Posts by PhilipN 1689 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2010
With today’s mobile phones we do not actually need to be in other places quite so much, or to get there quite so fast, and in any event there is so much to do on the phone to pass the time productively (such as this), I would be happy to see a canal system instead of HS2. Indeed is there not a network of canals (originally) carpeting the entire country which could be revivified with a tiny fraction of the HS2 budget?
Going off topic but now I wonder, since I have not been to those parts of the country for years, have all the railway lines closed in the ‘60’s by diktat of Dr. Beeching been repurposed? Cycle tracks - there won’t be any steep hills? Time was you could get almost anywhere by rail. Or canal.
Read the labels in supermarkets. Nine times out of ten that lemon (or whatever) flavour is not lemon. Like most of the packaged foods on the shelves it comes from a chemical factory. Less than 50 years to get this way and we are not dropping like flies. No - we are thriving. So MacD is fine. In fact with a smidgen of protein and a soupçon of veggie is better than a lot of junk food. Particularly fine when flushed through the digestive system by a 1.5 litre Big Gulp of Pepsi, or Coke (or was that Burger King?).
On the other hand, who mentioned tomatoes in Spain? *******! It is YEARS since I ate a tomato which tasted like a tomato. And don’t get me started on strawberries!
*Poor Bloody Stockholder.
Here's the sequence when a bid comes in :
Top priority - Executives check their terms of service and see either (1) how much they have to be paid to get lost or (2) how soon they go on the dole (welfare). No need to check the insurance cover for executive negligence since that will have been made watertight years ago,
Second priority - Call the lawyers to introduce a poison pill which for decades the company did not need.
Third priority - Get ready for a pitched battle in court over the poison pill. Lawyers win again.
Fourth priority - Call your golf club buddies or anybody to act as a white knight to soak up shares from wavering stockholders at a preliminary stage of the battle (before the bidder ups its offer). Clandestine deal to buy back their shares if the bid collapses.The arbitrageurs will move in anyway whether you ask them or not. They win.
Fifth priority - Call your main competitors (or any other company big enough to make the whole dish indigestible) to see if a quick merger or takeover may be agreed with guaranteed jobs for the executives.
Sixth - Engage advisers to say the target company is ridiculously undervalued, They get paid.
Seven - Dig behind the sofa to revalue assets which have been underperforming for years. Plan to write them off again after the bid fails.
Eight - Embark on long overdue restructuring and cost-saving to diminish future prospects for a new parent company.
Nine - Same advisers as in 6 asked to advise whether the bid is good for shareholders. Pay them. Then sack them if the answer is "yes". Engage new advisers.
Finally step back to see if the deal is actually good for stockholders.
Did I miss anything?
..and I shall find a way to get you. Whatever it takes. Including causing extradition proceedings in a foreign country knowing that a wealth of material would have to be produced in court there, giving our junior rottweilers lots more to pour over.**
Next they'll start instituting proceedings against any Huawei executive caught speeding. Or chewing gum in church.
**Customarily the courts in England do not like the process of cross-fertilising different cases with evidence produced in only one of them. But this is the Leader of the Free World, so what do I know?
What a load of blah. Course it is wrong for a company to propose more alluring outfits but the good ladies are quite adept at disporting their charms voluntarily. It only takes one of them to kick off the competition. Go on, girls - admit it.
What if the company had asked "them" to dress demurely? That is precisely what the other half of humanity has been fighting against for centuries.
Scratch my eyes out, ladies, but if the company had only hinted that they might be on display and the target of cameras ......
....... and, as an aside, what precisely is wrong with that?
Pardon my cynicism but driving on the wrong side of the road is dangerous but how with eyes on the road ahead do you get to kill someone, given the instinct to brake, swerve whatever on the part of both drivers.
Could she possibly have been seeing double? No.... no way... not a chance.....
No, that’s not what I meant.
This is reportedly similar to what a girl (one of those freaky humans who smell but don’t stink** and with bumps in strange places) said to a very young Bill Gates, presumably still wearing the same pullover he had had on since dropping out: words to the effect “at least you could wash your hair...”
** Acknowledgement to Dr. Johnson.
Yet they lived in prehistoric conditions in mud-baked dwellings, dressed in homespun, in the middle of the desert and, obviously, no running (or flushing) water.**
**Don't want to give Disney ideas but this could be the follow-up saga to Planet of the Apes (original).
Probably because he was greedy and pushed his luck.
Years ago I heard from a mate in the payables unit of a large U.K. company that, routinely, bills below a certain threshold would just be paid blindly because the resources required to check, cross-check etc. outweighed the (relatively) minimal cost, especially if it meant verifying with other departments.
Coupled with the fact that - came across this more than once with other guys I knew - many large companies particularly those with payments crossing borders** would have VERY shonky invoicing systems in place “somewhere” which meant management were very nervous about a lowly payables clerk - or anybody - asking too many questions..
**Pssst .... petroleum-related.
If Apple et al may be even remotely likely to be held liable for conspiracy* they would be the target of massive lawsuits back home.
*Only needs one “proven” (I.e. in a civil case better then 50-50) instance of violence deriving from the use of the app - now they know what it could be used for - to found a claim.
I have always wondered, given the existence of nuclear-powered subs for decades, we do not yet have nuclear power plants the size of a truck. Taking the lead from the honourable simonlb I came across:
https://www.powermag.com/a-thorium-molten-salt-reactor-when-and-where-you-need-it/
(which may be a site already well known to aficionados).
I learnt of Calder Hall when a wee lad. Almost 2020 and the promise of nuclear energy is within touching distance (as it always has been since then).
Oh dear. Seems like everybody believes Western Media nonsense and repeats unsustainable hypotheses as informed reportage. Incidentally every day I drive along the same roads in Hong Kong to go to my office, shop at the same supermarkets, eat at the same restaurants etc etc ETC as ever.
Many protesters have been arrested for breaking the law - not for protesting pure and simple.
The original cause of the disturbances was unilateral action on the part of the HK legislature. The Central Peoples Government had nothing to do with it. Hence withdrawal of the bill as soon as China got involved without any loss of face that side of the border.
The Hong Kong & Macao Affairs Office held an unprecedented press conference a few weeks ago and stated categorically that this is HK’s problem and HK with its own police force will have to fix it.
I could go on, and probably will have to, since I expect the same idiotic comments as above and which follow directly from idiotic reports and comments in and on the BBC, the Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (yes I read all of them online in HK every morning without Big Brother smashing the front door down).
By the way the reference to “the tightening noose of Communist Chinese laws and customs” is unbelievably stupid.
Never been an FB. (Brits will note the resonance)
I believe those of us who took up with the Internet long ago will have seen the original Facebook and thought "Ho-Hum. So what else is new?" and then noted the "new" aspects were the totally creepy ones. Then wondered how Zuck & Co. could assume that everybody is a low-watt bulb.*
*Seems they were largely correct.
My thoughts exactly, although I am neither an engineer nor a nerd so I may be shot down in flames .... uh ... yeah ... but - it was George Bernard Shaw who said with one watch you always know the time, but with two (which are always slightly different) you never know. With a third, and fourth etc. how does that get any better?
Surely the third system should be the pilot. Could the two planes which crashed not have survived since by all accounts the pilots were trying to do the right thing instinctively? Ok I am really sticking my neck out but is it not basic flying skills at least to maintain or restore a level flight path, no 21st Century hocus pocus required?
And if not, why not?
Agreed. Either some (many) thousands of customers bought rubbish knock-offs and could not tell the difference (!) - even though Apple products are supposed to be sold at premium prices - or did not care; or in the words of the Petticoat Lane spiv they all “fell off the back of a lorry” and were in fact the real thing which escaped out of the back door of the factory, or said lorry.
If it was not the real thing but passed muster on QA/QC bases : That is very difficult to achieve. It takes many thousands of man-hours on the part of Apple and its suppliers so - bloody incredible!
But still does not make sense because I thought every iThingy is supposed to call home and verify itself online with Apple before it is activated.
Fundamentally though I am shocked that such a high level of entrepreneurial capitalism should end with incarceration. Hopefully when the team has paid its debt to society they set up legitimately and market under a “This is not an iPhone” blurb. I’d buy one,
I tried the very first Sailfish phone and liked it - no, I wanted to like it and sort of did 'cos it was new and different, but it quickly became a nuisance.
I am struggling to find a reason to dip my toe in the Scandinavian waters again and maybe I will partly out of sympathy, partly because yes competition is good. But tired cliches such as "biggest update since...." do not help. Nor do cosmetic tweaks.
And as many punters on this site have said every micro-iteration to today's phones makes them more and more yawn-worthy.
Dear Jolla - give me a reason to change.
Or, more recently:
"The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his." (Golden Bough 1.1 Para 3 line 1).
The following text has equally pithy and disturbing parallels. e.g.
"such a custom savours of a barbarous age". Really?
Seconded. Not only that but previously I only wanted to know “How fast?” and never knew him to say much. Turns out he is articulate and smart and conveys complex notions easily. AND he turns out even to have been not merely a steady driver but a perhaps the mainstay of the entire project.
At the risk of lowering the tone of this whole item: Andy Green for Prime Minister!
I had to lend an ancient 5.25 inch floppy drive to the local data recovery outfit (a law suit I was involved in professionally). They didn’t have one. Zero result.
I tried myself with a disk(ette)* tool bought online. Result after 2 days : zero. I calculated 6 months to check just one floppy.
Question: these were floppies from an old Xerox word processor. Anyone know what formatting they used? There was nothing online.
OR Question 2 : how could the opponent have wiped clean a number of floppies - shove them in the microwave? Place a dynamo magnet on top of the pile?
*First time I have used that word for ...... Shoot!
I was on a bus going through the Aldwych when Concorde went over. Less than a couple thousand feet? Believe the idea was to gauge Londoners’ reaction to the decibel level. I was virtually still a kid and loved it!*
*but then as an actual kid lived in one of the flight paths out of Greenham Common. The windows shook way in advance, allowing time to run out and watch them go over
among the usual balls. Thank you AP.
So many industries are so tightly integrated that they qualify as global not national. IT is a prime example.
Similarly (with apologies for even mentioning the topic) there is no “UK car industry”. It is a continental industry with massive volumes of parts and bits flowing across many borders in all directions. Are you listening, Brexiteers?
