Posts by Doctor Syntax 40557 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
Back in 1968 there were student demonstrations about one thing or another all over the western world. I don't suppose many of those in Peoples Democracy in Belfast had terrorism in mind but it provided the starting point for years of that and a mob carrying arms and invading the legislature building are considerably further down that line PD ever were.
"These moves by the tech companies are not going to hurt Trump at all. But they are a kick in the nads to the millions of people who supported and voted for him. Those are the potential customers at risk."
How many of Trump supporters are decision makers in real and potential Salesforce customers (a) in the US and (b) in the rest of the world?
"Do the players of big tech really think they have become so indispensable that their customers will silently stand by and do nothing?"
But which customers are you thinking about. Out beyond the US shores lies the majority of our planet and right now many of Salesforce's customers there are looking at Trump's party and forming their own opinions about it. Salesforce is concerned about what these customers might do.
Salesforce, like any multi-national, sells to a wider clientele than the US (yes, USians, you are just a part of this world). If they judge that Trump has tainted the reputation of his party as far as the rest of the world is concerned then disassociating themselves with is is the better overall step.
You'll find they are regulated. If they sell facilities for conspiracy to overthrow the govt., carry out other terrorist acts, etc they are likely to end up in court as accessories. Now do you see why they discontinued that particular client? Not because they aren't regulated but because they are - by the ordinary law of the land.
"60+ judges (many of them Republicans too, some even appointed by Trump)"
Good for the judges but you can't imagine how bad that statement sounds to someone outside the US. The problem is that the political orientation of the judge, together with the fact that they're politically appointed*, is just taken as normal and acceptable.
* The problem with that is with the political nature, not the actual politician.
The job of a court is to interpret generally written law for the circumstances of the case. Where the circumstances aren't those envisaged by the legislators - which is the sort of case that comes before this level of court - then their rulings are guidance as to how other courts should act in similar cases. In general they themselves are guided by previous rulings and by established principles. It's not exactly making stuff up and it's always open to govt. to come along with updated legislation. The sort of clash which could be in the offing arises when the judiciary think the legislators have stepped outside the existing principles. I don't think that happens often but I think we're in danger of seeing it in the UK.
"Whatever is done it must be better that the path to challenging these sort of edicts is shorter when the EU and the ECJ are no longer concerned."
You're probably right. Without supra-national jurisdiction the challenge would be thrown out PDQ.
We have a govt. that's chafed at having to obey international law. They've got rid of as much of that as they can. They've also chafed at UK law and judicial review and have shown indications of wanting to get rid of that.
Did you vote to "take back control?" What you weren't told is that you weren't taking back control. It was the govt and it's you they propose to control.
"the words of an enactment must be unambiguous before the court may interpret Parliament as intending to override rights"
Right now somebody in the HO is digging out the next version of an Act, ready and filed for just such an occasion, to go before Parliament containing just such words. They can do that now because the grown-up supervision has gone. That's why they wanted to take back control.
"Can you imagine what the reaction in Corporate America would have been if DEC or Burroughs or Sperry or IBM had made just one release that was as buggy as the code that is run as a matter of course on modern computers?"
I don't need to imagine although the country was UK and the offender ICL.
The release was a package of semi-compiled (think library module) for FORTRAN that wouldn't link. In that case it lasted about half a day - just long enough to be detected given the turn-round times of punched card jobs. How long would it take to do the equivalent roll-back today?
Maybe it's dawning on them that (a) a tit-for-tat tariff war maybe isn't good and easy to win when they see themselves having to take on more and more countries to whom they wish to sell stuff and (b) they might get a better tax take from their own coporations if they can negotiate an end to the free market in corporation tax at the expense of letting customer countries take a percentage on sales.
The legend was that a QUB prof of Botany tried for ages to get a minibus for field trips. Eventually he took advantage of the name of the VW Microbus and slipped it with a lot of other micro stuff. Legendary is far as I'm concerned because the other half of the legend is that it was written off when somebody took a right turn too quick. When I got there all we had was a battered mini which got a few of the sump fins ground off by being driven up mountains.
More likely that somebody would have snapped it up and started posting stories such as Sainsbury in NI having to stock the shelves with Spar products instead of their own, numerous EU businesses refusing to ship to the UK & vice versa and M&S unable to export sweets produced in the EU (Germany) to the EU (Ireland) without having to pay duty.
Maybe they might contrast all Leave's claims about getting rid of EU red tape with the post-Brexit reality.
I'd guess W@ldo is referring to the fact that its visa system allows for tech jobs to be paid a bit more then the going rates in really low wage countries so as to ensure the tech behemoths in the US are able to get away with paying less than what would be the market rate otherwise. Whether the US tech population regards that as enthusiastically as W@ldo is questionable.
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