* Posts by Intractable Potsherd

4159 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Intractable Potsherd

Re: First step, tell them to fire security

My favourite joke ever*:

Noah's current descendant on Earth has a visitation from god, who tells him that he has a task for him. "I want you to build me an ark". "OK, " says NCDoE, "do you want it built to the same specs as last time?"

"No, this time I want it to have twenty decks", said god.

"Hmmmm, okay, but it isn't going to be easy. How long do I have?"

"Six months."

NCDoE gulps. "That's going to be hard! Do you want the same two-by-two accommodation?"

"No, just twenty decks" replied god.

"Fine, I'll get to work."

Six months later, god appears again to NCDoE. "Have you done as I commanded?"

Exhausted, NCDoE replied, "Yes - I just put the last nails in the roof. Do you want me to launch it now?"

"No", said god. "I want you to fill every deck with water and then put goldfish in it."

Surprised, NCDoE, agreed.

A few days later, god appeared to see the results. "Are you happy, Lord? Twenty decks populated by goldfish as you commanded."

"Yes", replied god. "You can take it all down now."

"What? Isn't there going to be a great flood?"

"Oh, no!" laughed god.

"Then why?" said a somewhat pissed off NCDoE

"Oh, it's just that I fancied having a multi-storey carp ark..."

*I'm laughing as I write it!

This is a sett-up! Mum catches badger feasting on contents of freezer

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Catflaps - let's drag this back to IT...

I can't think of a catflap on the market that would stand up to a determined badger. They are incredibly strong creatures, and the relatively flimsy bits of plastic would quickly succumb to their claws.

It's 50 years to the day since Apollo 10 blasted off: America's lunar landing 'dress rehearsal'

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Grit

I am far from a moon-landing denier - the evidence is there in so many ways - but I can see why some people doubt it. It is little things like how the dust falls after being kicked up by the LRV (looks very similar to how it falls here on Earth, even down to the speed) and the way the strap behaves on the LRV winch (it falls and wiggles very much like it would on Earth). These things set up a dissonance with what is expected *based on movie special effects*, even though they have been explained elsewhere.

I don't know how old MrReal is, but I suspect that he isn't old enough to have been around for the Apollo missions - he wouldn't have any doubt if he had been. The crowds at take-offs couldn't have been faked, and they would have smeeled a rat if anything was off, for example.

Dedicated techie risks life and limb to locate office conference phone hiding under newspaper

Intractable Potsherd

Re: ALL my calls from shouty men

"I have a reputation for being exceptionally calm when others are loosing their heads (with the odd emotional outburst when I am getting overwhelmed). Most of the time it's because I haven't picked up the subtle social cues that this is an absolute catastrophe and everyone around me is damned near losing their minds from panic."

Hah, yes! I have always been baffled by my reputation for having" gravitas" (something a lot of people have both said and written in references etc). I think people are confusing it with "cluelessness" :-)

Intractable Potsherd

Re: ALL my calls from shouty men

I have some problems with social interaction (just received a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder yesterday - and I'm closer to 60 than 50!), and one of the things I have trouble with is recognising anger. Shouting=angry, not shouting=not angry as far as I'm concerned (and that applies to any shouting - probably one of the reasons I don't like football). This has led to some difficult situations where I didn't know I was being bollocked until some time afterwards...

Polygraph knows all: You've been using our user feedback form

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Who actually wrote that?!?

I've noticed similarities between Alistair's and Verity's writing styles before today. Have they ever been seen in the same room at the same time?

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Race to the bottom.@cosymart

You are part of the problem in society at the moment. You think that people should self-censor for trivial reasons, which leads to a miserable life for everyone.

Freed whistleblower Chelsea Manning back in jail for refusing to testify before secret grand jury

Intractable Potsherd

Re: What happened to the 'right to silence'?

It is utterly bizarre that people can be forced to act as a witness in preliminary investigatory proceedings (for that is what a Grand Jury is), on pain of prosecution.

C'mon, UK networks! Poor sods have 'paid' for their contract phones a few times over... Tell 'em about good deals

Intractable Potsherd

Could you give the model of that phone, please? I have developed some health problems which have made a fall detector something useful, and I'm just at the beginning of my research.

Wine? No, posh noshery in high spirits despite giving away £4,500 bottle of Bordeaux

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Did this actually happen?

Or the customer didn't actually know what s/he was ordering, and just accepted what was presented.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: De gustibus non est disputandum

Sorry - it has just got too much. The correct word is "palate", not "palette". I haven't noticed a correct spelling in this entire thread, and I just have to speak out!

Let's check in with our friends in England and, oh good, bloke fined after hiding face from police mug-recog cam

Intractable Potsherd

Re: What the heck

Well, he is The Vogon. You know, "Resistance is useless", and awful poetry. Perfectly consistent, really.

Tesla driver killed after smashing into truck had just enabled Autopilot – US crash watchdog

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Autopilot and driver's attention

I know people who think that is more or less what happens - not the booze part, but that the flight-deck crew go off-duty between take-off and landing.

There are a lot more people than you think who regard "autopilot" as being "automatic pilot". Think of how the word is used in common parlance... it is synonymous with "not paying attention".

Banhammer Republic: Trump declares national emergency, starts ball rolling to boot Huawei out of ALL US networks

Intractable Potsherd

Re: "Unacceptable risk", eh? - let me guess

What - something like a union of countries that have a long history of commonality, such as those in Europe?

As if!

/s

Supreme Court says secret UK spy court's judgments can be overruled after all

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Seriously?

Lord Carnwath also said, obiter*, that he doesn't think that the rule of law makes such that no ouster clause would never be allowed to stand if it purported to exclude review on the grounds of error of law, no matter how well-crafted the section in the Act, regardless of the supposed supremacy of Parliament. This accords with what my public law lecturers taught me back in the day, and it seems incontrovertible to me. The courts do stand against abuse of Parliamentary power, and for the rule of law.

* "obiter dicta" is the name for things the judge says that are not part of the actual logic of the decision ("ratio decidendi"). Comments made obiter can be very powerful in the future, so Lord Carnwath was drawing a line in the sand with regard to future cases of this type.

Timely Trump tariffs tax tech totally: 25 per cent levy on modems, fiber optics, networking gear, semiconductors…

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Diplomacy Speech

"The USA should not subject itself to any legal entity other than our own Constitution."

So why is your country so insistent on denying other countries the right to do the same?

"Treaties and trade deals are agreements, not laws."

Ultimately, laws are simply agreements between the population and the government. The difference is that the government can and will routinely use violence against those accused of breaking laws. The only difference between that and treaties and trade deals is that the other party usually has some ability to inflict violence back.

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Thank you Andrew

I sometimes agreed with you, Andrew, but not always. I remember a few years ai when you responded personally by email to a comment I'd made - I was surprised and touched that you had read my comment.

I'll be following you on Twatter to see what is next in line for you.

Home Office cops an earful for emergency network feck-ups - £3bn overbudget and 3 years late

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Shambolic

I think you missed /s from the end if your post, YAAC :-)

US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Bit of a blunt argument Sir!

In general, if Thatcher would have been for it, most people* should be against it, and vice versa. The woman was the single worst thing to happen to this country post WW2, and her legacy led directly to Blair.

*I.e. People with a social conscience, i.e. not Tories.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: He's right.

Is there any chance you can give reasons for your assertion? I'm willing to learn...

UK is 'not a surveillance state' insists minister defending police face recog tech

Intractable Potsherd

Re: GDPR?

Much as I love the idea, you are overly optimistic in assuming that we will be allowed to "develop a more representative democracy". One of the reasons I am against leaving the EU is that it has given this country the closest thing to a written, enforceable constitution in its history. There is no way we are going to get that again any time this millennium, so all the talk about "taking back control" really just... talk.

Daddy, are we there yet? How Mrs Gates got Bill to drive the kids to school

Intractable Potsherd

Re: I must admit, I rarely if ever drove my kids to school

Minor pedant mode - half a mile is closer to 1km than 500 metres (805 metres, to the nearest significant figure).

Hands off Brock! EFF pleads with Google not to kill its Privacy Badger with its Manifest destiny

Intractable Potsherd

Re: "and all but the most privacy-conscious users would uninstall the extensions"

Google's astroturfers seem to be active! No arguments given as to why the change is better, just bluster and ad hominems...

Defense against the Darknet, or how to accessorize to defeat video surveillance

Intractable Potsherd

Had that happen several times while psychiatric nursing - patients in seclusion using poop to cover the spy-holes in the door. It guaranteed that we would have to go in because we couldn't see the patient. Personally, I never blamed the patient for doing it - put me in a seclusion room (low stimulus with unseen people looking at me secretly) , and, if I wasn't mad before, I soon would be.

Canadian woman fined for not holding escalator handrail finally reaches the top after 10 years

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Seems discriminatory

Thank you, Def! I thought that it was just desperately annoying. Now I know that it is desperately annoying with a purpose!

Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Fuschia

... and led/lead!

Supreme Court of UK gives Morrisons the go-ahead for mega data leak liability appeal

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Thinking about it...it's a tough one

The trouble is, it waters down personal responsibility. In your Root Cause Analysis, the individual is invisible - it is always somebody else's fault. The real reasons why somebody did something that led to bad things might be absutely nothing to do with the work environment. In this case, the Root Cause was that a person took a decision to screw over his colleagues because he'd been disciplined.

Intractable Potsherd

That is a good suggestion. Of course, the thief will never again have a job that will have significant earnings so nothing will accrue to Morrisons, but it will mean that his life is endlessly miserable, with no way out of his financial hole.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: An interesting case, Watson !

Being held liable *is* a form of punishment. It has measurable financial and reputational effects, whether it is a minor RTA or a major incident.

(I don't know why I am so caught up in this! My sympathies are entirely with the people whose data was stolen, but it just seems inequitable to make an employer liable for the loss caused by a malicious actor if (and only if) the employer followed best practice at the time.)

Intractable Potsherd

I don't agree. Whilst large companies might be able to absorb mass damages, small companies could end up going to the wall - it has happened in the past.

I am fully aware that criminal and civil aspects are separate, and I have no comment on the criminal aspects of the case. I *do*, however, think that vicarious liability is a poor tool for dealing with situations where a malicious actor deliberately does something that couldn't reasonably be mitigated against*.

*Note that I don't know whether Morrisons security met with best practice - I haven't read anything either way.

Intractable Potsherd

I fully agree - I don't know if the insurance busuness has this type of policy (yet), but it looks as if there will soon be a market for it. The question is, would anyone trust commercial interests to be properly covered, or do we need personal cover?

Intractable Potsherd

There is a saying that we learn early in law school - "hard cases make bad law". Whilst the saying is overused, I have always taken it to refer to a case that will set a precedent that can reasonably be foreseen to be abused regardless of the decision. This is one such situation - either it will make companies more exposed to harm, or it will leave uninvolved others vulnerable. Whilst I have not had a great deal to do with commercial law since I was an undergraduate some 20 years ago, I do know that, in cases of tort, the availability of insurance is often the deciding factor, so the CoA were simply following previous precedent.

Intractable Potsherd

Part of the problem is that, if vicarious liability goes too far, a disgruntled employee could do something that will bring down the entire company due to inability to afford the damages. This could be worth risking/going to prison for, in some people's minds. There has to be some level of reasonableness in the test - as an extreme example, consider a zero-day exploit that the disgruntled employee knows about, but againt which there is currently no defence: it would be unjust to hold the company liable in this instance. Best - not bleeding edge - practice should be the guiding principle for whether the company had the proper safeguards in place - security, as we know, is a trade-off against convenience.

Loose Women woman's IR35 win deals another high-profile blow to UK taxman's grip on rules

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Everything

The problem is the existence of political parties. They reduce, not increase, democracy. Anyone who is a party candidate has loyalty first to him/herself, then the party, and only then (possibly) to the electorate, and then maybe the country.

Part of it is laziness on the part of the electorate - they don't have to do anything other than support the donkey in the appropriately coloured rosette, regardless of actual policies or performance.

Any serious proposal for change should involve making political parties illegal - anyone who wants to be elected has to be independent.

Either Facebook is building yet another massive bit barn in Iowa, and doesn't want you to know about it....

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Yet another reason to use a shell company

Are there any morally good reasons for the existence of shell companies? It strikes me that the world would be a much better, and more honest, place without them.

Kent bloke incurs the anchor of local council after fly-tipping boat

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Keelhaul him!

"waterboatism", Shirley?

New UK counter-terror laws come into force today – watch those clicks, people. You see, terrorist propag... NOOO! Alexa ignore us!

Intractable Potsherd

Re: What are they trying to prevent - instant brainwash?

Three downvotes at the time of posting? Why?? There is nothing particularly controversial, let alone wrong, about what EricM posted...

Client-attorney privilege? Not when you're accused of leaking Vault 7 CIA code

Intractable Potsherd

"Its from what I can tell standard ops when you have a trial the deals with classified material as evidence."

Well, it shouldn't be. "Innocent unless proven guilty by a court of law" is the basis of the common-law judicial system. The prosecution has to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. This cannot be done if the prosecution is hiding evidence from the defence team.* We should all be very concerned that anything, even "national security" , is allowed to trump the basis on which the judicial system is based, since it could happen to any of us.

* That doesn't mean that other safeguards, such as hearings in camera, can't be used, though sparingly. Justice not seen to be done isn't justice.

Telly production biz films maternity clinic, doesn't tell patients, gets fined £120,000

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Am I an Insensitive Arse?

Yes, it is. The tragedy is that the people paid to care about patients going through a traumatic experience did nothing (as far as can be seen) to prevent the unscrupulous bastards from the media doing this.

Intractable Potsherd

If this sort of intrusion into clinical spaces was to be done for research purposes, the team would have to go through rigorous procedures, including getting approval from a properly constituted Research Ethics Committee. To get approval, things like the information given to potential participants, and what would happen if there was a refusal would be scrutinised closely. It disgusts me that, because it is a media operation, rather than a research one, no-one thought about the ethics implications - but then, that seems to be the default for doctors and hospital managers these days.

BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Wot, no TITSUP?

@doublelayer - that's the winner today!! Bravo :-)

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

Intractable Potsherd

Re: You should have been sacked

"When will manglement and (more important) HR ever learn that degrees are worthless without experience, while experience even without degrees has an enormous value."

There aren't enough up votes in the world for this!! Thank you.

Frontline workers urged to help stop UK.gov automating data slurps for immigration checks

Intractable Potsherd

@Doc Syntax

Anecdote isn't evidence, but I know some folk who work in frontline positions in the UK immigration service in a Yorkshire city. Some were very anti-immigrant before they started, the others weren't (on the spectrum between indifferent to pro-immigration). The latter group are now at least as vehemently anti-immigration as the former, to the extent that I have moved them from "friend" to "acquaintance".

You don't need a PhD to phish a Brit university: Nonprofit claims 100% hit rate is easy peasy

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Nothing to See Here ... Move Right Along Please .... NOT

Nice use of the interrobang, AMfM! It is a shame that native Earthlings don't use it more often...

Fortune favours the Brave: Privacy browser chap takes gripes over adtech body's website to Irish data watchdog

Intractable Potsherd

Re: The next target ...

@Throatwarbler - I think you might have missed a "Whoosh" whilst warbling...

UK's data protection watchdog preps to 'get its hands dirty' with beta of regulatory sandbox

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Realities

That's all very true, but the fault doesn't lay with the ICO, but with its funder - the government. It is fairly clear that the government wants none of these regulators to achieve anything, otherwise they would be properly funded.

I also think that any regulatory body should have a means for people to pre-check new developments - not because of "innovation", but to educate and to say to people in breach "You had the chance to check beforehand". Big sticks are okay, but yelling "Gotcha" and beating people up without warning is not justice.

Brit founder of Windows leaks website BuildFeed, infosec bod spared jail over Microsoft hack

Intractable Potsherd

"The two should be serving 15 to 20 in hard time prison."

Why??? There is no particular harm done. Are you another one of those people who think that simply breaking a law should bring down the maximum sentence? If so, you are wrong - context matters.

"Pandering to the feral never turns out well. Just ask France."

Is that some thinly veiled reference to it being unwise to give Muslims human rights? If so, you know that you are not a nice person, don't you?

Google plonks right-wing think tanker and defence drone mogul on AI ethics advisory board

Intractable Potsherd

Re: "a shiny-happy PR op"

The problem is the starting point, i.e. the complete focus on profit. This is unethical - not "making a profit", necessarily, but being focused on nothing else. Once that has become the mindset, then nothing truly ethical can ever come out of such a company since there is nothing it won't do to make more money. Alphabet are just putting lipstick on a turd. However, a balanced ethics committee always has as broad a range of opinions as can be managed, so there is some small hope that it will be somewhat effective.

VP Mike Pence: I want Americans back on the Moon by 2024 (or before the Chinese get there)

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Let's please not do another "We have to beat (insert name of communist nation) to the moon!"

According to Canon, we need another world war before Zefram Cochrane does his stuff. At the current rate, this is going to be sometime in the next 50 to 100 years (Cochrane, not the war - we're getting closer each day, I fear)

Altered carbon: Boffins automate DNA storage with decent density – but lousy latency

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Sounds bit 'pure science'

Up vote for the sneaky RAH reference!