehaviour, I suppose autocratic countries are more critical. North Korea comes to mind.
Cultural context again. A joke or irony that is well understood on the right side of the pond might be an outrageous insult on the left side.
The Japanese have a word "American joke", that they use for pretty much all foreign jokes they don't get.
Beer - one of the few universal bridges over most culture gaps. ->
"if they did work they were so broken you wish they didn't."
That, and exactly that!
What is more frustrating than having your calendar messed up by multiple syncs which fail to recognize previous syncs happened and add each event over and over again.
And after deleting some of the multiple instances by hand, suddenly the sync works in the other direction, deleting your original events in the other calendar.
As bonus, let's put both calendars to different time schemes, like one is on GMT basetime + difference and the other is just set to local time. Someone from overseas sent you an invitation? Good luck syncing that one!
I suppose most people just gave up syncing their multiple calendars. I certainly did.
Emoji are originally an extension of the Japanese writing system, which seemingly didn't have enough letters, to express everything perfectly (irony alert!). So we could just go back to using the original pictograms from where their writing system originates.
Why not write everything in kanji (Chinese characters)?
A fine example that more eyes don't necessarily mean better quality. Instead people tend to click through all those nasty work-items without really giving them a glance. We had this in production as well. If you put several check stations down the line, you just end up with the line workers getting sloppy, as they know someone downstream is still checking it, while the check guys get sloppy, because there is still a station behind them and the last one in the line sleeps away, because - hey, there have been already so many check before, right?
That said, that amount of money should have rang some bells. I really wonder how someone can get casual about transfers of hundred of millions of dollars. I am definitely in the wrong line of work, it seems.
Edit: And no, I don't think 3 persons checking such a transfer is excessive. Just that adding even more people probably wouldn't help.
"Now, why would a Linux developer want to run on Windows?"
Perhaps he is missing the fun of searching for drivers on various dodgy 3rd party pages whenever he wants to use any hardware that the manufacturer cannot be bothered to support any more with Win10 drivers?
Or he is missing that nice "activation" feature?
And don't forget the blue screen! How can one live without blue screens!
Yes, I just had to set up a Windows PC because the school insists the kids have to learn Windows. I nearly forgot the hell of Windows driver S&D.
"D-Link argued that it shouldn't be on trial, since no actual customers have been harmed"
There might be a few cases where their customers threw the product against a wall and were hurt by the shards flying around. Or perhaps they vented their frustration by biting on the router and breaking off a tooth. It would be interesting what that company understands under "harm". Being hacked doesn't seem harmful enough, it seems. Or do they consider that all their customers are private suckers that have no way to prove any "harm"?
Is the mess Intel made with their atoms. There are quite a lot of tablets out there with 32 bit bios/uefi. Not to speak of the last breed of netbooks that had their 64 bit instruction set disabled. I still have one of those and it is still useful for some lightweight tasks using xubuntu.
" Alternating between sensors on alternate flights was terrible design and seems like superstition rather than science."
Actually it is the worst possible design choice. A system that fails only every second time is really difficult to diagnose and will lead to disaster just as surely than if it fails every time.
Technician 1: Hey, I think this test failed.
Technician 2: No, I think you made a mistake, try it again!
Technician 1: Oh, you are right, it is working now. Thanks!
-> Boom
that he has sentimental feelings regarding his old perl scripts. I wrote a few back in my time and still feel proud to see someone still uses them. They were written hastily after a 2 days perl training and are an ugly and inelegant hack, but somehow there is nothing that lasts longer than a good improvisation.
"Well in all fairness it's more like someone saw the handbag, got out their quantum duplicator, made an exact copy and made off with their copy, leaving the original exactly where it was before."
There are so many personal items in a handbag, that you'd be in big trouble, anyway.
Was there cash inside? Oops, you are looking for twenty years in the cooler.
For some items you can't get a permission to copy them.
Any chance we can get an Old-Fuddy-Duddy package on our vehicle that uses metal keys without computer chips and old-fashioned mechanical interlocks?
No, because a reliable mechanical keyswitch costs way more than a cheap button. And the computer chips are needed anyway to make your insurance company happy.
A few years younger, but similar story. After graduation I applied for IBM, HP and Nokia as they had development centers close to my home town and were considered prime employers at the time.
I'm so happy none of them considered me good enough. Now working happily since 20 years at another company that may not pay top dollar but has a good working climate and our HR is populated by human beings (allegedly).
Can't say I dodged the bullet. It's more like I stumbled out of the way.
If I copy all my failed clinical trial data to Borat-istan and then claim I can't say how many patients died because that would be against Borat-istan data privacy laws - you can bet the FDA is going to take a dim view.
The case is a bit different, however. It is not Google's data we are talking about. It is someone else's data that the Irish branch of Google stores for a third party.
The sensible move would be to force the data owner to hand over his data. If the owner cannot be forced for whatever reasons, then the US court should request the Irish authorities to support in this case.
The US is trying to use the market power of their multinational companies as a lever to support their policies and circumvent proper procedure.
No there isn't because the average person is too stupid to make the connection, and You Can't Fix Stupid.
Problem is - even relatively intelligent non-techie people have no clue about the risks of connected devices. They see the convenience and shrug away the risks.
On a personal note - Last week wifey bought a creepy connected talking teddy for our toddler. I told her the thing is nothing else than an unsecured bluetooth headset connecting to a dodgy app. Anyone around can connect to it. The app can probably hacked as well and the Android tablet it runs on hasn't seen a security update for the last one and a half year.
Wifey shrugged it away and meant that there is nothing interesting any listener could hear in our house, anyway. The depressing truth is - she is probably right.
Maybe I should just reserve Meeting Room A in the central building as usual.
Or just use Lync, er, Skype for Business, erm Microsoft Teams, ... oh well, whatever it is called now, as long as it is still supported. And perhaps they will finally implement a microphone gain adjustment that actually works. (See icon)
Edit: Wow - not even 30 seconds up and already the first downvote. Looks like Microsoft is using downvote bots these days. Of course if you have a solution to turn on the automatic gain control on Lync (or however you call it) I'd be really happy. Feel free to post.