Posts by Alan Brown 15087 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008
I'd say he was more or less hired with the specific intent of being thrown under the bus as BBC management realised the project was a clusterfuck and they needed a plausible exit strategy which wouldn't result in them being in the firing line.
Unfortunately for them, he decided he wasn't going to be their Patsy.
"The recording would be inadmissible in a tribunal/court unfortunately."
If introduced directly, that's true.
A transcript of the recording IS admissible and then the recording can be introduced as backing evidence if the transcript is disputed - ie, the only way for the opposing party to avoid having the recording introduced as evidence is to accept the transcript.
Seems a bit odd, but that's the way it is in the UK for one party recordings.
If everyone's aware there's a recording taking place then the recording is directly admissible.
FWIW, in the absence of recordings, the first person to file a record of meeting minutes is legally assumed to be accurate unless that account is disputed - and even with a recording the recording has to be used as evidence for a dispute
One company I worked for (a govt operated radio station...) had a manager who would take advantage of this by agreeing to everything in meetings, then bash out a memo stating her version of events - which usually had no relationship at all to what had actually taken place.
It proved extremely hard to sack her as the only way to defend against this kind of thing is for everyone else involved to immediately dispute the version of events or a recording to be produced.
People like this are the ones who go from job to job with glowing reviews and a golden handshake as it's usually the only way to get them out the door.
The instruments on the bird have come from labs all across the UK
Disclosure: My employer has one onboard
The funny thing is that SSTL have been using our environmental chambers recently because theirs aren't big enough for the job.
Fire: because that's what got it up there.
"I've always worried why the Nimrod (based on the Comet 4) was kept in servie so such a long time,"
It worked and it had spectacular endurance (engines in the wing meant that when on station 3 of the 4 could be switched off, dropping fuel consuumption dramatically.) Try that on a podded engine and you'll find yourself flying in a corkscrew pattern thanks to the drag of windmilling fans.
A bunch of the other stuff on them was shite and dangerous, but all the other aircraft were "Not Invented Here", so jingoism ensured Nimrods kept going. (Not that Rivet Joint birds are any better. The design is older than the Nimrod)
Military aircraft are more about projecting national prestige than fitness for purpose.
"The Game of Thrones problem is also a good example. Everyone wants it but it's released in a specific place on a specific network...so gets pirated something rotten."
Actually it's a good example of the way things will be.
It got pirated something rotten and the producers wore that as a badge of pride. Their only stated worry was that if the pirated versions were "too good", people wouldn't buy the DVDs.
@mad mike:
They can make up whatever reason they want.
The CPS won't touch it with a bargepole as criminal charges would be laughed out of court and he can still sue them for false arrest - police can't do this kind of thing in a civil matter without a court order and even then only to bring someone before a judge.
"So if you weren't gonna pay for it then why the fuck watch it?"
The principle of the matter. Lots of people are downloading things with no intent to actually watch them, simply because of the streisand effect (whack a mole, etc etc)
This isn't exactly new. The french had a similar problem about 250 years ago: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110808/12354815439/if-even-death-penalty-wont-stop-infringement-perhaps-different-approach-is-needed.shtml
Documented in "Mercantilism", which is a university textbook, in case anyone wants to dispute it actually happened..
"Good to see that in a "raid", a private individual from the Federation Against Copyright ViolationTheft, a private for-profit organisation funded by large studios, was invited along for the ride."
That in itself is completely illegal, unless he was the actual person who signed the complaint and there was a court order for the raid.
If there WAS a court order, the COLP wouldn't need to use bulying tactics to force handover of a domain - and registrars wouldn't be telling them to take a hike.
"Here in the US it's a crime to do something where the primary aim of that something is to circumvent a law"
Yes - A crminal law.
The blocking of websites is a civil matter, all the court orders are in civil court, naming individual websites/IPs and applicable to individual ISPs (who must have more than 50,000 customers.)
There is no crime here. It's a civil matter and the COLP are operating WELL outside their legal jurisdiction.
"Yes, there's a law that says ISPs must block these sites,"
No, there isn't.
Individual ISPs get court orders to block sites, in civil cases.
This is corporate chestthumping at its best.
You can't be arrested for a non-crime, or for a civil matter unless you've broken a court order (in which case it's a contempt of court charge) .
Note that the actual charges proferred have not been stated and in all liklihood they never will be, because they woulfn't stand up in court.
There have been a number of cases where COLP officers have been found to be operating well outside their jurisdiction and without the knowledge of local forces (to the extreme irritation of those forces, who tend to regard them as a bunch of cowboys)
The COLP are the same group of numpties who try to arrest people for wearing tshirts or holding signs which say "Scientology is a dangerous cult". They are the only "police force" in the UK which is a privately registered company.
COLP are an embarrassment. Half of what they claim to do is fox-guarding-henhouse stuff and the rest should be covered under a proper national agency with proper oversight, as is done in other countries.. They're a guild hangover from medival times and should be limited to the city of london, not behaving as a non-accountable national agency.
"Very few people who download a pirate movie had the intention of buying it anyway,"
I for one have bought a number of movies I wouldn't have otherwise done, after viewing downloads..
The simple truth is that a good number of movies are crap and I'm bugger if I'm going to pay 15-20 squid on a new release to find that out. The crap ones get deleted and usually not-fully-watched.
Park a bunch of ILS marker beacons a few hundred metres short of a runway could make things "interesting".
Especially for whoever did it. Such an action would go unnoticed for about 2 seconds, then the ils systems on the aircraft would shut down in the presence of conflicting signals., requiring hands on sticks in short order.
Those looking for the beacons would not be particularly happy, nor would they be willing to just "have a chat". It's very easy to triangulate in on 'em, so hiding wouldn't be much of an option.
"I'd been wondering how firing the guy in charge of blowing 9 figures up the wall could possibly fail"
Given that he arrived in the post well into the project and long after it had lost its way - "Pretty spectacularly"
I've been wondering how much it'd cost the beeb ever since it happened.
I did do the research - including email exchanges with Sandisk Europe.
The Diablo driver is a proprietary binary blob.
From a number of points of view, that makes it unstable and unreliable until an opensource driver is available.
Ulltradimms also require bios tweaks or the OS won't see them - They can't just be dropped in any old box.
Supermicro were working on this with Sandisk when I spoke to them back in March/April. I'm a little surprised it took this long to get them to market.
"So far, despite its promise, only certain IBM X-Servers have been using the technology, and that server business is being sold by IBM to Lenovo"
The things are insanely expensive(*) and may be limited to Windows.
(*)10-100 times the price of equivalent PCIe devices
As AC write, it's hard to get much information about them. This may change when Supermicro roll things out but drivers are likely to be a serious hurdle in non-windows environments.
The shopping, 'chat' and porn channels are prime candidates for lowbitrates as the screen doesn't update much.
Going to H.264 SD would make a substantial difference in the number of channels able to be fitted in one multiplex. At some point it's likely that a decision will be made that this will be the way forward - probably with a 2-3 year leadin on end-of-sale for freeview SD boxes.
"We started with MPEG2 around the end of the last century. H.264 services launched on DTT in 2009 - roughly a decade later"
You missed DTT upgrades knocking out 20-30% of the entire Freeview receiver fleet in 2007 (no upgrade was possible on SetPal-based units as the company went bust) and that H.264 started the same year, just not in the UK as a public broadcast.
On the subject of "mini updates"
I've just had to reflash my 18 month old FreeviewHD system to cope with multiplex updates made in January (which shows how often I use it) - The updates affected 5-10% of ALL HD receivers out there and for most it's not practical to update as it involves soldering a USB port to the board or using a specially made scart-serial cable.
Arquiva never broadcast updates for these units (Vestel T8600s sold under dozens of brand names, including Tecnika and Bush - they were the ONLY available HD box for the first year of FreeviewHD) so owners who paid £59-150 for them are mostly out of luck.
Most people will have thrown the boxes out and bought new ones. It seems the cost of using Freeview is having to get a new decoder every 3-4 years.
> MATLAB?! I've heard MATLAB referred to as "FORTRAN meets APL in car crash",
Yup, but it's not as bad as IDL
> it is useful (very very useful) to prove an algorithm but not as quick as "proper code"
That doesn't stop people using it (or IDL) for production purposes
(IDL is a display language FFS. Asking it to perform complex numerical analysis is madness)
"Wasn't there a rumour that one of the spy agencies had bugged the other by bouncing a laser off a mirror through a window ?"
It's easy enough to do/demonstrate and is an extreme use case of the photophone - the window itself is the mirror, not something inside the room (dirty windows reflect more light).
The lesson to take away from the laser trick and the high speed camera trick is "double glazing + heavy multilayer curtains, if you must have windows at all"
"Isn't this the sort of thing the regulators are supposed to fix?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure; it creates an opening for firms to behave in ways injurious to the public (e.g., producing negative externalities). The agencies are called "captured agencies".
$HINT: Look where Ofcom's executives/staff come from and where they go to after leaving Ofcom.
It's hardly restricted to Ofcom and is a form of corruption. Regulatory staff/ministers should be prohibited by law from working in the industry they regulate for at least a decade after leaving the agency.
"His ISP claims they are not in breach of contract as they are making efforts to rectify the situation."
"Making efforts" is not good enough - they actually have to rectify it
If you give them a reasonable period in an "unfit for purpose" recorded delivery letter (14 days is ok) then that gives them a deadline they have to comply with.
Your contract is with the ISP
"Legally your ISP is still responsible but they don't always have much control over the last mile."
That's a contractual issue between the ISP and Openreach - and is explicitly not your or my legal concern.
If you want to get out of a contract for non-performance (particularly if throughput is shite or there are lots of disconnections), send a recorded delivery letter stating that the performance is not as advertised and therefore is "unfit for the purpose it was sold" - this is a contract breaker. They have a short period to try and remedy the situation, but after that you can close your account without penalty. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but this is the advice I got from one). They may try to go after you for termination fees, but proof of delivery of the letter is a powerful tool in small claims court.
You are NOT bound by Otelo or any of the dispute processes - they can be leapfrogged and small claims actions taken.
You can also invoke the Protection from Harrassment Act 1997 if they're making a real nuisance of themselves.
On the actual problems side:
Some ISPs are far better than others about badgering Openreach to actually fix duff lines. (Mine is pretty good - http://phone.coop), whilst some (ie, the big 6) seem to have some kind of cozy agreement with openreach to not bother and then get their ScriptReading Monkeys to divert/distract/delay.
This is especially important when there's a faulty cable involved. $LARGE ISPs are utterly focussed on "closure rates" and not on patterns of complaints, which means they don't put 2 and 2 together when a large number of customers in the same street are complaining about service issues (or when a single customer is repeatedly complaining about the same problems). BTOR contractors will happily sign off a non-fixed fault as "closed" because they're focussed on closure rates (they should be flagging patterns of fault reports, but they don't, because it might mean they have to spend money.)
A smaller ISP is often willing to keep badgering BT to fix the bloody fault - and there's none of this "you have to wait 2 weeks" bullshit.
My personal experience of cable faults is that it took 8 _years_ of complaining before openreach finally worked out that the underground 7 pair cable into my property was shagged - despite every contractor coming out finding foreign battery, shorted pairs, etc etc and changing to the "least bad" pair over that period - and 4 months for them to actually get around to replacing it.
The F22 is supposed to be the capable fighting system which suppresses enemy airpower.
The F35 is supposed to be the cheap swiss army knife which acts as followup and finishes off the stuff on the ground, etc etc
Except it isn't and it won't - and for the stated mission profile it certainly doesn't need stealth.
If it ever goes up against moderately capable opponents flying F15s (or even A4s) the F35 will LOSE.
The reason New Zealand has one, is that the envionment there is hostile to new ventures. In particular there are no taxation breaks for R&D and the telecommunications environment is expensive thanks to 30 years of monopolistic abuse by the incumbent telco
The former is why many companies jump across the Tasman (Australia offers 150% rebates on R&D) and the latter is why virtually every attempt the NZ govt has made to encourage establishment of things like call centres in Kiwiland has foundered (the exceptions have mainly been "adult services", which the NZ govt definitely hasn't been encouraging).
"you don't disconnect 450VDC under load using a plug unless you really hate your present eyebrow configuration."
For that matter, you don't disconnect ANY high current DC circuit under load - and it's not just your eyebrows which may suffer. The spray of molten metal will see to that.
"The reason we use AC rather than DC is because it's more efficient to transport over long distance, lossy power lines, and more efficient to step up and down in voltage"
ITYM: It's more efficient to use High Voltage to transport over long distance.
HV AC lines have non-insignificant losses when transported over long distances.
DC is better - the higher the frequency, the higher the losses, but the less iron needed in transformers - which is why aircraft systems are 400Hz and older HV electric train systems used 16Hz (AC has one major advantage over DC - any arcs which might be generated self-extinguish every half cycle)
What is true is that it USED to be more efficient to step up/down using AC, but that hasn't been true for over a decade, and that's been leading to quiet changes in power distribution infrastructure worldwide.
+1 for standardised DC supply voltages, but it has to be borne in mind that DC distribution setups have to be built to deal with and control arcs (this is why switches are usually rated for 20% of the DC current vs their AC rating.).
240V DC distribution used to be common in many industrial areas. It was discontinued because it's unsafe - one anecdote I've heard related was that a blown bulb arced internally, and the arc then ate its way through the bulb base, socket, suspending wire and into the ceiling rose before someone managed to shut the power off.
Personal experience from cutting through a live 48V feed (4mm2 wiring) is that the amount of current which flows is scary (the wiring got hot before the fuse at the other end blew and the arc completely destroyed the wirecutters I was using - the feed was supposed to be dead.). On another occasion I watched a 22mm spanner accidentally dropped between 48V busbars get completely destroyed and the resulting arc almost became self-sustaining.
Lower voltages may be less inclined to arc, but they need higher currents, which in turn means heavier cabling. It's all roundabouts and swings.
+1 also for 48V battery, but higher voltages are better in your storage bank because that translates to lower charge/discharge current (longer life, less droop) and thinner wiring (less voltage drop, lower cost). Electric cars often use 600V - 48V is used in telcos because that's about the highest voltage which is "safe" for dry skin to come in contact with. and using heavier wiring isn't a major problem. Higher voltages are regarded as "mains" for all intents and purposes and usually require electrical qualifications to work on and sign off on.)
"Ditto for Australia."
It's even worse for items - such as books/magazines - which are published in the USA but get to Oz/NZ via the UK
They generally arrive 2-4 months after the cover date (bearing in mind that magazines are on sale in the USA 2 months before their cover date) and costing 3 times as much.
The global book publishing copyright/distribution cartels are still in rude health.
"Much cheaper to ship stuff to the States across the Pacific than send it to Europe across the Indian Ocean, around southern Africa and up the eastern Atlantic, less pirates too. Probably shipping larger volume to the States as well."
It's even cheaper+faster to load it onto a train and have it arrive in a marshalling yard in germany 2 weeks later.
The reason we're seeing supercontainer ships on EU runs is largely because it's the only way to bring prices down enough to compete with railfreight - right now thet volumes passing over the EU-russia-china line are modest but they are increasing all the time.
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