Posts by Don Dumb 462 publicly visible posts • joined 20 May 2013
@Mephistro - "Patenting code, patenting numbers, patenting basic geometric shapes."
None of which has happened here as this is a Design Patent A.K.A. a 'Registered Design'. It is purely a specific design. It still may be really f***ing stupid but it is not a Patent.
@AC - "Patents are supposed to allow innovation by providing a monopoly on the invention for a limited time."
This. Is. A. Design Patent.
As others have had to point out below this is a 'Design Patent', which here in the UK we call (IMHO much more helpfully) a 'Registered Design'. The US patent system is abysmal but if we are going to criticise it we really need to understand what Patents are, and are not, before we wade in. This seems to be part of the reason that things haven't been fixed, few know the difference between Copyright and Patent, before we throw in pesky things like Registered Designs or Trademarks.
@tfewster - "I truly believe I'm colour and gender blind"
I suggest you submit yourself to academic studies on unconscious bias, you might not have any but it's much more likely that you are just not aware that you do (the clue is the 'un' in unconscious). The results of the studies may interest you.
Most truly believe they wouldn't simply follow an order to kill an innocent person, it turns out that the vast majority actually would - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
You don't know what you're capable of.
@Pascal Monett - " I am currently conducting interviews for a training position for a customer.....I try to avoid looking at the personal details until I have gone through the experience section in order to avoid bias. When I have an opinion on the CV, then I check who it is and where they live"
Could you not 'blind' the CVs? Get someone else to strip the personal information you don't want to see. You can then look through all the CVs make your decisions and then go back to the originals to take it further.
In the UK we now have anonymised applications, not sure if it's universal but it does cover public sector positions. The name (and perhaps a few other details) is not presented to the recruiter until they have sifted the applications for interview. It's a simple way to remove most unconscious bias, at least before the interview.
Most of the things this malware does can only be done if the user is running as admin and accepts the prompts to install software. How many enterprises are letting the users do that?
This would be bad but then most malware would have already defeated an organisation who is already running such an unsafe and unprotected network.
The process to install the patch is missing the most difficult bit -
Step #1 - vendor produces and issues patch on their website.
I didn't think that the process of patching sounded that difficult. However, this is all completely academic if the vendor doesn't ever consider supporting the device, let alone issue patches for a 'reasonable' period - that reasonable period being a lot longer than the support durations of even most IT company policies.
People expect appliances to last for longer than a decade, if they are a Thing On The Internet, that means they need to be supportable for that period (either by the manufacturer or by a third party). If the government is serious about 'Cyber' being one of the big threats, then they need to back this up with policy and regulations.
Patching just isn't something that the novice is aware they actually need to do and the old fashioned principle of "if it's not broken don't fix it" conflicts with the principle of regular patching. Getting people to do the patching isn't anywhere near as difficult as getting them to even consider it in the first place.
I've noticed in the last week or two (oddly since the Olympics) that many fewer videos on the BBC site demand flash on a desktop. iPlayer hasn't for a year, mobiles have non-flash videos but for some reason the news site was acting all stubborn on desktop.
My quick straw poll of a couple of news sites shows that they have finally moved off Flash. I imagine there'll still be a few pages that hold out but this was the reason for most consternation.
Dare I say that I think Flash is finally dying, after years of infections and false alarms.
@AC "Yahoo had half a billion users ?"
If you count all the companies they run email for (at least Sky and BT here in the UK) then they might well run 500m *accounts*.
Naturally every account is assumed to be an active user because no one would have a redundant or dormant account.
@AC - Nope, just checked and the banner at the top says "BT Yahoo! Mail"
Nothing on the BT news site says anything about the Yahoo breach (quelle suprise) and I have had no email advising me whether I am affected. Obviously changed password anyway.
Feel very much like I am paying for my lazyness in getting off BT email.
I find Microsoft's refusal to publish useful update information annoying and deeply suspcious. However for the rollup update patch they do give information behind the first link in the knowledgebase article.
September's rollup update (3185278) includes these updates:
"This update includes quality improvements. No new operating system features are being introduced in this update. Key changes include:Improved support for the Disk Cleanup tool to free up space by removing older Windows Updates after they are superseded by newer updates.
Improved compatibility of certain software applications.
Removed the Copy Protection option when ripping CDs in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format from Windows Media Player.
Addressed issue that causes mmc.exe to consume 100% of the CPU on one processor when trying to close the Exchange 2010 Exchange Management Console (EMC), after installing KB3125574.
Addressed issue that causes the Generic Commands (GC) to fail upon attempting to install KB2919469 or KB2970228 on a device that already has KB3125574 installed."
I prefer this to having 6 updates. Of course there might be 'more' updates included within the pack they aren't talking about...
@Chris G - "Given the level of spending for both the plane and pilot, I wonder if an air bagsystem would help incorporated into the seat and the pilot's pressure suit."
I think the seat already fires airbags that squeeze the pilot firmly into the seat (including pushing the arms close to the body) before launching. Whether there's any scope to extend the system to support the helmet I don't know.
As others have pointed out the simplest solution would be to reduce the weight of the helmet.
"Jonathan Edwards (Brit triple jumper) once said he forgot how he jumped to break records and never managed it ever again."
Remember test pilots aren't young.
Jonathan Edwards' best jumping isn't a great example, he was the best at-doing-his-thing of his generation. Athletes often have a golden period where everything is at its best. The gradual degeneration of the body (from about 18 years old) being overcome by training and increasing experience, after a point the degeneration wins (it always wins eventually). In track and field, the sweet spot is often only a few years. With Edwards, his sweet spot resulted in him jumping longer than anyone had, twice, in the same afternoon. He was still largely untouched for the best part of a decade and went over 18m quite often but didn't again ever jump as far as either of the jumps he did that afternoon. He is still the holder of the longest jump and the world record* a record that has lasted almost 2 decades. He says he forgot, in a sense the inevitable happened but it must have seemed to him like he had just lost the knack.
For fighter pilots, the flying training is intense, partly because there's exams to qualify from and they want to know how someone is in an intense environment (e.g. a war). But to my knowledge the most intense training is long before a pilot gets trained on their specific plane and flying role. So they never really know how good they are. I reckon a lot has to do with the more experienced pilots being quite a bit more efficient with their effort than the talented youngsters. So it must really seem like they aren't as good but they are probably just (unconsciously) wisely doing less.
If you will, Jimmy Anderson was a quicker bowler when young but much more effective when older.
* - the longest jump is farther than the record as it was wind assisted to a degree sufficient to not qualify for the record.
@MJI - Formula 1 is shared between Sky and terrestrial and apparently has no protection - here the list of sporting events covered by category A and B listing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom_Code_on_Sports_and_Other_Listed_and_Designated_Events
What this shows is that even though F1 is a terribly run sport they are reluctant to go completely off free to air so understand that there is benefit in many people seeing their races.
The Six Nations is in a weird position, it has no protection - the group that run it do know the value of it, they keep it to February/March partly because few other sports are prominent. The Unions also know that as a smaller sport trying to grow, putting it on Sky would kill the sport as an annual event. It's also a case that the England games are far more valuable than the Welsh and Scottish (not a judgement of quality, just the advertising revenue), so the other Unions would be reluctant to have their position weakened by the negotiations for England games, currently they can dictate much more to the BBC and ITV as equals with the English Union than if they all sold out to Sky - each weekend would all revolve around the England game (moreso than now). So the 6 Nations going to Sky might not be in the interests of most of the 6 Nations and would undermine the Unions' attempts to grow the sport. So they've half sold out to ITV and the BBC.
Naturally Wales is keen on the government to put protected status on the 6 Nations, as without it, they might end up with only the World Cup as a chance to watch their national sport live, and only every 4 years. There have been suggestions that the protected List is very much protecting middle class cares at the expense of what the working class and the provinces care about (notice that there are 2 horse races protected on a short list)
Everyone has seen what has happened to Cricket (Tests were massive in 2005, went to Sky and much less notable afterwards) and few are foolhardly enough to follow the same path.
@Rimpel - "It's unlikely any of you actually counted towards the viewing figures - do you realise that they are just estimates based on monitoring a few specific households?"
Yes, er, that was my point, obviously so badly made you felt the need to reply twice.
I'm aware the stats are based on a few specific households and the house I was in was unlikely to be one of them, I was merely avoiding making the assumption that the house I was at was not one of them.
@AC - "I've never understood the appeal of watching TV of someone else cooking, you can't exactly smell or taste the food."
I can't eat the foods I really want to very often but seeing people who are good at making them and make them in creative ways, does give me enjoyment. Sort of food porn I guess.
I must admit I don't like most cookery programmes but GBBO seems to have the right mix of entertainment (including the time pressure and cooking difficulty) and some really tasty looking food. A lot of the skill seems to be the creative/engineering aspect.
"If it interests you, get in the kitchen, experiment and actually cook for someone."
And guess what, the SO watches GBBO, gets some ideas and goes and tries to make them. Some people seem to think GBBO's just making Victoria sponge every week but it does introduce things we've never heard of and we have made them since.
It's hardly the greatest show on earth, but it's an enjoyable hour's television.
@Credas - It is simple Dacre bollocks, I'm betting only the 'talent' got first class, the rest of the BBC workers wouldn't, most of the athletes didn't even get First Class on their return (they *were* all on the same plane). Considering how much the country enjoys and watches the Olympics, I think the coverage was money well spent (perhaps not Inverdale)
"Personally I'm delighted that it's one of the few major sporting events that's still available FTA in this country"
And that's because it has a government protected status. Only a few sporting events have 'Category A' protected status but those that do *must* be shown live on FTA channels.
I believe the current list is:
FIFA World Cup finals (all matches); UEFA European Football Championship finals (all matches); FA Cup Final (both men's and women's); Scottish Cup Final (applies to Scotland only); Grand National; Epsom Derby; Rugby league Challenge Cup final; Rugby union World Cup final; Wimbledon Championships men's and women's finals & wheelchair finals (not the whole tournament); Olympic & Paralympic Games (both summer and winter) - really not that many.
Everything else is free to take BT or Murdoch's dime, although there is a 'B' list where there must be highlights or delayed coverage on FTA television. It's interesting that some sports deliberately chose to argue for themselves to be removed from the list so that they could take Murdoch money and have become far less a part of public consciousness as a result (Test Cricket).
When you remember that the "most watched" stats do not include people watching in the pub or outdoors on big screens you realise that the 'most watched' are biased heavily against major sport events.
The England vs Wales World Cup Rugby match, on a Saturday night was likely to have had a higher number of people watching in the UK but a large proportion of viewers wouldn't have been counted. I was, for instance, watching at a party at a friend's house, I don't believe any of us (other than the householders) would have counted towards the viewing stats.
Shows like EastEnders and GBBO are watched primarily by people in their own homes so always come out high up in the stats. When sporting events that seem to have been watched by almost everyone have much lower rating than you would expect.
Confession - I do actually enjoy GBBO, not all of the weeks and not the early rounds, I find it to be a wonderful food porn. I've found that now I don't eat cake very often, but still have a ridiculously sweet tooth, I can genuinely get enjoyment from watching people make cakes. I also enjoyed the fact that the shows didn't really get into the personalities or back stories and didn't seem to be overly dramatised. or cut throat.
@Ledswinger - Do you know what an ad hominem is?
It isn't an ad hominem attack to state that research performed by the writer of their own article isn't independent research. I didn't say that I disagreed with the results (I genuinely don't know), merely that I would prefer to see a better source of information, which might just be objective a well carried out. A tax lawyer is not a sufficiently objective researcher on the subject of tax, was the paper peer reviewed by academics?
Seeing as you must have seen all these reports, how about linking to one, from maybe an academic in a peer reviewed publication?
From the article written by 'Out-Law.com' - "said tax investigation expert Fiona Fernie of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com.....
The figures come from a recent survey by Pinsent Masons"
Wow, from such an esteemed research organisation as a law firm. I don't know how you could possibly think to criticise the journalism.
El Reg, this is poor - I would have thought that on a site like this we would at least get independent research referenced, even when doing comment pieces arguing a clearly pre-determined point. Not a survey by *the author* to support (in this case seemingly advertise) the author's business.
Most people on here know how easy it is to do a survey that gets the result the surveyor wants, so please at least try and use an apparently independent one. Even though they are often just as bad, at least you're not insulting our intelligence by being quite so blatant about it.
I'm beginning to think listening to Radio 4's 'More or Less' should be compulsory in schools. El Reg, at least credit us with being able to see through 'Think Tank Tactics'
@Voland's right hand - Fair comment, have an upvote.
You make a good point but I don't agree that it should be *public* knowledge but the knowledge of a properly independent organisation, with proper controls. WADA *should* be that body, if they haven't done their job properly then either reform or replace. I was unfair you do have relevant knowledge, the general public (myself included) don't. Some athletes earlier this year were taking advantage of this by publishing their test results, I suspect cynically knowing that it would 'incriminate' others who weren't cheating but whose result appear to be outside acceptable levels.
I don't agree that being an athlete should force your medical record (exemptions are ultimately that) into being public. I don't agree that simply because they are in the public eye (for a few years) means they should give up all privacy, they already have to tell the authorities where they will be for 1 hour every day.
NB - I find it interesting that we demand almost unachievable privacy for ourselves but are happy to argue that others shouldn't have any.
@Voland's right hand - "Frankly, the fact that quite a lot of top level USA athletes have successfully applied for "medical exemption" for performance enhancing chemicals should be public as well as all applicants and what chemical were they exempted from."
Seeing as you're making a medical assessment about the performance enhancing effects of these chemicals on the athletes I assume you're suitably qualified in medicine?
The *other* reason for keeping these records confidential is the same as the 'baseline chemical levels' and testing result scores, used to determine whether an athlete is doping or just normally has higher levels of certain chemicals and is within tolerances. It is very specific to each athlete, isn't something that the public can understand, and worse, to the *untrained* eye can seem to be evidence of cheating.
For (simple) instance, I take steroids. Doping right? When I say that these are in an inhaler to prevent asthma, is it still cheating? You could argue that this is performance enhancing for me, but I would argue (and it's the position most sports take) that this isn't cheating or unfair, it just prevents me from having my performance impaired. If I was an athlete and you saw the chemical on this list, you might assume I was getting away with something. The individual circumstances matter and even for a professional athlete are private.
WADA decided that qualified people are better at assessing the results than me. But obviously not you with your many qualifications in biochemistry and medicine.
@TUE - "Not sure I understand why an [approved] exemption ... should remain secret.
Because medication can be deeply personal - imagine being Caster Semenya - having your very identity become the subject of international news for years, people accusing you of cheating for being simply you and then being forced to take medication to compete.
Regardless of how you think of sport, Semenya never asked to be a a flag bearer of gender issues or be the subject of reasoning like in this comment. Her medication is private.
Or perhaps women using contraceptive medication shouldn't have to tell the world (some countries might not be impressed)
@MrDamage - "The emotionally stunted players and fans of Rugby League in Australia demanded a "golden point" system (first to score the next point of any sort) to deal with draws in the NRL."
They tried 'Golden Goal' (first to score) and 'Silver Goal' (team in lead at halfway) in extra time in some international [Association] Football tournaments in the 90s/2000s, the intention was to make it 'more exciting', reduce the number of penalty shootouts and prevent teams having to play a whole half hour extra.
But what happened was a classic unintended consequence - it actually made the extra time *less* exciting and led to more shootouts as teams, already naturally risk adverse, became even more defensive as the risk/reward balance had shifted to greater risk.
I know your point was about allowing draws in a league but I think it's interesting when you see what happens with similar initiatives in knockout tournaments. Much like the drug user trying to keep the high going. Often trying to manufacture excitement consistently leads to less overall (look at the final minutes of a close basketball game for 'manufactured excitement'). I think it comes from the flawed idea that everything can be made equally brilliant but all that does is dull the excitement from the whole sport. You actually need the lows, the terrible games, to have the great games and moments in any sport.
Terry 6 - I think you're perhaps oversimplifying some of the laws and rules of games as all just silly things. Aspects of a games require rules/laws to make the game, the game.
"Most games have rules that are there for rules sake. In Tennis you have to win by two games, if I understand it right. And they count the scores in funny words. No sensible reason other than that "them's the rules"."
The scoring in funny words is basically there for the sake of it. However, if you didn't win a set by two clear games then most sets would be won by the person to serve the first game in that set (the toss of a coin), the rule isn't there for the sake of it, it's there to create the principle that a player needs to 'break' an opponent's serving game to win the set. That's not really a rule for the hell of it, that's a rule to define one of the basic elements of a tennis match.
DLS isn't just to be extra weird, it's also to allow both teams to know what the score is when rain interrupts play and is supposed to be a fair way of calculating that score.
"And in footie there's the offside rule. But you don't need an offside rule. If the other side's players aren't up there, well tough."
[Not sure which 'footie' you're referring to]
Offside is interesting - most team sports have a version, it's not so much a silly rule* but a device to give the game structure. A bit like saying that everyone should go clockwise in Monopoly is just a rule rather than a basic principle.
In Association Football, it's primarily to prevent 'goalhanging' and forces the strikers and midfielders to have to beat the defence in a more restricted space (also allows the ref to not be too far away from the action), without it the structure of the game would be very different. I notice that the same principle is in Rugby (both Union and League), American Football, Basketball (the '3 in the key' rule) even in 1 day Cricket there are laws regarding how many close/deep fielders are allowed.
* - although it can be written in a really silly way
"draws or non-results are perfectly acceptable outcomes."
You're slightly missing the point - Draws and no results are entirely possible when playing under DLS conditions. What DLS is for, is working out what the team batting second for are aiming for - i.e. it is to work out what the score is and keep the game fair. DLS doesn't *force* a result.
Your emphasis is really just pointing out that Test cricket is 'proper' cricket. For which I agree, T20 has a place but it shouldn't take over from Test cricket as the defining form of the game. (if anything, it should take over from 1 Day cricket which is an unsatisfactory halfway house between the two)
NB - penalty shootouts aren't simply an Americanism, they're necessary for the knockout stage of a tournament to work. Notice that football (even in America) doesn't force a winning result in a league structure.
@jzl - "We voted to leave the EU.
We didn't vote for anything else the more vocal Brexiters are clamouring for."
I agree with your point but I would also say - How do we know what people voted for? I know several that voted out on protest grounds, a vote of 'Screw Cameron and Osborne'.
That's why I can only see that the negotiation result should be put in front of another referendum. We have no way of knowing if the UK's negotiating position even reflects what the majority of out voters were expecting. They were told so many different things by various different Out groups is difficult to know what people actually brought and who from. Some might even have been under the impression that the NHS is getting a much needed £350M a week uplift and now that it isn't getting that might justifiably feel defrauded.
This is one of the problems with referenda, with a representational democracy you vote for the person you feel will best lead/govern, pretty clear cut. With a referendum you vote for a thing, not knowing exactly what that thing is and then the representative decides anyway.
"If this were democracy,"
If this were a democracy, the Prime Minister would actually be elected.
Lest we forget no one voted for Teresa May to be Prime Minister and her party are in complete charge despite having less than half the vote in the last general election. This was never a democracy, despite Leavers telling everyone to accept democracy.
Considering how little was/is known about what Brexit means (and, no Teresa, it doesn't mean 'Brexit') If this were a democracy the government would negotiate the withdrawal offer and then put a referendum to the public to ask us "is this really what you voted for?" - my guess is that many people who voted Out won't be happy with the result of the negotiations any more than the Remainers.
After all, once you've had a Referendum to endorse or reject government policy then you can't really not have Referendums every time.
"High BMI is a bit crude"
BMI is a terrible measurement. It was development almost 200 years ago, it keeps being debunked as medically deficient, there are many better measurements and yet for some reason the NHS still use it as the primary measurement - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations.
When are we going to move on?
I only ever saw/heard people use Siri the first time they got an iPhone or on comedy shows. In the last few years I haven't ever seen or heard of anyone using Siri. I have known of people using voice control*, like phone dialling from the car or from their headset while walking but never bothering with Siri.
If that's an example of the amazing new features (which are several years old) that are going to get people buying new or second iPhones, then the market has matured and sales will slow down. There's been nothing new of any real significance for several generations, in any phone, just slow iteration. There's little need to upgrade other than because the phone is broken, slowed down by OS updates or now a bit too small. With Apple prices people aren't keen to splash cash every couple of years unless necessary and it is becoming less necessary each year - no matter how much Apple tell us "it's a game changing changer change".
This doesn't mean that smartphones or Apple are dead, but just like TVs we buy them to last 5+ years not until next year. There's nothing wrong with that but electronics firms have got used to massive sales and haven't quite had the guts to tell their investors that it won't last for ever.
* - Siri and voice control on iPhones aren't the same, the phone's commands "dial mum" can be driven by voice with Siri turned off, it was present before 'Siri' was even a thing
'OurMine' also claim to have taken down the login process today, of course they only have good security in mind. Which is why they claim that “No one will be able to play this game till Pokemon Go contact us on our website to teach them how to protect it!”
Of course, OurMine could have volunteered that lesson to Niantic but OurMine would rather charge for that lesson.
No, I didn't think it was at all like a protection racquet either.
In truth, it is difficult to estimate whether this is a malicious DDOS or just insufficient server capacity for the demand.
@alain williams - "So stop pissing about and abusing the numbers."
I'll concede you have a point as I suspect my pissing around with the referendum semantics has obscured the point I was making. Please allow me to clarify:-
The referendum, rightly or wrongly, is considered as a 'mandate' by many politicians and commentators as many did vote. But no one voted for, and very few will be able to vote for, Theresa or Andrea to carry out that mandate, let alone run the whole bloody country.
I wasn't really objecting to the result of the advisory referendum being considered a mandate, I was objecting that the party election for PM is considered an acceptable way to award the job of head of government and chief exit negotiator. We should now have a general election as neither the leader we voted for nor the leader of the leave campaign voted for are doing the job of leading the country or the leave negotiations.
NB (offtopic) - Yes, I am would suggest that the number that didn't vote to change should have been considered as remain (it is government policy) but I acknowledge we can't do that after the result.
@AC - Not a majority of the population but of the general electorate. My point was that many were prevented from voting and less than half of those who actually could vote demanded change against the government advice and policy.
I know the Leave Vote won under the rules of the referendum, but it hardly delivered a clear mandate. And this party election for PM isn't giving that mandate either.
@Alister - Not sure why the downvotes, it's proven to be too easy to sell stupid to Dumb Britain -
Every day millions of webpages are desperately trying to get into the UK, flooding into *our* servers, clogging up *our* infrastructure, taking away browser space from decent, hardworking UK webpages. Some of them are even written in Arabic.
@Charlie Clark "But hang on: Britain could decide to leave the internet, couldn't it? That would keep all that nasty stuff out."
"Take back control of our internet" along with "Let's decide how to spend the £millions of fees we give to the W3C each year ourselves and free us from their burdensome 'standards' red tape."
@Voland's right hand - "What a choice"
And one that hardly anyone gets to make - it is only the Prime Minister after all.
There are faults with the US approach to democracy but one aspect that I like is that everyone knows who the person to take over from the President would be (the Veep) at the time of voting. So voters get to vote on the leader and their understudy.
No one in Britain voted for a government led by Theresa or Andrea (neither were Deputy PM). And yet one of them will apparently have the "mandate" to tear the UK out of the EU that a minority of the country voted for.
As much as I hate Boris, he was the person that lead the vote to leave, he should be the person to lead that exit, as it was his 'plan' that people officially voted on. (The - he shat in his bath he should wash in it principle.)
What annoyed me during the investigations into the media and the Leveson inquiry is that, for some reason some areas of the media are treated as sacrosanct and others are fair game for massive censorship.
The print media is a gradually dying form (old news) but for some reason any regulation of the print media would be 'tantamount to living in Pyongyang'. Preventing regulation of newspapers would be fine, if not for the fact that the very same print media are always happy to see television, radio, the internet, films and every other form of media be heavily regulated and often pre-emptively (such as film with the BBFC). Why should Television news be subject to far more government oversight than newspaper article?
I get annoyed at the double standard applied, it's as if everyone decided the phrase 'freedom of the press' should only ever be applied literally, so everything else gets regulation, pushed hard by the print media and the print media themselves get no regulation. That seems unfair being as many sources of information have taken over from newspapers, yet newspapers still sit on this strange pedestal.
If Andrea Leadsom wants to age rate the whole of the internet why doesn't she start with press articles? - sitting there in every newsagent poisoning human decency. Oh, because *that* would be wrong, so why should heavy regulation of the internet be any more acceptable?
Paris - because pictures of her and her ilk are often at child height on the cover of papers in a newsagent, that's all perfectly fine with Andrea of course.
@Dave 126 - "There was talk of 'luvvies' ... in the article, but not of actors."
AO seems to use the term 'luvvies' in most of his articles, I noticed this a while back. Apparently he uses it as a catch all term to brand those with whom he disagrees. Considering that Andrew had a period of going out of his way to bash Stephen Fry, I can't help thinking he has a bit of a problem in this area.
Personally, I find Andrew's meandering style, interspersed with many irrelevant attacks on vague groups of people to be unpleasant and detract from the point supposedly being made. I don't mind that Andrew makes cases or points I might disagree with, that's healthy counterpoint and actually I welcome that, don't want an echo chamber here.
I've noticed that I know Andrew has written the article before reading it, simply from the headline and that isn't a compliment. This was also the case with Lewis.
Andrew - please continue to write here but bear in mind that you come across badly in these articles in a way which I like to think doesn't fairly reflect you. I give you the benefit of the doubt that the intention is to be entertaining rather than dry but to me the manner in which the argument gets presented often comes across more as more like a Fox News rant than a well written comment piece. Perhaps read your articles and ask yourself if they are as humorous as you intended or if you have been stretching too far to throw stones at "the luvvie intelligensia" or whichever loose ambiguous group you want to fight against.
@LosD - "I'm going to go with the dissenter here: As soon as it was willingly shared, it is "just" theft of confidential information."
It was NOT willingly shared by the organisation who owned the information and the computers that were infiltrated. In fact, it was specifically *against* their wishes as they had rules prohibiting the practice. That the employees were willing to share their logins does not constitute consent by the data owner.
It was still unauthorised entry, regardless of how easy the employees (accomplices?) made it.
My router (Archer C2) is one of the devices affected, the old link resolves to tplinkwifi.net, hopefully this was within my network but in any case I haven't logged into it since the last firmware update and have now updated my bookmark.
What's really annoying is that, TP Link had a few ways to notify me - the page where the updates are downloaded or the frontpage of the router update. But instead they have done this silently, leaving many open to hijacking. It realy didn't need to be that hard, especially considering they have produced firmware updates recently.
Chief Exec Seb James also said that:-
"We're going to see lots of screaming and shouting, but my message to my team is to absolutely make sure we do everything in our power to ensure our leaders get access to the single market and make sure we heal the rifts that this debate has caused in our society,"
So all the bullishness is dependant on the UK staying in the single market - that's a fairly big risk right there.
"Our young are not necessarily yuppies, can't afford to buy and are unable to find homes to rent because they have been taken by "deserving" immigrants straight from the back of the lorry.
Oh & by the way I'm not a racist, just a realist."
Those people getting off "the back of the lorry" aren't *EU* citizens are they? No you're not a racist at all. You seriously think that by getting out of Europe it will change non-EU migration? And this despite the fact that EU countries already take in many more refugees than the UK. What Leave papers were oddly quiet to note is that the Leave campaigning Employment Minister Priti Patel was suggesting Vote Leave to asian communities as a way to increase immigration from the subcontinent.
Are you sure that all Leave voters really want the same thing? Without a second referendum we won't know if the negotiated deal is really what all 52% voted for.
@batfastad - "Thanks 1.1%"
That is Cameron's fault, he got to set the rules of the game and somehow set the rules up in the opposition's favour
- He could have incldued 16/17 year olds or delayed the vote as late as possible to allow the demographics to swing his way; he could have set the bar at 67% majority and/or 75% turnout; he could have included permanent-resident non-UK passport citizens (those allowed to vote in local elections). Any of these would have improved his chances. Yet he was so unjustifiably confident that he didn't do any of these and we are all now paying for his hubris.
TL:DR - Don't get upset at the result, get upset that the game was rigged.
@TheTick - "No, it wasn't politicians that said we would leave the EU. It was the people, and we spoke clearly."
No we the people didn't. It wasn't *the people*, it was the *electorate* and not even half of that - 17m is a lot smaller than 64.1m (the rough population of the UK). The electorate is roughly 46.5m and well over half didn't insist on change, so parliament hasn't had a clear mandate from "the people". Furthermore, many people within the electorate were excluded (EU citizens can vote in local but not national elections, so they get taxation without representation)
As others have said, sane countries make sure that mandates to change are based on very clear results (like 2/3s majority) - 52% of 72% of 73% of the population (back-of-fag-packet maths) is not a clear statement from the people.
I'll concede that against the rules of the referendum the desicion was to Leave the EU and that has to be honoured to keep any shred of credibility for democracy. But what does "Leave the EU" actually mean? Are you sure that everyone who voted Leave had the same idea of what they were voting for? All that has happened is a desicion to commence a vague re-negotiation of our EU membership. We could have our position chnage from 'member' to 'associate' with no material change in
Consider that no one actually stated which bits of the EU we would leave and which we would keep, no promises were made, not apparently even on the side of buses. There is and never was any plan that was endorsed by the vote. Many want out of the single market but that's not what Boris is saying it means. There are likely many different views of Leave voters of what they wanted when they said leave. Some wanted out of the ECHR, which isn't even part of the EU; some want to divert the gross payment from the EU to the NHS, which isn't going to happen because it was never true. Some expect us to become another Norway, but to other Leave voters that will be betrayal.
I can't believe I'm agreeing with Jeremy *unt, but that is how fucked up things are. The right and democratic thing to do is now undertake Article 50 negotiations and then have another referendum on whether to enact the deal struck with the member states. I suspect many Leave voters won't like any deal because it wont go anywhere near far enough for what they thought 'Leave' meant, while others will be worried it gets rid of things they thought wouldn't be touched. This referendum result shouldn't be seen as a mandate for Boris to just negotiate any deal he wants and then enact it without a specific endorsement for that deal from the public.
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