Total times CCTV coverage in the UK has been abused in some Orwellian circle-jerk fantasy like people are always warning it is:
Really? That's interesting because another forum I'm a member of happens to have someone who's likely to lose his job tomorrow because a store manager handed over CCTV footage in breach of the law.
Granted, what I'm saying is third-hand anecdotal evidence on a website like/. so it's probably not something you want to take as gospel truth - but perhaps if anyone else knows of similar examples it might illustrate that CCTV, like all tools, is open to abuse.
Those who take backups seriously and those who've never experienced data loss.
If you're lucky, the data loss you experience won't in the big scheme of things be particularly important. If you're unlucky - well, articles like this get written about you.
You're absolutely right but a large number of people on/. will argue "buy a bunch of 1TB disks and backup onto those", without thinking about how you actually go about using all those disks, or how you account for the fact that most disk connectors simply aren't designed for daily swapping, or how most disk controllers aren't really designed for swapping (unless it's to remove a faulty drive), or how you either need an atomic snapshot of the filesystem before you can copy the files that the database consists of or you need to ask the database to dump its data, or how an atomic snapshot of the filesystem doesn't necessarily guarantee that the database on it is in a consistent state with the default installation of at least one DBMS I can think of or any one of a hundred little things which are what separates a competent systems admin from someone who's playing computers.
Are these documents actually intended to be followed and how technical do you want to get exactly? Who's going to follow them? Why would they want to?
Because if the answer is "we'd like to be able (in theory at least) to hand over all network troubleshooting to the marketing department" and you have a complicated network, your documentation is going to include a reprint of an entire CCNA course - and possibly the CCNE as well.
The solution we use is a wiki and a few rules of thumb - such as "if your procedure is more than a page or two long including screenshots or diagrams, it's too complicated to expect someone to reliably follow it. Make it simpler (with scripting and automation if necessary) and document the simple procedure".
But if faced with accepting a refund for a £100 piece of software or going to court and - if losing - setting a huge precedent - which do you think the retailer's going to choose?
You're incorrect - you cannot get a refund on software that has been opened from most stores.
This is where there's a massive loophole in current practice, which software houses are happily taking advantage of.
Software house: "Return product for a refund" (Unwritten bit) "If the store won't give you a refund that's between you and them. Nothing to do with us".
Store: "We won't give refunds on opened software (excepting your statutory rights)". (Your statutory rights cover if the software had a glaring defect - certainly under UK law you could probably get a refund if a card game reformatted your PC. "I don't like some part of it" isn't covered by these rights.)
I believe its because terms cant be forced on the user after the sale has been made.
This, I imagine, is why most boxed software has a sticky label on the flap stating that the product is sold according to the terms and conditions laid down by the EULA and if you don't like it, return the product to your vendor for a refund.
Though it still seems to me rather silly that you can't make an intelligent decision regarding whether or not you like it until you've read the EULA - which means you've got to break the seal, which means your retailer won't take it back....
It should be abundantly clear by now that if there were no piracy, industries which depend on copyright law (eg. commercial software houses, RIAA, MPAA) would be forced to invent it.
It follows that if piracy were to disappear overnight through nothing more than a lack of desire to pirate anything, something which could be made illegal would still be blamed for declining sales.
I've only ever seen two nokia charger types on phones made this century, and my new phone came with an adapter for the old charger, as well as a new charger, so I'm pretty pleased with them. But miniUSB would rock.
Right now there is the small connector and the larger, older connector for Nokia.
But the larger connector has in the past been used with phones that required a different charger - different voltage/current specs.
... for any application that assumes sizeof(time_t) is 32 bits.
Not that I'd expect that to be the case with any half-decent intelligently written application. But we all know how common applications which are neither half-decent nor intelligently written are...
It's a little different in this case for a number of reasons.
This system was paid for by the taxpayer and sold to the taxpayer on all sorts of spurious grounds. With DVD and Blu-Ray, people can decide not to buy and the investment is lost - and if you object to R&D a company is carrying out right now, you can avoid funding it by not buying one of their products.
With ID cards, you can't just write to HMRC and say "I won't be paying £100 worth of my taxes this year because they're going on a project I don't approve of" (much as many of us would love to).
Now we find out this system won't achieve anything because organisations that might want to use it (eg. police, benefits offices) are expected to pay for readers separately out of their own budgets and this wasn't accounted for.
Nobody would actually be so naive to claim that GIMP is a legitimate and complete open source alternative for Photoshop for a design firm at this point in time? Right?
I don't think anyone is. A few people are repeating the open source mantra but few have specifically mentioned the Gimp so far.
I spent hours Googling and got nothing but a bunch of snarky MVPs saying "it may or may not be possible but in any case I'm sure as hell not going to tell you how".
A single bitch on/. and I've got all the documentation one could want.
And people say that you need to do this in order to get anywhere on Linux?!
With Vista, there's no (official, at least) way to disable UAC except by a user actively going to Control Panel and disabling it.
This breaks a lot of things - particularly a lot of stuff concerning scripted/automated installers.
The obvious solution to this is to provide a way for a script to disable and enable UAC. But as soon as you do that, a lot of the protection offered by UAC disappears.
Slashdot Mirror
Total times CCTV coverage in the UK has been abused in some Orwellian circle-jerk fantasy like people are always warning it is:
Really? That's interesting because another forum I'm a member of happens to have someone who's likely to lose his job tomorrow because a store manager handed over CCTV footage in breach of the law.
Granted, what I'm saying is third-hand anecdotal evidence on a website like /. so it's probably not something you want to take as gospel truth - but perhaps if anyone else knows of similar examples it might illustrate that CCTV, like all tools, is open to abuse.
I hate to sound defeatist, but nobody ever learned to backup as a result of being told to.
There are two types of people in this world.
Those who take backups seriously and those who've never experienced data loss.
If you're lucky, the data loss you experience won't in the big scheme of things be particularly important. If you're unlucky - well, articles like this get written about you.
You're absolutely right but a large number of people on /. will argue "buy a bunch of 1TB disks and backup onto those", without thinking about how you actually go about using all those disks, or how you account for the fact that most disk connectors simply aren't designed for daily swapping, or how most disk controllers aren't really designed for swapping (unless it's to remove a faulty drive), or how you either need an atomic snapshot of the filesystem before you can copy the files that the database consists of or you need to ask the database to dump its data, or how an atomic snapshot of the filesystem doesn't necessarily guarantee that the database on it is in a consistent state with the default installation of at least one DBMS I can think of or any one of a hundred little things which are what separates a competent systems admin from someone who's playing computers.
Are these documents actually intended to be followed and how technical do you want to get exactly? Who's going to follow them? Why would they want to?
Because if the answer is "we'd like to be able (in theory at least) to hand over all network troubleshooting to the marketing department" and you have a complicated network, your documentation is going to include a reprint of an entire CCNA course - and possibly the CCNE as well.
The solution we use is a wiki and a few rules of thumb - such as "if your procedure is more than a page or two long including screenshots or diagrams, it's too complicated to expect someone to reliably follow it. Make it simpler (with scripting and automation if necessary) and document the simple procedure".
No idea.
But if faced with accepting a refund for a £100 piece of software or going to court and - if losing - setting a huge precedent - which do you think the retailer's going to choose?
You're incorrect - you cannot get a refund on software that has been opened from most stores.
This is where there's a massive loophole in current practice, which software houses are happily taking advantage of.
Software house: "Return product for a refund" (Unwritten bit) "If the store won't give you a refund that's between you and them. Nothing to do with us".
Store: "We won't give refunds on opened software (excepting your statutory rights)". (Your statutory rights cover if the software had a glaring defect - certainly under UK law you could probably get a refund if a card game reformatted your PC. "I don't like some part of it" isn't covered by these rights.)
I believe its because terms cant be forced on the user after the sale has been made.
This, I imagine, is why most boxed software has a sticky label on the flap stating that the product is sold according to the terms and conditions laid down by the EULA and if you don't like it, return the product to your vendor for a refund.
Though it still seems to me rather silly that you can't make an intelligent decision regarding whether or not you like it until you've read the EULA - which means you've got to break the seal, which means your retailer won't take it back....
and the Dell salesman talked her into buying with Vista, saying that she can always downgrade later if she does not like it.
Well, probably not with Dell seeing as they build to order unless you buy through the retail channel they're starting to establish.
Perhaps the case that kicked this off was someone who bought through the retail channel?
Because it's not generally considered a terribly good idea from a diplomatic point of view to say "Here, take our criminals".
The "not pirate" is an issue here.
It should be abundantly clear by now that if there were no piracy, industries which depend on copyright law (eg. commercial software houses, RIAA, MPAA) would be forced to invent it.
It follows that if piracy were to disappear overnight through nothing more than a lack of desire to pirate anything, something which could be made illegal would still be blamed for declining sales.
This is not about "consumer" law. It is about contracts between businesses.
Depending on the country, there are still some laws governing contracts between businesses.
I've only ever seen two nokia charger types on phones made this century, and my new phone came with an adapter for the old charger, as well as a new charger, so I'm pretty pleased with them. But miniUSB would rock.
Right now there is the small connector and the larger, older connector for Nokia.
But the larger connector has in the past been used with phones that required a different charger - different voltage/current specs.
Quite common amongst lawmakers, especially recently.
The UK has done something similar with ISPs regarding filesharing.
You can get cells with their own special USB connectors (like iPod/iPhones).
Then it's not a USB connector, is it?
It's just a random proprietary connector and you just happen to get a USB lead with it.
For those of us who are employees, exposing your employer to legal action is generally a CLM.
AFAIK (though IANAL), the Data Protection Act only applies to companies in the UK - not companies making services available to UK citizens.
... for any application that assumes sizeof(time_t) is 32 bits.
Not that I'd expect that to be the case with any half-decent intelligently written application. But we all know how common applications which are neither half-decent nor intelligently written are...
A comment recommending "Write-only memory" modded informative?!
I take it nobody read your comment properly or followed the link from it, then.
It's a little different in this case for a number of reasons.
This system was paid for by the taxpayer and sold to the taxpayer on all sorts of spurious grounds. With DVD and Blu-Ray, people can decide not to buy and the investment is lost - and if you object to R&D a company is carrying out right now, you can avoid funding it by not buying one of their products.
With ID cards, you can't just write to HMRC and say "I won't be paying £100 worth of my taxes this year because they're going on a project I don't approve of" (much as many of us would love to).
Now we find out this system won't achieve anything because organisations that might want to use it (eg. police, benefits offices) are expected to pay for readers separately out of their own budgets and this wasn't accounted for.
Nobody would actually be so naive to claim that GIMP is a legitimate and complete open source alternative for Photoshop for a design firm at this point in time? Right?
I don't think anyone is. A few people are repeating the open source mantra but few have specifically mentioned the Gimp so far.
Perhaps they didn't read the summary properly.
I spent hours Googling and got nothing but a bunch of snarky MVPs saying "it may or may not be possible but in any case I'm sure as hell not going to tell you how".
A single bitch on /. and I've got all the documentation one could want.
And people say that you need to do this in order to get anywhere on Linux?!
Thanks for your help.
Ideas are ten a penny.
Where the value comes is in the clever execution of those ideas.
Or, to put it another way: Xerox invented the GUI and the mouse. When was the last time you used a GUI that Xerox had produced?
Compaq have been credited with inventing the hard-disk based MP3 player. The last time HP marketed a hard disk based MP3 player, however, it was a rebranded iPod.
With Vista, there's no (official, at least) way to disable UAC except by a user actively going to Control Panel and disabling it.
This breaks a lot of things - particularly a lot of stuff concerning scripted/automated installers.
The obvious solution to this is to provide a way for a script to disable and enable UAC. But as soon as you do that, a lot of the protection offered by UAC disappears.