Posts by Doctor Syntax 40471 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
If I follow this correctly then the main reason this is happening is - drum-roll - cloud.
I can more or less understand the need to export a database connection to support remote working if the users have the DB client application local to them. In that case it ought to be wrapped up in a VPN and have proper security. Even then, it would be better to put the application on the server so the remote link is only handling the UI.
"Any and all convictions surrounding accounting fraud and based upon the Horizon evidence are unsound and should be revoked. There's no need for new legislation or other grandstanding. If the Post Office wishes to pursue a re-trial of a genuine fraud case, they are entitled to do so based upon sound evidence."
They should all have been quashed, including those that had guilty pleas as soon as the problems were identified as it was manifestly obvious they they were all unsafe. As to trying to prosecute any possible genuine frauds - no chance of that as they would be unlikely to be able to produce untainted evidence.
"the company handed a massive fine that will be paid DIRECTLY to the subpostmasters!"
No. A fine AND compensation to the subpostmasters.
And the directors jailed should be those in post at the relevant times. All the relevant times.
CW first reported in 2009. Remind me who was in government then. It continued after the next year. Remind me who was in government then.
Party politics doesn't fit very well here. It's very likely a case of anyone in government who had an inkling not daring to ask questions and the long it went on the more frightening it would be to get them answered. The current government is more unlucky than culpable - they're the ones in office when the music finally stopped.
"Did anyone benefit financially from the errors in Horizon or the unauthorized activities of Fujitsu employees accessing terminals remotely?"
Very likely the Post Office. If the net result was the SPMs paying the PO to rebalance their accounts that must have been where it ended up. But exactly what was it Fujitsu were doing? Presumably trying to cover up some of the failings.
As "get stuffed" trumps wankword bullshit, they fell into line
I had the opposite. New Unix boxes replacing two where the application wasn't Y2K compatible.* The pair were replaced by shiny new, acceptance tested and everything. All ready to cut over in the week before Christmas and the New Year. The users - finance - suddenly said no, they weren't taking the risk (hah!) of doing that before they'd closed the year off which would take them until mid-January. We had the vendors dialling in on at least a daily basis fixing errors until we could make the move.
* Actually the version on the old production box was but that on the even older hot standby wasn't. That's the hot standby which wasn't' really that hot as the overnight update had been failing, by running out of time and unnoticed, possibly for a year or more.
OTOH sometimes you have to test to be sure - but you only need to test a representative sample if there are multiple similar systems.
It was a few years earlier then Y2K but Sun was reported to find a problem one year turnover which is rather odd given the way Unix kept time.
About the year after that a routine in a system I was looking after started screwing up in January. A boss-written page and a half of C I couldn't understand (not surprising as it was wrong) could no longer decide whether it was being run on a Friday. I replaced it with a one-liner.
Sometime the unexpected happens so testing wasn't wrong.
"Given that the explicit intent is to avoid paying tax, the person doing so is definitionally not being a good person."
Back in the days when I was a civil servant and doing a certain amount of travelling it seemed that every expense claim violated some or other restriction that the IR had thrown up. If I'd had a witness summons to attend court as a private individual I'd have claimed my expenses from the court. As I was attending as part of my employment it seemed I was expected to subsidise my job. Was whoever was behind that being a good person?
Later, in my final years as a permie I kept getting tax forms to fill in, being assured that if I updated their information I might be able to pay less tax. I always ended up paying more. Three years into being freelance they decided to hold some sort of investigation. By now i had an accountant and turned the whole thing over to him - at the cost of extra accountancy fees of course. The outcome was that the last three years were perfectly correct but because an investigation extends over six years it went back into the permie period. The outcome of that was that I was owed a considerable rebate because, based on those forms, I'd been substantially over-taxed. If they hadn't made the mistake (from thair PoV) of launching the investigation this would never have come to light. Were those responsible for those permie taxes being good people?
The IR and their successors HMRC have made the tax system adversarial. They will attempt to maximise an individual's tax beyond what is due. Any morality has been removed by them. You shouldn't look at it as a matter of good and evil. It's simply a matter of individuals looking after their own rights when confronted by a sate that just doesn't care.
I have a cousin-in-law who used to work for the IR. He took very early retirement due to ill-health which he said was due to the stress of what he was required to do.
"It's coming up to 50 years since Fred Brooks wrote TMMM and we haven't learned a damned thing."
It depends on who "we" is.
One of the problems he wrestled with was how do you organise the efforts of the many but take advantage of the overall vision of a single individual. ISTM that the FOSS community has worked out one solution: the maintainer. The maintainer provides the overall vision and decides whether a contribution meets the standards, should be sent back for rework or even whether it fits in with the whole at all. In effect the role combines QC with that of architect, shaping development in the long term.
It might need some modification in a commercial environment in that there would also need to be more planning as to what needs to be developed but I wonder if any development teams have adopted the overall principle.
"Avoidance is using laws in a way that they were not intended to be used, hence is using a loophole."
It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it?
I am using an exception in the way the government intended.
You are using the exception in circumstances which need some clarification.
He is avoiding tax by using a loophole.
The legislation is what the Act or Regulation actually says, not an unstated intention.
The biggest source of avoidance - and loophole is probably the wrong word for it - is the entire way that international taxation works. For multi-national corporations there's a world-wide competitive market in corporation tax.
A country with a relatively small real economy can offer a better price in the form of lower corporation tax if, by doing so, it can get a few large multi-nationals to be head-quartered there for tax purposes. By their size, even at a lower tax rate, they will contribute sufficient to the smaller economy and, as a bonus, local businesses are also enjoying the lower tax which can help them be more competitive selling abroad.
In short, if you're a multi-national you can arranged to be taxed in Ireland on profits made on the business conducted in the UK. It's perfectly legal, it's not a result of some quirk of UK tax legislation but of the freedom to do that and the disparity in tax rates. Sorting it out would require international agreements and those smaller nations who benefit are in no hurry to agree.
Not that I'm explaining this to you, Codejunky, as I'm sure you're as well aware of that as I, but there's always an element of the commentariat which isn't.
"Naïve or just an apologist? Hard to tell."
Neither. He's just stating the fact, which is that it's a legal definition. There was a legal judgement long ago which stated that no man was obliged to organise his affairs to maximise the tax he had to pay. That you aren't aware of that does not make Codejunky either an apologist or naive.
"how about involving people who know the technology"
But where are these people? Certainly not in ministerial office and probably fairly fe in ministerial offices. Long term dependence on outsourcing is liable to end up in a lack of the knowledge to manage the outsourcing effectively.
"those infernal pieces of sh!t,... the Microdrives"
Fitting something so far from wat was already a standard storage technology was one example of what I think of as the 90% approach ot the UK PC vendors at the time. It's not a variation on the 80/20 rule, it's that they included 90% of what was needed to make the kit worth buying.
Why? Was it really cheaper to design and build the drive and its media rather than just buy in something that already existed?
Looking back to those days, certainly the Spectrum was worth buying as a present for my son and arguably launched him on his career as it did with many. On the other hand buying my own PC of any sort was long delayed in the gap between those with 90% of what was needed to be worth buying and those too expensive to be worth buying. It was a long time before slowly rising income and falling prices met.
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