Posts by Doctor Syntax

"I want to save data and I want to save it now. I dont want to define a new row with int or VARCHAR or define how large the table can be."

Don't we all? But the rest or us want to be able to find it again and to have it consistent when we find it, especially if multiple people are saving related data. We also have multiple people wanting to access the same data.

However there's always the much under-rated cardfile.exe which may do just what you want.

"In practical terms, can I say to Vodafone that I don't want to deal with your India call centre?"

India would need to show itself to be GDPR compliant.

"The poster seemed to be suggesting that anyone over 50 is less likely to have been exposed to IT technology - not that their age made them less competent generally. That seems reasonable."

Even if we disregard earlier stuff such as the Apple II, Trash-80 etc, someone aged 50 this year would have been ~14 when the IBM PC was introduced. And I know people born in the '20s & '30s who can find their way round PCs (and have worked out how to download Open- or LibreOffice because that's what they use).

" I remember people of my parents' generation born round the start of the 20th century who had never adjusted to an understanding of electricity or radio."

That would be the same as the older members of my parents' generation. I never met any of my aunts, uncles or their friends who had the slightest unfamiliarity with either.

Re: the Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves

"the judge in criminal trials normally instructs the jurors that they may not infer either guilt or innocence from a defendant's failure to testify."

Juries have been known to ignore the judge's instructions.

Re: Already incriminated by a witness.

"On the other hand, they don't care how many pictures he showed to his sister, but how many are on his drive."

It could be that they've been deleted in which case there are none although it would then be unlikely that he'd withhold the password if he did remember it.

"Even if it was considered proven that there are pictures on the drive, for _correct_ sentencing you would need to know how many exactly. And these photos come from somewhere, so they might help the police catching the distributor."

If they were more concerned to catch the distributor - well, the USA is the land of the plea bargain.

Re: Actual case aside

"BUT, and this is the key thing, regardless of whether that evidence is sufficient to convict the defendant or not, it doesn't somehow provide justification to remove the defendant's Fifth Amendment rights."

I'm not saying it would. Quite the contrary in effect as if there's eye-witness evidence to convict then the whole argument about passwords is irrelevant.

Re: Court fail

"Judges are partly to blame for this -- they are typically over the age of 50, have a limited understanding of technology"

This is just ageist bollocks. I'm over the age of 70. I've been using computers for nearly 50 of those years starting with FORTRAN about 1970. I know a few 80-90 year old friends and family who use computers regularly. I wonder how old you are and what understanding you have of the law or, come to that, of those older than yourself.

Re: To be honest...

"which is keyed into a fingerprint"

An injury to the finger could be a problem.

Re: Actual case aside

"So how do we know she's not making it up? There's no evidence to prove that what she's saying is true."

A sworn statement by her would be evidence. There's no indication in the article as to whether she made one.

Re: Actual case aside

"evidence in a safe - you have no right at all to keep that evidence unknown to the police if they have a search warrant"

Opening a safe doesn't require a key (or combination if that applies). The only advantage of having it is that you're able to re-use the safe.

Combination locks raises another issue. Surely there are precedents for this. They should apply to passwords.

Re: so Desperation

"Eloquently put"

What was?

Re: @AC Isn't it their job?

"Trump may be right, however you, I and everyone here will be long dead before the truth sees the light of day, if ever."

Unless someone gives it to Wikileaks.

"If that kind of thing needs to be written down for people to actually think to do it, then we're in trouble."

That's ISO9000 and friends for you. They're bureaucracy standards which are intended to replace thinking so the least skilled or intelligent people you can recruit will be able to follow them.

"Linux and BSD has been running merrily on ARM since the last century."

And making little headway into the data centre where the hardware has remained dominated by Intel.

To save you reading the article again let me explain. The hardware has remained dominated by Intel because there was a standard configuration built around the Intel processors so that there was a generic platform for OS vendors to target. All that time ARM devices were wrapped up in a host of different platforms so the builds required customisation. That was not what DC operators wanted.

Re: SBSA is the real threat to Intel.

"in the consumer space Android has pretty much beaten Linux off because most consumers don't really relish the idea of customising the software on their TV. "

So how do you explain the fact that consumers really relish the idea of customising their Android (based version of Linux) software on their phones?

Re: Long overdue

"It should be can we trust Westminster politicians more than Brussels ones? I do, if only because they have more skin in the game when an election comes around."

Then how do you explain the IP Act and its predecessors such as DRIPA?

Re: Totalitarianism

"Viral? Network effect? Fragmentation?"

Network effect.

Re: Long overdue

"post-Brexit... can't see the UK government having either the balls or the clout of the EU to walk-the-talk as Germany is doing here..."

Maybe the current govt might well take an anti-regulation stance. Past UK govts, however have had the reputation of gold-plating some EU regulation - although not in the field of data protection.

Re: Long overdue

I'm sure Facebook et al will have a whole raft of "technical" reasons why it can't be done in 24 hours, but will probably claim they can do it 7 days.

And if the German govt called their bluff and tell them it's 24 hours or fines I'm sure Facebook would find a whole raft of technical reasons that enabled them to do in in 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.

"In fact any entity that uses tax avoidance should be banned from supplying any government department right down to councils."

You mean they shouldn't award contracts to companies that have pension schemes because pension schemes avoid tax that would otherwise be paid on the contributions?

Please go away and learn the difference between avoidance and evasion.

Re: Idiot Husband?

"He took the precaution of making a temporary, off-site backup to prevent data loss. Not a bad thing to do, I use free tools do do similar."

If I were making a backup whilst doing an upgrade I'd plug in a USB disk. I like to keep my data where I can see it. If there was a need for keeping the backup off-site I could simple unplug said disk and take it offside.

Re: Even more than meets the eye

"BTW, how *does* one properly quote in these forums?"

Simple way. See what I did above.

Fancier way. Look at what you did. Replace the word "quote" by the word "em".

Re: Even more than meets the eye

"Was this because of lax IT security awareness in the chambers she was a member of, or other reasons."

I wonder how many jobbing barristers outside London are based in chambers. Maybe, like a lot of other professionals these days, they work from home. In that case a home PC (or maybe a home NAS) and a laptop carrying today's cases wouldn't be an unreasonable combination. But, as others have said, how on Earth did the husband find a backup service that was open to the net?

Re: Husband

It seems to have passed notice that the barrister's spouse IT support had access to the confidential work information. That's not a accident, but gross incompetence.

Imagine if a GP's spouse IT support had full access to the GP's medical records.

Does that put it in terms which might be more familiar to el Reg's readership? Unless we expect everyone dealing with confidential material to be able to provide their own IT support it's a problem that doesn't go away.

Re: Top Tips For Barristers...

"I also find myself wondering if barristers - being largely if not wholly self - employed - are also required to be Data Controllers as defined in the DPA."

Read the ICO's PDF linked from TFA.

Re: Online backup?

"I wonder how they caught her? Did some client's names appear in a Google search?"

Reading the linked PDF that appears to have been the case.

Re: Online backup?

In the case of data like this UnShed storage would be better. Got to keep it separate from everything else.

Re: Why store them on a shared computer in the first place?

"More interesting than the barrister's name would be the backup system's name."

Definitely.

Re: Why store them on a shared computer in the first place?

"I don't see why she would store those files on a shared machine in the first place, was she not issued a laptop from her organization? Or if they are completely independent, do they not have the money to buy a cheap laptop?"

Hmmm. Let's look at it differently. Let's think what might happen if she'd used only a laptop and had files of >700 people on it. Let's say that laptop was reported stolen. My guess is that we'd then have a Crazy Operations Guy saying "Why did she have them all on the laptop? Couldn't she have used a separate computer to keep the files on and just kept the ones she needed at the time on the laptop?".

Re: £1,000 fine

"even senior barristers can struggle to push through £100k a year"

Back in the '70s & '80s the senior criminal barristers in NI were reputed to be making £250k a year. I'm not sure of the evidence for this, however.