"For anyone interested, if you get irritated with Mary coming along and punching you if you swear, you can find her in the curiously Spanish-named El Vinos, and kill her. It doesn't help anything, of course, since she comes back a minute or two later, but it still gives a certain thrill to those as nerdy as I."
When Barclays tried to foist one of these cards on me last year, replacing my debit card with a contactless one, it was quite difficult to reject. Nobody seemed to understand my concern, and the half dozen people I had to go through all said "Well, you don't have to use it if you don't want to..."
In the end the only alternative they could offer was the Debit card they give to customers they don't quite trust, which has to have every transaction verified by the bank before it will authorise. I suppose there's a sort of symmetry there - I don't trust them, so they don't trust me. Thanks a lot, Barclays.
"The Ambient light feature is appealing; but when the picture does not match the screen's aspect ratio, the usual blank bands would disassociate the effect."
I'd have expected that problem too, but from experience it really isn't a problem. There's a bezel round the edge as well, which doesn't cause a problem either. It would seem that the Ambilight effect is not dependent on being so close to the image as all that.
I've got one of the first edition LCD 56" 21:9 Philips TVs, which I got cheap when they released the current model. All I can say is, before you spark off about how pointless Ambilight is, or useless 21:9 is, or how the upscaling will ruin the picture, just try viewing one.
I thought all the same things, and then I gave one a viewing, and they are simply amazing. The upscaling is really, really, good. I simply can't tell from the image quality whether it's native resolution or upscaled. The Ambilight is brilliant. After a while you stop noticing it and it just helps draw you in to the screen. Turn it off, and the picture suddenly seems too large, imposing and eye-straining. If you don't like these features, that's fine, but they're hardly pointless and they do work well.
Yes, you do get black bars either side on 4:3 content. Yes, low quality SD content doesn't look great, but do you really expect it to on a 56" TV? On decent DVD or BluRay content, these TVs are epic.
The writing's on the wall if all they've got to fall back on is patent trolling.
Unlike Mondo's experience above, my own experience of Overland's products is that they were the worst-built, most unreliable, worst-supported tape loaders I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. When your tape library won't detect tape changes, and Overland's own technical support tell you that's normal and that you should reboot server and library every time you change tapes, you know something's up. (That was a fault, by the way, and after we finally convinced Overland it was a fault, they gave us a replacement unit which would happily identify changed tapes, and then simply mark them all as unreadable.)
If it's anything like the DMR-BW780 BluRay recorder we've got here, it'll have decent recording quality let down by the most half-baked, frustrating, inconsistent and poorly thought through interface. 20 key presses to finalise a disc when you've just finished burning it? Failure to recognise a disc you've just formatted unless you remove it, and cycle the power? When editing the title of a recording, pressing Delete inserts a space, and pressing Pause deletes? That's Panasonic, that is.
This reminds me of Bromcom who, because they had a patented product using hand-held devices for electronic pupil registration, started threatening any school that was doing any form of wireless registration, even if they were just using an Excel spreadsheet on a laptop.
"I still have a VHS copy of episode IV recorded from the telly. It has half an episode of 'blockbusters' at the start and adverts for that carpet you could throw ketchup on and just scrape it off with a butter knife."
"Yay! +1 for someone else who remembers those. Mind you, you're giving your age away a bit, but I suppose only to those who are old enough to remember the Zarbis!"
If you really were old enough to remember, you'd remember that the plural of Zarbi is Zarbi.
I think the specific point would be that they don't have public IP addresses and have no presence on the internet, so could only be addressed via asking the BT router to do it.
How could they tell it was running slow? The Autotrader site is one of the slowest, buggiest and most unreliable sites I've ever visited. Really really nasty, and that's before I get on to the advert pop-unders and bloody survey questionnaires every time you visit.
"Good to see a TV that allows you to turn off the picture and just have the audio.
(Actually it's a useful feature for a lot of TV, especially documentaries which love to shove pointless images in that do nothing to enhance the audio - Horizon, I'm looking at you)."
Or not looking at Horizon, if you take your own advice...
"To a physicist, 10x Normal radiation level is slightly heightened (for a given Normal on a given scale) but instead of dealing with the physics or the facts, you prefer to use "scaremongering". In what way do you think you are any better then the Red Top brigade who also bend the truth to sell copy."
That's not at all what he was saying. Go back and read the article again.
"The "science" that assured us this was a safe design was wrong. "
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that it was "science" that decided how resilient to make the plant, when it was actually the bean counters. The scientists designed it to survive the level of quake and tsunami they were told to - five times weaker than the one they actually faced in the event. That the plant has survived at all means you could criticise them for over-engineering, but that might seem a little churlish if you do it at the same time as screaming at them for the problems the plant is now facing.
"Scenario: Argies have built an airbase in the south and have destroyed the airbase on the Falklands.
..."
This is primarily an IT tech site, with the occasional divergence in to military hardware at a non-technical level. That being the case, could you possibly translate your little scenario into English? Can't follow your banter, old chap.
"I imagine any educated employer would have sacked the loud-twittered idiot for americanised vulgarity of expression and displaying lack of judgement and self-control. Would he have expressed himself in the same way directly to airport staff? Particularly if the member of staff was over two metres tall and weighed 100 Kg?
Of course one may lament the lack of proportion in official response. But, as for freedom: we are all absolutely free to say or do whatever we want. Conversely, we must also be prepared to take the consequences, foreseen or not."
Anybody else imagining that little outpouring to have been spoken in the style of Noel Coward?
"You have GOT to be kidding me ... Does nobody reading this forum actually understand basic electronic theory? Look up "multivibrator", and get yourself a tiny chunk of an education ... if your country's firewall doesn't "protect" you from such information, that is."
As well as sharing the fraud concerns of other commenters, what about tracking? Why were we all worried about the RFID tag on our passports but now we're not bothered when it's on our credit cards we carry every day? Do we really think these aren't going to be used to record our movements? After all, shopping centres are already tracking you through your mobile.
Barclays sent me one of these cards when my debit card came up for renewal. I couldn't reject it via internet banking so I phoned them up. The gentleman on the phone told me he was required to explain to me the benefits of the contactless system, and then having done so (and me still wanting rid of it) told me he couldn't cancel it. So I went into my local branch. The cashier told me she was required to explain to me the benefits of the contactless system, and then having done so told me she couldn't cancel it, and I'd have to see the manager. The manager told me he was required to explain to me the benefits of the contactless system... in each case they said "You don't have to use it." Surely it's a cornerstone of good IT security to not leave a feature in place that you don't use, when you've no idea or control over what it's doing. Barclays told me that if I didn't want the contactless system they had to cancel both my old (still valid) debit card and the new contactless one, leaving me without a card for a week while a new non-contactless debit card arrived. The new one apparently does not work everywhere my previous debit card did, and is generally given to customers who cannot be trusted. Surprise surprise as soon as I got the new second-class-citizen-who-can't-be-trusted debit card, the interest rate on my Barclaycard credit card shot up. So, then, fuck Barclays. After 20 years I'm off.
Laudable to want to reduce the burden of having to be CRB-checked for every job, but it fell at that first hurdle, since the CRB check covered slightly different ground, and most employers would have ended up having to do the CRB check as well as the VBS check.
"The point of VBS is to provides a single, one time clearance for people who wish to work with Children and vulnerable adults to replace the current CRB checks that must be done regularly and for each job you do. "
Except that the VBS check does not cover quite the same ground as the enhanced CRB check, so most people will end up having to get both.
"Frankly, they can fuck off if they think any of us field based guys are going to be doing any more than we're paid for after the email that went round explaining that we were taking unpaid holiday if we didn't drive on dangerous roads in areas that had severe weather warnings in place.
If I were a little more reckless I'd have gone out and wrapped the car up on purpose."
You only need about 3mph to get it irretrievably planted in a ditch. Hypothetically, of course.
"I'm not Bono's biggest fan, but in any case I am forced to concur with you all since you have each manifestly achieved more in your lives and done more for the greater good and suchlike than he has. I mean, it's self-evident."
Well, I didn't release The Joshua Tree, so if it's the greater good you're referring to I reckon I'm ahead on points, at least.
On the subject of whether "significant" numbers of people wouldn't have broadband if they couldn't download illegally, I suspect it's more the case that the ISPs are able to sell premium high-bandwidth connections on the back of that downloading. So the question is how much more money do the ISPs make off the premium connections, if any, given that they have to throw more resource at those heavy users? Only a couple of years ago, ISPs like PlusNET were trying to get rid of their heavy downloaders.
Well, if it's going to destroy us all, don't sit around here moaning about it. Go and wave a placard or something. We'll still be here when you get back. Or not, depending on how successful you are.
I don't know about quark cannon destroying the universe, but I do know that oxymoron doesn't mean what you think it means.
"A DAMOCLES MACHINE THAT IS HALTING THE ADVANCE OF TRUE SCIENCE"
Careful. Some spittle nearly hit me there.
"Astro-physicists fear that if enough quarks are pegged together in one of those condensates, they can trigger a mass-reaction that would attract all the other quarks of the Earth, transforming our planet into a dense pulsar or black hole."
Splendid performance. I'm an astro-physicist. I don't fear this. Smash them particles, I say, and let's see what falls out. Last one to get turned into strangelet soup's a ninny!
"Still, why not go the whole hog and tattoo barcodes on the back of all citizens' necks for checking against the Good Law Abiding Citizens Thought Crimes Database?"
Because that's where they record a bishop's diocese.
For those commenters who are bemoaning the lack of mention of pumped storage as an alternative to thermal capacity in dealing with intermittency, the basic problem still stands. Creating pumped storage is extremely expensive and the impact very large, and who is going to want to invest in it unless the returns are very large?
There has been a study, reported on by Lewis on this very site - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/ - which took in pumped storage as an option. If I remember correctly, we're looking at having to convert pretty much every major body of water in the UK to pumped storage. What's that going to do to the ecosystem, particularly if some of it has to be sea water?
Mr Sutherland seem to think we're only concerned about humans processing our personal data. We're not. A data-mining algorithm is just as bad, if not worse. If you're running your data-mining tentacles over a database, you're still processing the data in it, you're still - how can I put this? - running fishing expeditions on millions of people.
"No offence, boys. Most of you are barely evil at all."
How's that for damning with faint praise? Here we are, trying our level best to outdo each other with our eviltude, and there you are telling us we're barely registering. Sheesh, might as well go and bait some Scientlogists or something.
How can they say that password masking does nothing for security, and then in the next breath recommend keeping it on by default for high-risk applications, because "sometimes security should win"?
It either helps or it doesn't, and if it does help then it's a matter of weighing up the advantages against the disadvantages of password masking.
Advantages: if every password box is always masked, it provides consistency for the user. It reminds them that the password is something they should be keeping to themselves. It largely deals with shoulder-surfing which, judging by the comments here, is still regarded as a problem by a lot of people. It's a lot harder to read keypresses on the keyboard than characters on the screen.
Disadvantages: easier to mistype the password.
I don't think unmasking the password makes it any more likely that the user will write it down or store it in a file. The sort of people who do this are the sort who have difficulty in remembering the password anyway. They'll still write it down.
"There should be an audit trail within the organisation showing who has actually accessed personal data. "
Who currently does this? It would result in a lot of data being generated, is this something that is regarded as good practice for all organisations or just those working with particularly sensitive data e.g. medical, financial?
Register
143 posts • joined Friday 2nd March 2007 11:10 GMT
Page:
Re: An there was me thinking that...
"He was just an actor, playing a role. I'm sure it's just what he wanted as well.
Even in death he can't help but be a parody."
So, 50 down-votes so far. Allow me to be number 51.
Re: And if that wasn't bad enough...
"Fox cancelled Firefly."
It still hurts. It still hurts.
Re: You know,
"For anyone interested, if you get irritated with Mary coming along and punching you if you swear, you can find her in the curiously Spanish-named El Vinos, and kill her. It doesn't help anything, of course, since she comes back a minute or two later, but it still gives a certain thrill to those as nerdy as I."
> Fuck Mary.
> Mary is not amused. (Punch)
Ah, Valhalla, happy days.
Re: This technology is absolute bollocks
When Barclays tried to foist one of these cards on me last year, replacing my debit card with a contactless one, it was quite difficult to reject. Nobody seemed to understand my concern, and the half dozen people I had to go through all said "Well, you don't have to use it if you don't want to..."
In the end the only alternative they could offer was the Debit card they give to customers they don't quite trust, which has to have every transaction verified by the bank before it will authorise. I suppose there's a sort of symmetry there - I don't trust them, so they don't trust me. Thanks a lot, Barclays.
Oh, Apple, you kidders
"...we would never knowingly abuse someone else’s trademarks."
Apart from when selling music, of course...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
Misread that...
"You are obviously a gynaecologist abusing your position of trust"
At first glance, I read that as "position of thrust."
Re: Ambient + Letter Box...
"The Ambient light feature is appealing; but when the picture does not match the screen's aspect ratio, the usual blank bands would disassociate the effect."
I'd have expected that problem too, but from experience it really isn't a problem. There's a bezel round the edge as well, which doesn't cause a problem either. It would seem that the Ambilight effect is not dependent on being so close to the image as all that.
Well, anyway
I've got one of the first edition LCD 56" 21:9 Philips TVs, which I got cheap when they released the current model. All I can say is, before you spark off about how pointless Ambilight is, or useless 21:9 is, or how the upscaling will ruin the picture, just try viewing one.
I thought all the same things, and then I gave one a viewing, and they are simply amazing. The upscaling is really, really, good. I simply can't tell from the image quality whether it's native resolution or upscaled. The Ambilight is brilliant. After a while you stop noticing it and it just helps draw you in to the screen. Turn it off, and the picture suddenly seems too large, imposing and eye-straining. If you don't like these features, that's fine, but they're hardly pointless and they do work well.
Yes, you do get black bars either side on 4:3 content. Yes, low quality SD content doesn't look great, but do you really expect it to on a 56" TV? On decent DVD or BluRay content, these TVs are epic.
Two down, 100ish to go
@Paul L. Daniels
"Good News... the episodes are coming back to us anyhow..."
One has to assume, since you're not providing this link on April 1st yourself, that you didn't notice the publishing date on that article.
@Zack Mollusc
It was the start of the colour era. They assumed nobody would be interested in them there old-fashioned black and white programmes any more.
Lovely guy
I had the honour of meeting him last year. An absolute gent, totally dotty but really charming and interesting. I'll miss him.
Aren't they dead yet?
The writing's on the wall if all they've got to fall back on is patent trolling.
Unlike Mondo's experience above, my own experience of Overland's products is that they were the worst-built, most unreliable, worst-supported tape loaders I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. When your tape library won't detect tape changes, and Overland's own technical support tell you that's normal and that you should reboot server and library every time you change tapes, you know something's up. (That was a fault, by the way, and after we finally convinced Overland it was a fault, they gave us a replacement unit which would happily identify changed tapes, and then simply mark them all as unreadable.)
Hmmmm
If it's anything like the DMR-BW780 BluRay recorder we've got here, it'll have decent recording quality let down by the most half-baked, frustrating, inconsistent and poorly thought through interface. 20 key presses to finalise a disc when you've just finished burning it? Failure to recognise a disc you've just formatted unless you remove it, and cycle the power? When editing the title of a recording, pressing Delete inserts a space, and pressing Pause deletes? That's Panasonic, that is.
@AC 08:41
"But "Irrumatio" would be even more appropriate, it seems."
I do wish I hadn't Googled that term at work.
Shades of Bromcom?
This reminds me of Bromcom who, because they had a patented product using hand-held devices for electronic pupil registration, started threatening any school that was doing any form of wireless registration, even if they were just using an Excel spreadsheet on a laptop.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/24/schools_patent/
@AC 15/9/11 09:24GMT
"I still have a VHS copy of episode IV recorded from the telly. It has half an episode of 'blockbusters' at the start and adverts for that carpet you could throw ketchup on and just scrape it off with a butter knife."
Would that be Flotex 21?
@We want Zarbies
"Yay! +1 for someone else who remembers those. Mind you, you're giving your age away a bit, but I suppose only to those who are old enough to remember the Zarbis!"
If you really were old enough to remember, you'd remember that the plural of Zarbi is Zarbi.
/pedant.
@Don't they, by George?
I think the specific point would be that they don't have public IP addresses and have no presence on the internet, so could only be addressed via asking the BT router to do it.
How can they tell?
How could they tell it was running slow? The Autotrader site is one of the slowest, buggiest and most unreliable sites I've ever visited. Really really nasty, and that's before I get on to the advert pop-unders and bloody survey questionnaires every time you visit.
@AC 14:43
"Good to see a TV that allows you to turn off the picture and just have the audio.
(Actually it's a useful feature for a lot of TV, especially documentaries which love to shove pointless images in that do nothing to enhance the audio - Horizon, I'm looking at you)."
Or not looking at Horizon, if you take your own advice...
@Zog The Undeniable
"The prospect of Jar Jar Binks bulging out of the screen actually makes me glad I'm going blind in one eye."
Comment of the Week, right there.
@Paul Smith
"To a physicist, 10x Normal radiation level is slightly heightened (for a given Normal on a given scale) but instead of dealing with the physics or the facts, you prefer to use "scaremongering". In what way do you think you are any better then the Red Top brigade who also bend the truth to sell copy."
That's not at all what he was saying. Go back and read the article again.
.
@Ralph 5
"The "science" that assured us this was a safe design was wrong. "
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that it was "science" that decided how resilient to make the plant, when it was actually the bean counters. The scientists designed it to survive the level of quake and tsunami they were told to - five times weaker than the one they actually faced in the event. That the plant has survived at all means you could criticise them for over-engineering, but that might seem a little churlish if you do it at the same time as screaming at them for the problems the plant is now facing.
Five rounds rapid
Splendid chap, all of him.
@Raise the Titanic
Love the score for Raise the Titanic, was listening to it only the other day. I loved the score for Black Hole too.
@Admiral Of The Pink (Slip)
"Scenario: Argies have built an airbase in the south and have destroyed the airbase on the Falklands.
..."
This is primarily an IT tech site, with the occasional divergence in to military hardware at a non-technical level. That being the case, could you possibly translate your little scenario into English? Can't follow your banter, old chap.
And...
Galaxian, Gorf, Terra Cresta. Spy Hunter. Scramble.
LaHood?
When reading the quotes from LaHood, I can't help imagining him as the evil businessman from Pale Rider.
If he doesn't get his way, will he call in the Pinkertons?
@cyberspice
"So the entire article is huburis. "
"May be the reporter doesn't know what bricked means! "
Maybe you don't know what "hubris" means.
There I was...
...just wondering whatever happened to FoTW, and what do I see? Hello old friend.
Not a patch of flames of old though. Not nearly enough spittle.
@AC 2010-09-17 13:27
"I imagine any educated employer would have sacked the loud-twittered idiot for americanised vulgarity of expression and displaying lack of judgement and self-control. Would he have expressed himself in the same way directly to airport staff? Particularly if the member of staff was over two metres tall and weighed 100 Kg?
Of course one may lament the lack of proportion in official response. But, as for freedom: we are all absolutely free to say or do whatever we want. Conversely, we must also be prepared to take the consequences, foreseen or not."
Anybody else imagining that little outpouring to have been spoken in the style of Noel Coward?
@jake
"You have GOT to be kidding me ... Does nobody reading this forum actually understand basic electronic theory? Look up "multivibrator", and get yourself a tiny chunk of an education ... if your country's firewall doesn't "protect" you from such information, that is."
Hur hur hur. You said "vibrator."
Fsck Barclays
As well as sharing the fraud concerns of other commenters, what about tracking? Why were we all worried about the RFID tag on our passports but now we're not bothered when it's on our credit cards we carry every day? Do we really think these aren't going to be used to record our movements? After all, shopping centres are already tracking you through your mobile.
Barclays sent me one of these cards when my debit card came up for renewal. I couldn't reject it via internet banking so I phoned them up. The gentleman on the phone told me he was required to explain to me the benefits of the contactless system, and then having done so (and me still wanting rid of it) told me he couldn't cancel it. So I went into my local branch. The cashier told me she was required to explain to me the benefits of the contactless system, and then having done so told me she couldn't cancel it, and I'd have to see the manager. The manager told me he was required to explain to me the benefits of the contactless system... in each case they said "You don't have to use it." Surely it's a cornerstone of good IT security to not leave a feature in place that you don't use, when you've no idea or control over what it's doing. Barclays told me that if I didn't want the contactless system they had to cancel both my old (still valid) debit card and the new contactless one, leaving me without a card for a week while a new non-contactless debit card arrived. The new one apparently does not work everywhere my previous debit card did, and is generally given to customers who cannot be trusted. Surprise surprise as soon as I got the new second-class-citizen-who-can't-be-trusted debit card, the interest rate on my Barclaycard credit card shot up. So, then, fuck Barclays. After 20 years I'm off.
@AC 09:39
"They've changed it again!"
Somebody over at the Beeb clearly reads the Reg and is playing a game of "How many articles can I generate?"
@Is it me?
Laudable to want to reduce the burden of having to be CRB-checked for every job, but it fell at that first hurdle, since the CRB check covered slightly different ground, and most employers would have ended up having to do the CRB check as well as the VBS check.
@AC 14:48
"And then you could take her to Silverstone."
I think she'd prefer Goodwood.
@Peter Gathercole
"I'm off to find a teacake, and some perspective."
You rang?
@AC 14:12
"The point of VBS is to provides a single, one time clearance for people who wish to work with Children and vulnerable adults to replace the current CRB checks that must be done regularly and for each job you do. "
Except that the VBS check does not cover quite the same ground as the enhanced CRB check, so most people will end up having to get both.
@AC
"Frankly, they can fuck off if they think any of us field based guys are going to be doing any more than we're paid for after the email that went round explaining that we were taking unpaid holiday if we didn't drive on dangerous roads in areas that had severe weather warnings in place.
If I were a little more reckless I'd have gone out and wrapped the car up on purpose."
You only need about 3mph to get it irretrievably planted in a ditch. Hypothetically, of course.
@Sarah
"I'm not Bono's biggest fan, but in any case I am forced to concur with you all since you have each manifestly achieved more in your lives and done more for the greater good and suchlike than he has. I mean, it's self-evident."
Well, I didn't release The Joshua Tree, so if it's the greater good you're referring to I reckon I'm ahead on points, at least.
On the subject of whether "significant" numbers of people wouldn't have broadband if they couldn't download illegally, I suspect it's more the case that the ISPs are able to sell premium high-bandwidth connections on the back of that downloading. So the question is how much more money do the ISPs make off the premium connections, if any, given that they have to throw more resource at those heavy users? Only a couple of years ago, ISPs like PlusNET were trying to get rid of their heavy downloaders.
@luis sancho
Well, if it's going to destroy us all, don't sit around here moaning about it. Go and wave a placard or something. We'll still be here when you get back. Or not, depending on how successful you are.
I don't know about quark cannon destroying the universe, but I do know that oxymoron doesn't mean what you think it means.
@luis sancho
"A DAMOCLES MACHINE THAT IS HALTING THE ADVANCE OF TRUE SCIENCE"
Careful. Some spittle nearly hit me there.
"Astro-physicists fear that if enough quarks are pegged together in one of those condensates, they can trigger a mass-reaction that would attract all the other quarks of the Earth, transforming our planet into a dense pulsar or black hole."
Splendid performance. I'm an astro-physicist. I don't fear this. Smash them particles, I say, and let's see what falls out. Last one to get turned into strangelet soup's a ninny!
So that's...
...a take up rate of 0.04% so far? Those Mancs really are keen, aren't they?
@Dominic Contardi
"Still, why not go the whole hog and tattoo barcodes on the back of all citizens' necks for checking against the Good Law Abiding Citizens Thought Crimes Database?"
Because that's where they record a bishop's diocese.
@asiaseen
"So they're pissed off because he's copied their blotter book?"
Oh, very good. There can't be many opportunities to use that pun, but well done for finding one.
@AC 29/7 12:14
"What if she isn't moaner?"
She is with me.
Re: Pumped Storage
For those commenters who are bemoaning the lack of mention of pumped storage as an alternative to thermal capacity in dealing with intermittency, the basic problem still stands. Creating pumped storage is extremely expensive and the impact very large, and who is going to want to invest in it unless the returns are very large?
There has been a study, reported on by Lewis on this very site - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/ - which took in pumped storage as an option. If I remember correctly, we're looking at having to convert pretty much every major body of water in the UK to pumped storage. What's that going to do to the ecosystem, particularly if some of it has to be sea water?
Is this guy for real?
Mr Sutherland seem to think we're only concerned about humans processing our personal data. We're not. A data-mining algorithm is just as bad, if not worse. If you're running your data-mining tentacles over a database, you're still processing the data in it, you're still - how can I put this? - running fishing expeditions on millions of people.
@Sarah
"No offence, boys. Most of you are barely evil at all."
How's that for damning with faint praise? Here we are, trying our level best to outdo each other with our eviltude, and there you are telling us we're barely registering. Sheesh, might as well go and bait some Scientlogists or something.
Rubbish
How can they say that password masking does nothing for security, and then in the next breath recommend keeping it on by default for high-risk applications, because "sometimes security should win"?
It either helps or it doesn't, and if it does help then it's a matter of weighing up the advantages against the disadvantages of password masking.
Advantages: if every password box is always masked, it provides consistency for the user. It reminds them that the password is something they should be keeping to themselves. It largely deals with shoulder-surfing which, judging by the comments here, is still regarded as a problem by a lot of people. It's a lot harder to read keypresses on the keyboard than characters on the screen.
Disadvantages: easier to mistype the password.
I don't think unmasking the password makes it any more likely that the user will write it down or store it in a file. The sort of people who do this are the sort who have difficulty in remembering the password anyway. They'll still write it down.
Reading the advice...
"There should be an audit trail within the organisation showing who has actually accessed personal data. "
Who currently does this? It would result in a lot of data being generated, is this something that is regarded as good practice for all organisations or just those working with particularly sensitive data e.g. medical, financial?
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