Posts by Jonte Monkey

Zuck ghosts metaverse as Meta chases AI goldrush

Re: "Losing" $6 Billion in Five Years

Not $6 billion....$60 billion.

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

Re: Building software is hard...

I think you will find the level of political donations from these areas is much more important than the number of votes.

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 6.6 after running out of excuses for further work

Iron Maiden - Number of the beast

Whilst the video may have aged badly - it is still a cracking song.

Jeff Bezos adds some more overheads to his $485m yacht by taking down historic bridge

Re: Meh

You don't have to include the shops where workers spend their money, as presumably the industries into which the money would otherwise have gone also have workers* (who spend money in shops, pay tax, etc).

* or would have, had all this money not been spent on a yacht.

Re: Meh

He doesn't sit on the money - most of it is in the form of Amazon. He just sells some of Amazon (thereby forgoing any future profits on that bit) and someone else takes the profit instead - this is how investments work. Anyhow, him spending money on a yacht just means some of the world's resources have been spent on a yacht, rather than being spent on whatever the person who invested in Amazon shares would have spent it on. The only people better off are yacht manufacturers - the industries where the investor would have otherwise spent their money are worse off by the same amount.

A more extreme example would be someone throwing rocks at your windows. Window manufacturers will be better off, but other businesses where you would otherwise spend your money are worse off.

TLDR: Trickle down economics is a fiction.

I was fired for telling ICO of Serco track and trace data breach, claims sacked worker

Re: OTOH

But according to the judge, she wasn't finding ways to hurt the company that employed her, as apparently SERCO wasn't her employer.

Non-doms pay 10 times more in income tax than average taxpayer group

Re: Fuck the poor then

They only contribute 2% of the income tax - they also consume somewhat more of the national output. Next you'll be arguing fly tipping is good for the economy as it keeps people employed in cleaning up the mess, whilst cutting red tape for the companies dumping the rubbish and making them more competitive internationally.

Apple patents NEVERSMASH iPHONE for fumbling fondlers

Re: Physics.

Not necessarily. Whilst one motor will only give one degree of freedom in the way it can rotate the phone - this might be enough to stop it landing at an angle that would cause the most damage e.g. on one of its (rounded) corners.

PEAK APPLE: Mystery upstart to hurl iLord from its throne 'by 2020'

Oh noes - Apple have failed to acquire a worthless customer because of the possibility that they might do something differently in the future (I assume you are implying that you will never buy any music again as you already have 14 GB of it - correct me if I'm wrong).

Who was the lucky company that you paid to get all of that music as I'd like to check them out - to see if they are any better than Apple.

Experian subsidiary faces MEGA-PROBE for 'selling consumer data to fraudster'

Re: Experian -- a disgrace in a democracy.

You are right - but the problem is with the banks giving out the loans not giving you that choice - not with the credit reference agency. However, loans would be more expensive without any sort of credit check as they would be far more risky for the lender because they'd only have their own records to go on.

Imagine if you were the bank manager and someone walks into your branch and says "I'd like to borrow £250,000 to buy a house" - would you lend them the cash? What if they have only just opened an account with you last week and you know nothing about them? How long should you make them wait? 6 months? a year? more?

Look, I'm not saying that the current system is perfect but no-one has yet come up with a better one. If you have ideas for a better system - let us know how it would work.

Re: Experian -- a disgrace in a democracy.

Sigh - you have just made my point for me - the information that you haven't given away (from your 35 year old credit agreement) doesn't show up on your report as you didn't sign a contract saying that they can have your data. The information that you have given away does. If you don't want to give your details to the credit reference agencies then don't - just don't expect anyone to lend you money. If you think that lending money to unknown people on the internet is a good idea (which is what the banks would be doing if they didn't use the credit reference agencies) then I've got a bridge I'd like to sell to you.

The direct debit system is a bill payment system - nothing to do with credit except that you can use it to pay back what you have borrowed.

Experian make no money from selling the £2 report that they have to make available by law (if you could do all the admin/fraud prevention checks for less than £2 then I know someone at Experian who would be very interested in talking to you). Yes, they do sell a monitoring service but it is up to you if you think it is good value or not.

Re: In the UK Credit reference agencies have special privleges

Yeah, but if you sign up to the mailing preference service you'll be flagged as such on their database and then your details won't be included when they sell a mailing list. You'd be surpised how strictly the data sharing is policed even between individual departments at Experian (I used to work there). Even different banks get different credit reports depending on what data they are allowed to see.

You already have the ability to correct/annotate your data (via a notice of correction), it's just that most people don't use it. You can also get your report for the princely sum of £2 (which is way below what it costs to process - given the number of anti-fraud checks needed before sending out such a report). This report also includes details of who has looked at your data, when they looked and why (with the exception of enquiries by the police for obvious reasons). I can see a good case for making this service free, but you can bet that the agencies would make it much harder to access this service if this were the case. Also, all of the credit reference data on UK people is held in the UK and can't be transferred abroad due to the data protection laws we have in this country. Getting the status of a credit reference agency in this country is hard and it can easily be taken away.

Google on the other hand has no such restrictions/obligations. If you think that they are the same then you are wrong.

Re: Experian -- a disgrace in a democracy.

You are right - they have no implicit right. You gave them the right when you signed the loan application (you did read the small print right?). If you don't want them to hold data on you don't take out any credit.

Re: In the UK Credit reference agencies have special privleges

They only have access to the full electoral roll for anti-fraud purposes. They use the same cut down down version for all of their marketing services as everyone else. And if you think they are as unregulated as wheel clamping companies you really need to do some research.

Mastercard, Syniverse target holiday payment security with mobile verification system

Re: ?

If they combine this with "find iPhone" (or a similar service for the 'droid) they will get a handy thief locator as presumably they will need to have the phone switched on for the credit card to work.

This is out of hand now: Apple attempts to trademark the LEAF

Re: Apple - maybe not down the rabbit hole but they are certainly up some other hole of their own!

Your tree will only be infringing if it starts to manufacture and sell electronic goods (or jewellery or some other stuff) and brands them with a leaf design like the one in the trademark application...

You do realise that Nike have trademarked a tick, the post office (along with many other companies) have trademarked a colour and some fashion label has a trademark of a crocodile? You do realise that a trademark is not a patent?

Geeze, as someone else pointed out - the level of stupid around here is rising.

GiffGaff: We've got no iPhones, but here's how to cut down your SIM

Re: How?

I believe the abuse is more like going to an 'all you can eat' restaurant and passing plates of food out of the window to your mates... but if you want to to believe differently then carry on.

Virgin Media broadband outage - six days until fixed?

Re: Virgin Media broadband outage - six days until fixed?

It could be hardware or infrastructure that's busted...

Apple iPhone turns five this Friday

Stock App

Who uses it? Anyone who is in a company with a sharesave scheme ... plus anybody else who owns any shares...

There are quite a few of us I'd imagine.

Job-slashing HP 'to hire 15,000 staff in India' – report

"I can confirm we have not announced any plans to expand our operations in India"

In other words the Indian job market is looking up.

Facebook IPO plunge sparks tidal wave of lawsuits

Re: Brains not required

Well lets see if it gets thrown out then shall we...

And why should "stupidity" have no right to sue? Do you think that fraud is ok? Wait until someone scams you out of some cash and see how you feel then. Or does your ego make you think that you are too clever to be scammed? (admittedly the bar was quite low on this one but that isn't the point)

Insurance firm pushes out iPhone app that rates driving ability

Re: "removing all the signs and lines leads to safer roads"

"That said its been proved removing all the signs and lines leads to safer roads"

Could you provide a link to the data / research paper. I'd be interested in reading that. Thanks.

Scottish news site admits coding mishap caused outage

"improvement in procedures"

that'll be doing some testing then...

Real Time Information trial to begin April 2012

(untitled)

Looks like the market for contractors should pick up a bit in Feb 2013...

German Green extracts tracking info from mobile operator

re: It always makes me laugh...

It is a ruse. You'll also notice that it only takes them a few minutes to crack "military-grade" encryption.

i.e. message to all criminal types - don't bother with encryption as the police can crack it in about five minutes. It's ok to phone the police and taunt them from your mobile as long as you hang up before thirty seconds has elapsed - they'll never be able to find you if you do this...

EU will change e-signatures laws to boost electronic invoice usage

EDI was/is rubbish...

...but only for certain values of rubbish. It's hard to get right (or expensive to have set up properly) but it is very bandwidth friendly - mainly due to it's pre-internet heritage.

Also, I'd be interested to see your really simple address definition.

Things like this appear easy until you get into the gory details (rural addresses, different international address standards, BFPO addresses, etc). Just writing a routine to reliably interpret addresses is non-trivial.

My lost Cobol years: Integrating legacy management

hello world...

200-300 lines - you must be joking. Just Google "Hello World Cobol" - the first example I found was about 20 lines long (and at least half of the lines in this example were completely redundant).

Broadband advertising speed gap widens

BT

What gets me is that BT thinks that pointing to "ongoing investment" is in any way an answer to the fact that actual speed is lower than advertised speed. I'm not paying for speeds that I might achieve in the future, I'm paying for these speeds now.

Firefox engine outraces self after Jäger shot

@MarkOne ...half truths?

It is only a half truth if you consider Opera to be a competitor.

Revealed: Government blows thousands on iPhone apps

Re: If you're unemployed...

You do know that some of us had a job before we were made redundant?

'The internet's completely over', declares petulant Prince

title

Oh, I'm pretty sure it'll be on the internet pretty sharpish...

Job club firm loses thousands of details

I just took the test and failed...

I was only born here and have lived here all my life... quite well educated too.

Most of those questions are bizarre and have no relevance to living in the UK. Who the f*ck cares what other names the Church of England can go by, and why would I care how many hours children are allowed to work - if I ever have any children or wish to employ any, I'll find out. Maybe I should have followed my last job when it was outsourced to India - apparently I'm not fit to live here...

Google vanishes Android apps from citizen phones

Permission...

You mean like when you gave them permission by signing up to the terms and conditions of the Google application store?

It should also be pointed out that If you didn't agree with their terms and conditions then you don't have permission to access their store and so it would be YOU who would be in breach of the computer misuse act.

Autopsy on wacky Jacqui's ID astroturfing

By my calculations that is over £66 per survey respondent!

They could have could have issued them a free ID card and paid them £30 for their opinions and it still would have worked out cheaper.

Apple director 'disgusted' by Jobsian health secrets

Jerry York

It would seem that Jerry York had worse health problems...