Posts by Doctor Syntax 42029 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
This seems to be typical of managerial thinking in general. I've never quite worked it out.
Do we put it down to them being so stupid they actually think it? Or do they know it's wrong but they're so stupid as to think it's credible? Or do they just not care? With a few other gradations in between.
"There is PGP and decent one time pads are REALLY easy and unbreakable, the issue with them is purely key distribution."
It certainly is for one-time pads. One reason for suggesting encryption be built into SMTP rather than being on top is that there is already a framework in place - the mail servers.
CO2 tends to get removed from the atmosphere in 40-50 years which is used to justify burning forests as "renewable energy"
Wood burning is essentially a closed cycle - the wood that's burned has been a standing crop that has been building up for a few decades. The C in the CO2 it releases into the air is the C that it removed from the air when it was growing so there's an equilibrium.
Burning fossil fuels releases as CO2 carbon that was fixed many millions of years ago and that amount of C will hang around until it finds its way to another long term sink.
"Sounds like a quite a few people went to schools where the staff had no idea how to store the daily milk delivery."
Milk delivered from the farm was unpasteurised and fresh. Milk delivered to the school had a cooked taste; whether that was simply age or over-zealous pasteurisation I'm not sure but living in the country one knew the difference.
"the cold-blooded dinosaurs that roamed beyond what is now the Artic and Antarctic Circles"
You do realise, don't you, that the bits which are now beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles weren't always where they are now? There's this thing called plate tectonics...
OTOH climate and relative sea levels have never been constants. Those who insist that they are regardless of burning fossil fuels and those who insist they would be if we stopped are both deluded. However there has been no excuse for decades for the amount of valuable fossil carbons that have been stuffed up power station chimneys for the last many decades and the greens of past generations are largely to blame for that.
"All glass contains some radioactive bits of rock - it's a pain making some optical detectors, you have to chemically purify the glass to get the background down"
K40 for one. When the Belfast carbon dating lab looked into the problem they calibrated and reused supposedly disposable containers for the scintillation counter samples.
"There is one (with several points) obvious flaw in your plan. etc"
There's a great deal to be said for ring-fenced taxes, not least that the Treasury absolutely hate them. The hate, of course, is indicative of the fact that it prevents them playing the silly tricks the OP describes.
"For three years the British car owners had to listen to tales of its total reliability, routine servicing only, everything just worked."
There was a certain amount of sampling bias. The UK manufacturers were certainly making some dreadful cars but if you compared the state of the average Japanese car in the car park with the average British car you needed to take into account that the Japanese were newcomers and the average Japanese car was going to be a few years younger.
"Feel sorry for the clients who have long term contract with this toxic puddle called DXC."
I wouldn't worry about them either. (a) They outsourced so they deserve it. (b) There's such a thing as breach of contract, assuming they were smart enough to insist in service levels written into the contract and if not see (a).
We occasionally get people turning up at the door to sell things and waving a badge to show how genuine they are. The looks on their faces are priceless when I tell them that their badge is meaningless outside the building where they work - if, indeed, there is such a place.
"SumOfUs has had some success in embarrassing companies to change their governance or approach in the past."
I doubt Zuk can be embarrassed and he can't be outvoted so what's all this about activism? If they don't like it about all they can do is sell their shares.
"Therefore, our board of directors believes that the process contemplated by this proposal is unnecessary and recommends that our stockholders vote against this proposal."
I'm sure he will.
"A PR department has the advantage of having a clear view of communications and of the communication strategy"
By producing a lot of meaningless verbiage such as "only a few customers", "your security is our first concern" etc.
