Re: There is no breach
So they do, but in the UK I'd have to pay £6.99 a month for the priveledge, not worth it for the times I don't use paypal.
I know the fee includes a whole bunch of other "benefits", but I don't have a use for those.
232 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jan 2010
This is the same problem I had.
I opened a Cahoot account, now defunct, because it offered a virtual card, which eventually got withdrawn.
I then found Neteller, who also eventually stopped providing virtual card services.
Other banks have "promised" them over the years, but its never come to anything signficant enough for me to notice.
That's one of the things I've always found confusing over the "gig economy" and the contractor vs employee "debate". This is mostly rhetorical, and I could have entirely misunderstood something about it.
To me, the two roles are different, and, probably incorrectly, clearly defined in my mind.
Contractors : Take jobs as they see fit, have to cover themselves in terms of medical coverage etc, can accept or decline jobs on a whim, hence flexible.
Employees : Get assigned jobs they can not refuse, under normal circumstances, without consequence, employer pays for medical coverage etc, required to work as directed by employer, hence rigid.
So, where someone wants to do a few hours here and there, why would they not want to be contractors?
Conversely, those that want to do it as a full time job, why wouldn't they want to be employees?
And, importantly, why do officials, and possibly the companies, not want to offer both?
This is my "argument" with counterfeit goods.
If its fake and says "Apple" or "Rolex", thats one thing, generally because people are stupid and don't question why they're paying so little for something, "its a bargain!!"
If its fake and says "Bpple" or "Bolex", then, as long as someone isnt trying to claim its a 'mistake at the factory', you know its a fake and the price reflects that.
This is entirely one of the reasons why I dont get why stock price is, in general every day terms, equated to a businesses ability to function normally.
Unless the business needs to issue more stock to raise funds, it is, surely, no different to owning a house in negative equity, in such that it only matters if you are trying to sell the house, it is no reflection on your ability to pay the mortgage and other bills.
We had a customer who deployed, what was basically software intended for LAN use, directly on the internet.
We pointed this out and said it most definitely wasnt advisible.
Our recommendation was that he lock it away behind even basic HTTP password protection.
His response? "Oh yea, we're going to use SSL".
I'm fairly sure that, after a year, it was still exposed, SSL-less and no sign of any additional password protection.
Just a case of convenience over sense.
"It could become impossible to write anything more than 'Hello World' without employing a lawyer to sort though all the licensing and rights issues."
I am not sure it goes quite that far though.
Oracles argument is that Google has taken their APIs and re-implmented them in a way that prevents Oracle from monetizing it, ie they have taken Oracles "work" and provided an alternative that is a copy, a bit like the difference between a genuine Rolex and a knock off "Bolex".
Writing software that uses an API would be unaffected, however an alternative version of the API would, think "printf" in GCC libC and Win32 C runtime libraries.
The people that should be really worried by an Oracle win are projects like WINE or ReactOS, where they are directly providing the same APIs but with their own implementations.
Broadly resembled? Isn't Oracles argument basically "if it looks like a duck.."?
Such that having an API with the same name and declaration means its identical, even if said functions did two totally different things.
Next you know they will be claiming that source code file names are copyrightable.
This seems to be exactly the kind of work most people envisage when you say "contractor", yet the Government conveniently ignores it and assumes "contractor" means "high paid permanent staff with tax avoidance".
Also, can HMRC not some how manage to make MPs all fall within IR35, after all, they are all fixed term contractors, no doubt with some on the fiddle.
I get the impression HR always believes that entry level positions, with entry level wages, are only wanted by those without experience, which they mostly view as the young.
I mean, why would a 50+ year old want to work in a job that pays them £20k, or less, a year? Surely that is their choice.
That's certainly how it's supposed to work, yes.
Reality is that people vote for parties, often blindly, at all levels.
The worst part is that the party policies aren't always the candidates, and vice versa, but if you are 51% Conservative/Labour/Other, then it seems to be close enough for many.
The very nature of APIs is that they are meaningless interfaces to the actual code underneath.
If you have a function called "get_value" in more than 1 language that does not make them the same.
Equally so, to common sense at least, the same declaration with 2 completely different implementations underneath is also not the same.
A, probably bad, analogy is the existence of 2 different houses with the same design and colour front door does not mean you can go in to the one you don't own and claim it is yours.
Obviously Google chose to use the same function names so that Java would just work in their JVM without Android devs having to rewrite anything, but they should have written the actual code behind the APIs blindly.
Your claim seems incomplete:
"I am appalled at their hypocrisy and patronizing attitude towards the unwashed masses who MUST be preached what's good for them, because they're too stupid to make up their minds"
That can only be true if you also say "whilst claiming to be unbiased", otherwise they are doing nothing more than anyone else that is trying to convince you of a particular argument.
After all, the popular papers, websites and organisations of the "unwashed masses" are only doing the same thing, but from the other side of the argument, and that should be no less appalling.
I thought changing my address with my bank was easy.
Until it turned out they had ballsed things up, for no reason that anyone can explain nor has any rational reason.
Went into the branch, Lloyds, because doing it online requires you to print out a form and post it off, changed address, got given printed acknowledgement, sorted.
Wait a bit.
Get new credit card, due to expiry, and I had gained an extra middle name!
Some how, some random buffoon had managed to duplicate my existing middle name, so I had it twice!
This change had proceeded to replicate to one of the other banks in the group, Halifax, incidentally the one that had sent me a new card.
Couldn't change the details with Halifax because "i wasn't set up for phone banking".
Went back into Lloyds who fixed it, which was the point I discovered it was duplicated, everything until now just had an initial. Gave up on Halifax and just left the card to expire.
Some months after it was fixed, Lloyds sent me a replacement card STILL with the extra initial on it.
Let that one expire too.
Problem now gone, apparently the credit card departments dont get updates from the banking department except when its to propagate mistakes.
And there in lies the problem.
For all possible combinations, its only 3, one of them is viewed as exploiting the system, even if unintentionally.
True freelancers and "freelance contractors", i.e. short term contractors, would seem to be the ones being punished, no matter what they do, where as "permanent" contractors, are seen as basically employees.
Take MPs for example, they look exactly like contractors to me, but probably consider themselves freelancers at best, or IR35-exempt at worst.
It's like the "gig economy" workers, some want to be employees with all it entails and some want to be free agents, yet also with full benefits as if they were employed.
But the question is, what does count as a legal signature?
Putting your name at the end of an email? "Yours, Joe Bloggs"
Putting an image of your actual signature?
Using a 3rd party like DocuSign?
Putting your name and not disclaiming it? As in this email example.
Can you avoid signing anything by not putting your name at the end?
Do people then argue that, because you sent it and your name is in the From field, then you have effectively signed it anyway?
It is one thing to set out to deliberately sign something, but something quite different to accidentally do so without intending it.
I'm not advocating for or against either, it just makes me wonder.
You're reading too much into what I said.
I am simply talking about when something HAS happened, such as a person has gone missing, and plod comes along with a photo and currently someone has to manually watch the CCTV footage.
Recognizing a FACE is different to recognizing a IDENTITY.
One sees and understands it is a face, it can follow said face and knows where said anonymous face went.
The other sees a face, knows who it is and can be used to know who is where and what they are doing.
Yes, it could still be used to track where a person went, if someone manually uses the system that way, hell a mobile phone does that all on its own, giving away bluetooth and wifi information as you walk around.
Question is, is it identifying people, as in getting name etc, or just recognizing and tracking?
You can use facial recognition to monitor where everyone goes without trying to identify or look them up in any way.
Being able to automatically see where someone has gone, say a child kidnapper or just someone with dementia, is a lot quicker than having to manually sit there and trawl through CCTV footage, and in neither case have you identified the person by name.
Ah ok, I stand corrected.
However, your explanation is still flawed.
Open Source and Free, as in speech, Software do not concern themselves with the complexities of the code, nor of your ability to modify or build it.
An Open Source project could be simple and easy to understand and build, and a Free Software project might be very complex, but both COULD be built by people with the correct skill set. Neither is necessarily expected to be shipped for self-building, nor is either required to be.
You might not want, or need, to build Firefox, but equally, you probably wouldnt want to try building LibreOffice, a Free as in speech, project either.
Can is not the same as should.
You made my brain hurt.
I think you have your definitions backwards and too distinct.
Free software is software that is free of cost to the end user. It can be closed or open source.
Open source software is software that has its source code openly published so that anyone can take it, modify it if they wish, add new features and publish it back or just build their own copy.
Which then makes me wonder, exactly what falls into the "recreational amenities" category if it requires "physical activity"? And, for that matter, exactly who has to perform the activity?
Do they grant such licenses to "football" or baseball arenas?
What about a popup bar in a park, most of those being active are kids, whilst the adults sit around drinking, hardly physical activity there either.
Maybe they all qualify by selling enough food.
"What sells windows (apart from being pre-installed) is ability to run stuff even from 16 bit windows."
Good luck with that. Almost all PCs sold these days run the 64-bit version of Windows, which, natively. completely lacks 16-bit support.
That just leaves businesses making a choice between very legacy software and running modern, more memory hungry, applications within a limited address space.
"Not only did every political party send me crap as soon as I was on the electoral register (despite opting out of the public version)"
That will be because they are part of a group that has access to the Full register, most political "entities" have access on request. It's quite a long list too.
The "public" or Open register is the cut down version sold to companies.
But how can you tell you've been discriminated against if someone decides to not use your services without you knowing?
You go searching for, lets say for arguments sake, an accountant.
You check them out on Google, so you get some idea if they are any good.
You find an old report about how they were accused, and may or may not have been convicted, of defrauding customers a long while ago.
Do you still use them? or do you pass them over without ever having spoken to them?
Their policy statement lets you know, up front, what they want to do with your data. My brief searching about it suggests this is valid, and therefore IS a privacy policy.
They appear to be offering you two choices when it comes to data permissions, either accept it, or refuse it and don't use the card, their services or anything else they may be offering that requires your data.
By granting them permission, you know what you are granting them permission to do, it is their choice to be basically giving a binary choice. Hopefully other companies will offer a more granular approach, the old "allow us" and "give to 3rd parties" choices.
In theory, however, you should be able to write to them and explicitly revoke the use of your data with 3rd parties or even other businesses within their own group, except where they are legally required to do so.
Either way, it will be forbidden under the overly draconian and knee jerk changes that get made to appease the thin skinned.
It is quite definitely one thing to be rude or even offensive towards something someone has done or said, but quite another to make death threats or harass someone just for who they are.
And Microsoft dont, and wont, care about old legacy apps that fail to run.
You cant run ancient 16bit or DOS software on x64 Windows for example, and most of Microsofts more recent shifts have been towards UWP which means 1 program for x64, x86 and ARM without changes to the source.