Posts by TDog 324 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jun 2013
Hey, I ordered a new hardback book from Amazon and was charged VAT on it. They are exempt from VAT. I was told that it was one of their associate suppliers who did it. But Amazon allowed the charge to be made.
If they can't even be bothered to check that VAT rules are being applied correctly, what chance is there of them collecting the VAT I was fraudulently charged?
There is an argument which may be slightly different.
Taking the image may well be lawful. It is no more than photographing a crowd or a snapshot of an individual. Police and other systems do this all of the time. But associating a name with a particular image may well be unlawful. Particularly if it has less than 50% probability of being that person.
So in civil law it is necessary to prove that on the balance of probabilities that there is a causal relationship, which is quite obviously not the case it the probability of the accuracy is less than 5%.
And for criminal law with its beyond all reasonable doubt requirement this is much more difficult.
So if this information is associated with your image then presumably this could be described as libelous if published or otherwise slanderous.
And anyone who claimed "we have reason to believe" would be knowingly propagating a libel or a slander.
They discovered that the star's rotational frequency increased by about 16 microhertz, a tiny amount, over 30 seconds or so, according to a paper published in Nature Astronomy on Monday.
That amounts to "about one part in a million," Gregory Ashton, first author of the paper and an assistant astrophysics lecturer at Monash University,
It's about one and a half parts in a hundred thousand. Too many tinnies sport!
How can you even be sure that there is or is not information in the AI which is relevant to an individual? And even more worryingly how can you be certain that you fake data does not create relationships which seem to identify individuals. After all, if the data is realistic then it must mimic reality.
On another note, some 20 years ago when I was writing HMRC's personal review system they were using real data for test purposes. I thought this was a no no and so used some name generators I and a colleague had written for some simulations.
Being a bit fed up at the time I didn't use the English language names.
Some samples follow:
Brictius filius Æson
Galenus filius Artemidorus
Rogatus filius Luciferus
Antipater filius Alcinder
Isocrates filius Clophas
Bratislav Radovladov
Budig Gostomyslov
Rogovlad Vyshemirov
Chestimir Ostromirov
Perei Velislavov
Gradimir Izjaslavov
Volodimer Radimirov
Vladimir Miodragov
Samovlad Yarovidov
Sobeslav Svyatoslavov
Lyutomir Naislavov
Gorica Yasnomyslov
Sveinbiǫrn Þorvarðrsson
Gunnarr Þorfinnrsson
Ásbiǫrn Óleifrsson
Ásbiǫrn Ǫnundrsson
Hólmsteinn Oddrsson
Finnr Hrólfrsson
Ǫrnólfr Álfrsson
Oddr Geirmundrsson
Eysteinn Þorvaldrsson
Arnórr Eilífrsson
Ingialdr Steinólfrsson
Bárðr Kárisson
Watching the attempts at pronunciation was fun.
You have detained me on the basis that you have identified me with an alleged offender, such justification being on a purely computerised system with no human evaluation at all. What happens next? I am going to leave right now as you have no particular justification for stopping me. After all, you can always find me again should you need to.
You have no valid justification to arrest me, and should you so try then I will attempt to depart. Should you attempt to stop me you will have to explain and justify your actions to the legal system of the UK.
Now that is what should happen. It becomes more difficult day by day (Think of the Children / Victims)!
I have arrested a police officer for "impersonating a police officer", but that was about 25 years ago. He wasn't playing by the rules and attempted to bully me. These days it is much more difficult to resolve this sort of nonsense. When you can be arrested for obscuring your face against a trial of facial recognition software we live in a world of deep fake; we have faked the perception of justice and replaced it with the processes perception of what the law should be.
Just play along with them, ask if it is anything to do with Tonia Antoniazzi, the MP for Wales' Gower peninsula and the surrounding area (c.f. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/27/mps_5g_electrosensitivity_5g_cancer_doom_apocalyse_etc/) and 5G radiation signals. They tell you they don’t understand and they then say that your router is sending messages to their system.
At this stage get very concerned and ask if the messages are criminal?
Ask if the police will arrest you?
Bit more wind up, then
Ask which messages have they received?
Was it the one that called them lying scum?
Or maybe the one that called them thieving shitheads. Or was it the one that asked if their mother knew they were a thief?
If you can get the last one out before they put the phone down give yourself 5 brownie points.
The rules should be very simple. Whenever a company is challenged (threatened) with a Tax Process (I'll use that because there are lots of things it could have been) then the government should be required by law to prove that this is not part of any process that is accepted from any other organisation.
And that is fine. Because then you have to apply it to everybody. Many years ago the Inland Revenue claimed that if you gave them your info then they would do your tax return. I asked them if they would give me every tax advantage available or merely give me whatever they thought I should get? Well they changed the wording afterwards which was a casual admission that they would rather stuff you than be hones.
And only if they can show that exactly the same rules have been applied to the players who didn't pay the taxes, then they should be required to state exactly how it would have been impossible (other than accountancy, for every one knows that accountants are honest. Or simply incompetent, so as an after thought lets allow accountancy and their clever games to be copied too) for that company to have failed to have the benefit of those rules.
Of course some companies will have better accountancy teams or lawyers than other companies. So what? The law should be equal to all, and it should be one of the primary duties of any government to ensure that that is the case.
I'm not a socialist, nor am I a capitalist. If anything I am an egalitarian, which simply means there are no acceptable circumstances for money (capitalism), group fascism (often trades unions), or any other power group claiming special exemptions of circumstances. And the easiest way to do that is to simply extend any particular view or exemption to everybody. And it seems to me that that should be a duty of government.
I had one of these, from a legacy with Tiscali. I didn't use it other than for potential exploratory reasons. I was not surprised when it was hacked - I was well aware of the soft and strong access routes. But what I wanted to see was the reaction of TT.
In simple terms, there is no universal guarantee that you shall not be hacked. Anyone who claims otherwise is marketing their bullshit. Teams I have worked with have assured me that any hack will simply fall into one of many traps which will both adsorb the hack; identify the hacker (through various quasi legal processes) and deal with the problem. BTW see the comment about QLP.
And they were always right - they told me so themselves. But usually there were fewer than 50 of them. Which leads me to think that marketing may be less accurate than reality. Cos even assuming they were as good as the hackers I have been told about, well maths suggests there are a lot of holes - maybe 10 ^ 3 per hundred thousand lines of code (1%) and so with guy's trying to plug the hole in the dike, well 4 fingers and a dick ain't going to work.
But they always assured me they were in control.
Yep, believed that
Digressions but a realistic understanding of risk is probably useful. There are always more people looking to hack than making it in the first place.
Oh, and about TT, incompetent, stupid, multiple times used inappropriate scripts, which had the users known would have been lying, and soft targets if you were to spend sufficient time.
Sad to see my expectations gratified
The sub pens were, in general, bombed after completion. Up to 10m. of re-enforced concrete then made the bombing ineffective; and hitting the subs in the brief time of entering or leaving the pens, which they rapidly learned to do underwater was not a trivial task.
I have seen pictures purporting to be the remnants of a tallboy (or grand slam) which penetrated the pens at Brest, I think, but that was some 2 1/2 years later.
So bombing the pens in the construction phase was viable; although many French would have been killed a little earlier than otherwise, after construction useless. Although many French were killed.
Bomber Command, whom in general I support, did put the kybosh on Liberators which they claimed were imperative, so that Coastal Command did not get replacements for their VLR (Very Long Range) ones of which they had about 24. This was silly.
BTW converting a Liberator into a VLR Liberator took several months, not a simple task.
This actually partially answers the previous question.
No - I do not think that the UK (8th largest trading country in the world) will inherently be able to enforce it's laws on the USA. Or the FRS. Or China. But I do think that if you start killing our people with nerve gases there will probably be a reciprocal sanction somewhere, at some time that is to our convenience. That doesn't mean that we will necessarily kill or otherwise use violence to "send a message".
Messages can and have been sent in many ways. It is particularly noticeable that as the cold war grew, the casualties from direct military action between the primary actors reduced. Don't shoot down that spy plane, it is in the Baltic sea and is keeping both sides happy.
That is for mutual convenience. At the very least the UK could certainly inconvenience Facebook, Google, et al by making individuals liable. This is what the Americans have done when they claim jurisprudence over any bankers who deal with the USA; even if they are apparently not immediately constrained by their laws. (e.g. Autonomy, Barclays etc.)
A risk of personal sanction will make travel abroad much more difficult. Just as the USA have found that Canada is amenable to arresting Huwaiu (No idea how to spell that) CFO's the USA may well find that it is a bad idea for those of dubious intent to go anywhere we can reach.
That should include the USA but having agreed a reciprocal extradition treaty the US decided it was unilateral. But such actions only last as long as you have sufficient power to be arrogant bastards. I can't quite recollect when we last sent a gunship to deal with "Jenkins Ear" or its last equivalent but I doubt if we do it as often as we used to do.
Plus ca change, plus la meme chose. But the actors change
I still don't really understand it. As I see it there are 2 obvious possibilities with regard to the server:
1 - This is mission critical; and yet you are allowing it to run unfixed (on average) for 3 1/2 days.
2 - It is not mission critical, but you still use an arbitrary date system for "OK" which apparently could be met by simply rebooting the server.
And, not to make too fine a point of it, if you spin up another version of the same thing, then it is the same thing. (Unless you claim it isn't to meet your bullshit targets).
I had been sacked and at the tribunal rather than fight it they settled for the maximum legal amount (in those days about £24000) which of course was reduced by the salary that they paid to me in the mandatory "gardening leave".
No particular surprise there. But as the new chief executive had arbitrarily sacked me when re - applying for what was my old job I had a bit of fun.
At the time it was merely sufficient to prove that they had broken the HR rules and should have given me the job automatically.
But two years later when she was coming up to be re-appointed I sued again - in the small claims court of the county court. And claimed that since it had already been agreed that I had been unfairly dismissed then my compensation should have been based on the salary I should have had, not my previous salary.
This lead to the solicitor (poor sod) on their side claiming that you couldn't have two bites at the same cherry. When the judge for the 3rd time explained that he understood and decided the law I felt it was not going well for the poor sod. They settled for a rather larger fee than the original compensation not to set the precedent. And they sacked the chief executive who sacked me. (That was my only non negotiable point (Oh, and giving her a bottle of gin to help her on the way to the gutter)). But to be fair, I paid for the gin myself.
And the point of this, who would have expected English law to be easier to manipulate that that of the US. And having comprehensively fucked on the NHS, it is just a small pity that I never got to do the same to Oracle; nor that is as simple and effective in high cost high pressure law in the land of the free and the slave.
There is a serious problem here, other than the apparent stealing of IP. The clear issue is whether or not the patent issuers are aware of previous work. Most authorities haven't got a (fucking) clue where to look, and even if they did, are not paid to do it and haven't the time. So they functionally can't look for it.
Thus if you discuss your work, and someone appropriates it (after all, it is neither in the public domain(s) that the issuers check) then challenging it is much more difficult than the trivial process of claiming it.
So YOU ARE FUCKED.
But it is so tempting to deal with a huge firm like google. (sort of claiming "first do no harm"). And not all of them have to be lying. Simply a few and the inertia of lawyers and "well it's ours" is sufficient.
(TLDR even if you can trust some of the cunts, there are still cunts there.)
Don't let the Shites happen.
This doesn't answer the question of how to solve the problem; nor am I convinced there is a trivial solution. But the ownership of the problem by the big companies might just help. But that would require the concept of maximalising shareholder return to be constrained by ethical considerations. And we have seen no clear examples of that working. (Failures include Greenhouse gas emission, Asbestos, Slavery, Tobacco, Insurance fraud and all sorts of bullshit.)
I guess you can neither trust companies nor people. And in the long term that is catastrophic for people.
Strange - I thought Edith Cavell was a British citizen, along with many others. I thought that the Germans spies we shot in WW2 and WW1 were German citizens. I must have been mistaken.
Or citizenship does not trump locality and law.
Unless you believe in gunboat diplomacy. (Or Jenkins' ear.)
Well yes - that was the point of the comment. When law simply becomes a purchasable commodity then it is imperative and good science to find the cheapest solution. (A sort of re-analysis of Occam's razor.) And since according to the rules that Oracle seems to want to play by, then if you can win, with a trivial solution, and not have to pay for it, it seems the obvious solution.
Sorry, we may have a conceptual misunderstanding here. Are you implying that I should let them fuck me up simply because they have more money than me, and that means I must play by their rules.
To make it quite clear, I have no personal, impersonal, or otherwise vested interest in dealing with Oracle, their employees, or any other business that is associated to the nth degree with them. I am simply, and impersonally exploring a theoretical process that follows on from the logical imperatives that I (myself, and purely as a personal thought experiment) have traced to a single set of conclusions. Their is no implicit instructions, no incitement, it is merely a single (but not sole) analysis based on what I understand to be described as a "thought experiment".
"Its argument? That the salesman only gets paid when the customer pays SAP and that he can only get commissions while still working at the company. So even though he did the work and closed the deals, the company didn't get paid until after it had fired him, so he didn't deserve any compensation."
So similarly, if I hired an assassin to shoot SAP managers and lawyers (let's not get into too much detail as to how, when, where and whom (Sorry to Mr K's six honest serving men) as long as I didn't pay him until the indescribable event had happened, then I wouldn't have to pay him., "even though he did the work and closed the deals" and there would be no chain of culpable evidence by their rules.
OK, seems a bit dubious to me, but if that is the rules according to SAP, then who am I to dispute it. Get to sort them out, and it is free (although if the team doing the takeout do get to claim, they can always point out that SAP lost; so they presumably would pay their fees.)
I was an Atari man. 6502 all the way. Player Vector Graphics (sprites for those of you a generation younger). Raw coding I/O cos you only had 32K to do everything. Using a standard routine as a loadable bit of script. Forgetting that you had hard coded the I/O channel to 0. (out of all of 6). Coming back 3 months later to use it again, choosing channel 1 and not knowing why it didn't work. Because I intended it to be flexible but forgot about the hard coded port. Documentation; who needs stinking documentation...
And of course, trying to find 3 ring binders for 'De Re Atari'. Still got mine. (De Re, I gave the binders to a friend who also needed them)
Fell in love with the 6809 - favourite op code of all time
BRN
BRN, LBRN Branch (short or long) never
SOURCE FORM: BRN dd; LBRN dddd
Which in the original documentation was described as "to keep symmetry with BRA (Branch always).
"JUMP - What now?"
"OK -- we'd better have a 'DON'T JUMP'"
"What always?"
I don't see that sort of humour in hardware often now.
"A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly."
So we can't accuse any large data gatherer of theft when they are copying rather than taking personal information. But we could do a couple of things. We could create a "taking with intent to market" crime, where taking includes copying, or a wider "taking without clear informed consent".
In some ways the GDPR is approaching this from the other end, where disclosing without authorisation is an offence; but an offence which allowed the alleged offender to be able to provide proof of clear informed consent as a defence against the charge, is more appropriate as it deals with personal data on an individual basis, and that is where the offence lies, against that individual.
And as for the 'no doubt' claims that clear and informed is subjective and not fair to the collectors of the information, it is amazing how quickly and effectively the 'cookie requirements' clearly informed users of how cookies were used on sites - most certainly not hidden at the bottom of pages of text beneath the broken lamp with the sign warning "Beware of the Leopard".
I suspect it may be slightly more difficult to provide the 60 medium and heavy artillery pieces per mile of front...
I rather think I played with early MAF sensors (were they the same things as 'Fleisch' sensors (spelling from memory) which utilised the same principle as a heated grid through which the air passed and measuring the delta resistance?
I was young then, and at the IAM Farnborough.
One other tad of information - the microphones were basically kilner jars - chosen because of the large opening at the top with the platinum wire inside. The large opening and volume made them relatively insensitive to high frequency changes but the low frequency pulses of air caused sufficient displacement to cool the transducers.
It took me ages to find that out - I kept looking for information on microphones...
I spent quite a lot of time about 5 years ago researching this technology as it is a fascinating pre digital computer process. The 'microphones' were actually pressure transducers and an arc of about 6 of these would be placed behind the observation post and connected to it by wires.
When the observer heard a sound of interest he would press a button. This started a cine camera running that would record the 6 galvanometers attached to the transducers. These would kick when the pressure wave hit the transducers and this was recorded on film. The film was automatically developed and printed (in 1916 / 17!) and the time delays were recorded.
An analogue computer consisting of a board with pins in the positions of the transducers and string attached to each pin was used by simply choosing a length of string proportional to the sound delays - where all the six strings intersected was where the sound had originated. As the observer started the process when he heard the sound of the shell exploding the sounds that hit the transducers when recording was the sound of the guns firing.
This was how the silent pre-registration of the suppressive artillery barrage at the battle of Cambrai was planned; it prevented over 80% of the German batteries from performing their defensive roles in 1917.
By mid 1917 the system was so effective that it was being used to calibrate individual guns for barrel wear to allow corrections to be made.
Fascinating to me.
"So what can a submarine coming out of port do against an opponent which is doggedly following it constantly shining on it with active sonar? What can it do if it is doing it from deeper than its maximum torpedo engagement depth (up to 500m)? What can it do if the "target" is 40% faster than its fastest torpedo ~ up to 100 knots (not difficult if you do not need to carry meatsacks)? How do you think it will perform if the crew knows that they have a gun pointed at their temple 24x7x365?"
Well a modernised subroc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC would do quite nicely. Particularly with a spearfish in it. Pop off, nip about 20 KM in advance of the targets projected path and go active immediately. OK - that's not necessary. 100 knots is bloody noisy. And you aren't going to change course very fast. (high length to cross sectional area ratio so any change of direction causes serious forces perpendicular to the direction of change.) Otherwise you snap. That doesn't even need the spearfish to say 'hello'
It's the empty battlefield phenomenon. Dates back to the introduction of smokeless powder. If you can see it you can kill it. It's just a question of how? Some kills require usually unacceptable processes - as in "Can I nuke him now Sir?". But in most situations, once found means vulnerable, which generally suggests that shouting 'HERE I AM' tends to lead to a technological solution which fundamentally is constrained by 'my cost is less than your cost'. And a spearfish / subroc equivalent is a damn sight cheaper than unmanned submarines.
Don't ... read ... don't ... read ... ah sod it, I can't read it
"By accident, when making it a change improved its functionality." i.e. the enzyme was altered. Not by evolution but by the researchers. It was that change that was not evolutionary. There is no reason to assume that would have occurred through an evolutionary process. If you must insist on me being a troll at least read the correct article first <g>.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/16/scientists-accidentally-create-mutant-enzyme-that-eats-plastic-bottles
Neither - as I said in the post I thought it was one of the most important discoveries of the 19th century. But it doesn't explain anything. It describes a process by which things happen. But you can't make the Popperian nullifiable hypothesis that a single specific event will occur by "evolution". All that you can do is observe trends in genetics through probability. A simple example would be the enzyme which has been discovered that degrades PET. By accident, when making it a change improved its functionality. Great - we need it. But there is no reason to suppose whatever that this would have been forced to occur by "evolution".
That is the point that I was (obviously ineffectively) trying to make. Evolution is not deterministic, it is stochastic and as such cannot explain anything, merely describe a route that was taken to get to a particular position.
"Shohat-Ophir said the behaviour can be explained by evolution.".
It bloody well can't. Evolution doesn't explain anything. All you can say is:
"I haven't got a bloody clue how this happened - it might or might not be the optimal solution - but we didn't even know what problem was trying to be solved until this gave us the answer'. And then we analysed it retrospectively." Which is descriptive, not causality.
"NOTHING IS 'EXPLAINED BY EVOLUTION"
It is simply a post hoc description of what has happened so far. Even whilst it is happening another conspiracy of genetics is attempting to do lots of things, Some of them may be better and fail for [insert your preferred reason here]. Others may be worse - and fail for [insert your preferred reason here]. That's fine - it is one of the most important concepts of the 19th century. I think it is massive in the implications. BUT - it is abused, described as a serial process retrospectively and misunderstood. Cue just about every casual science reporter.
And it doesn't really matter; evolution gives you what you get - not an computationally correct, verifiable through diverse methods and algorithms proof.
It was science fiction in reality. My 91 year old father cried. They used to go out to watch a plane fly overhead in Rotherham. And had horse drawn rubbish carts. And electric trolley busses. And I nearly cried as well.
Like to see the mars thing. Love to see Heinlein city on the moon, which we probably need, because of the cheap delta v and lots of stuff there.
Doubt if I will live to see anything else, but one can hope.
"To achieve this means using your licence fee proportionately, so we won’t investigate minor, misconceived, hypothetical, repetitious or otherwise vexatious complaints which do not suggest a breach of standards. Nor do we investigate gratuitously abusive complaints."
source http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle-complaint/
Tell me - if I described your complaint as "minor", and thus automatically "vexatious" which has a very specific meaning in UK law then would you feel this was an appropriate conflation of "it's not a very important matter" and "you are a shit stirring bastard!".
The BBC seems to feel that where it is concerned there is no significant difference. Why did they put the word "otherwise" in there?
Probably just a vexatious point. But someone should stir the shit...
And we have the very peculiar scenario that I, who was around and remember the headlines will have no problems in searching for TN1, Alpha and fraud (with appropriate solutions) and so may feel somewhat unhappy about entering into a business relationship with that person, whereas my daughter who was not born then will not have those prompts and so may enter into a relationship which on past evidence may prove to be slightly dodgy.
So we have one rule for the elderly buggers and another one for the young innocent ones. What happens to any form of diligence in these circumstances.
"Dad"
"Yes"
"You are an old fart, aren't you?"
"No"
"But you are old?"
"A bit"
"So how should I search for TN1 and Alpha to find out whether it is a good idea to enter into this business with him? "
Seems a tad unlikely.
Theoretically we have the concepts already (von neuman machine [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine]); we simply have two problems:
1 Getting it there - this has been just about solved
2 Providing sufficient fuel (energy source) to allow the machine to have a positive feedback in reproduction
In simple terms if it hasn't got enough energy available to fund the replication process, it ain't going to work.
Now the replication process is a whole can of worms. If we could make the whole thing out of regolith then it would be trivial, albeit replication might take a while. (First one sent there, one made 50 years later; two new ones 100 years after start and do the maths yourself.)
Sadly that doesn't seem to be possible - and we still don't know how to make the harvesters (the machines that eat / utilise the initial products) build what we want.
But I am sure we will get there.
About the same time as a FTL drive gives us access to quite a lot.
Sadly there is one true answer.
I discovered this the hard way when I advised my god daughter on some pascal programming in the '80's; they had been taught one particular loop process (can't remember which; not for next, might have been do while or repeat until) and the use of the fully functional loop I explained and she coded was failed as "not the right answer".
I got a tad shirty about this and then discovered the sad truth that Shaw's dictum about those who can't...teach was sadly too true. It was explained to me in no uncertain terms that "THIS WAS THE ANSWER" and all else was a fail.
Some twenty years later and I was doing an OU Java course simulating race conditions on a train track and gating via a tunnel. My code worked perfectly including race conditions but was failed by the tutor. I did enquire as to whether it had been run, and was informed that it didn't have to be - it was the wrong answer...
You are correct; plagiarism (albeit with the skill to recognise an appropriate solution) is one of the few bases of good code authoring. Indeed, other than FP every time we spin up an instance of a class we are plagiarising our own work (or whomsoever we copied it from). Sadly most people marking the solutions provided are better at copying the "FAIL" rather than evaluating the submission.
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