Graham Chastney

Well I have got to that point in the day before many of my holidays where I now only really have big things to do. Big things that will take longer than the minutes I have left to complete them in, I’ve done all of the little things.

So I’m signing out now.

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas.

I’m not likely to write anything here until the New year, but I’m very likely to write stuff on happenings and I may do some fiddling with Facebook too.

I thought I had done some predictions for 2007 which I was going to comment on, but it looks like I only predicted the inevitable. So I’m not going to bother commenting.

While at work in the office today I went to the gentleman’s room. I was the only one stood, but a couple of the cubicles were occupied.

Then I heard a mobile phone ringing. It only rang a couple of times.

You know what’s coming don’t you.

Yes, that’s right, after a couple of rings the phone was answered. it didn’t even sound like a very important conversation.

There was a time when such things were unthinkable because you couldn’t take the phone into the gents.

It’s just another example of technology stripping away our dignity.

There are certain things that should always be done in private, but it’s clear that attention addiction has become so engrained in people that they are willing to forego their dignity in order to feed their addiction.

This is just a little gripe that bugs me from time to time but I fancied getting it off my chest.

The organisation I work for, along with many others, operates a e-mail mailbox quota. I’m Ok with that, as a service provider I think it’s a great idea.

My gripe is that I get warned about the size of my mailbox based on the percentage of the quota I have used. I have a large quota (one of the privileged) I get told when my mailbox is 80% full, the same as I did when I had a 100MB mailbox. This doesn’t make sense to me, the issue is how much space I have left to work in, and 20% doesn’t seem like a sensible way to measure that especially as mailboxes get larger:

• 20% of 100MB is 20MB – which might cause me a problem during a particularly busy day. So I might like to see a warning.
• 20% of 200MB is 40MB – I suppose it’s interesting
• 20% of 300MB is 60MB – that would be an exceptionally busy day.
• 20% of 400MB is 80MB- I’m not sure how busy I would have to be, it’s more likely that someone has sent me the same 10MB file a few times.
• 20% of 500MB is 100MB – right is as much as I had when I had 100MB.

Warning me that I have 100MB left isn’t really telling me anything, I’m highly unlikely to do anything about it.

I’d much rather have a quota warning that told me how many days I had until I needed to do something about it. Even one that warned me at 20MB free would be better.

Time to stop the grumpy posts now.

Data loss seems to have become the latest cheap news story here in the UK. Back in November the UK Government admitted the loss of some really important data from the Child Benefit department of Her Majesties Revenue and Customs. There is no doubting that this was a significant data with potentially massive consequences for the people who’s data was lost (me included). This data set included bank account details and National Insurance Numbers, things that would be very useful to anyone with criminal intent as well as children’s names which would make password hacking a lot easier.

There was lots of information and lots of analysis telling people what the impact of this could be.

Since then though, the stories have come thick and fast, but the information hasn’t.

Yesterday was another announcement from another government minister – Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly. This time the data lost consists of name, address, phone number, fee paid, test centre, payment code, e-mail where provided.

So what is the impact of that data getting out?

In this instance nearly all of the analysis has been on the political impact of the loss. You have to look very hard for any information on how risky this is. About the best I could find on the BBC was this:

The information commission had judged the risks presented by the loss were not “substantial” and there was no need to notify each person individually.

This poses a real difficult challenge to the IT industry, how do we communicate what the risks are and why this loss is “not “substantial”". More broadly, how do we communicate the things that people should protect at all cost, and the things that are already in the public domain. I know, for instance, that my name, address and phone number are all out in the public domain and that there’s no point in worrying that someone has misplaced it, likewise with my e-mail address. I’m not sure what use “fee paid, test centre, payment code” would be other than some form of targeted fraud. I also have a graduated password scheme, my bank password is nothing like the password I give to a site that requires me to register but doesn’t do any financial transactions. I don’t really care about the latter password, but the first one is used in one place only.

My issue here is that we aren’t doing a good job of communicating and that all data loss incidents are receiving a very similar reaction. The problem with that is that people become immune to the message, it’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf, only in reverse. The first data loss from HMRC was a really big issue, subsequent minor ones just blind people to the impact of the first one. If we have another significant loss announced people won’t realise it because they have become deaf to the messages.

I’ve installed SP1 for Vista onto my tablet. I was expecting some problems with the specific drivers for the tablet but they all seem to be working fine. A few of the glitches I had have been resolved and it all seems to be just a bit slicker.

There are two methods of updating, one is to use the standard full install mechanism, the other sets your Automatic Update to download it and install it over time. I chose the later as a bit of an experiment, seemed to work just fine.