Posts by Doctor Syntax 42400 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"how is this subscribe and save feature OK?"
It doesn't seem to be but it would need to be a different case. Maybe TPTB in Germany think it best to tackle each one separately to avoid Amazon miring the whole case with complicating one aspect of it. Or maybe they'll be able to use one as a precedent for the rest.
From that link: "Now we’ve got a smart button that we can stick to any wall, table, desk or bookcase to turn on our smart lights."
Oddly enough I've already got a switch stuck to the wall to turn on my dumb lights.
Also, having read the explanation there it turns out that you have to be a Prime subscriber.
One of my dislikes about Amazon is their persistent efforts to push Prime in my face. I don't want it. I will never want it. And yet each time I order something before I get through to complete the order I'm presented with a page full of Prime guff with a conspicuous button to click to sign up with Prime and an inconspicuous link to continue without. Along with their crap search engine and habit of failing to deliver to lockers - followed up by a complete lack of idea what to do next when that happens - it's one of the things which makes me less likely to use them if there are alternatives.
"has overseen work on the NHS 111 online service"
I tried that last week.
It was along the lines of "Do you have symptom A, symptom B or symptom C.
OK, A and B.
Oh, it works on radio buttons and can only accept one option.
Have they never heard of check boxes or haven't they got rules (or maybe a rules engine) that works on two?
It finally dropped through to "Gall your GP" which is what I'd have done without its "help".
"PlusNet is owned by BT by the way, but runs as a separate division."
I here reports of poor customer support but I've never needed to use that very much as they haven't contrived to do anything to piss me off. Unlike TT when they bought Tiscali who'd bought....
"And that's also why the Democrats are opposing it so much, even though when you come to it, it's a relatively small amount of money."
It's probably to their long term advantage to cave in. They can then call it the Trump Folly and point and laugh at it, rinse and repeat for every successive Republican candidates' wilder promises.
"the government would just keep on going, using the same budget from last year."
Not unless things have changed since the '80s. One of the principles then was that if you don't spend your budget this year you don't get it keep it till next year and when you put in next year's estimates they're likely to be chopped back because clearly you didn't spend this year's money. So as the end of the financial year approaches you spend up on stuff you'll need for next year (microscope slides and cover-slips were two of my stand-bys along with methylumbelliferyl phosphate).
One variable factor was the over-winter spending on road clearance so if there was a mild winter there was a lot left over to spend. In the Northern Ireland Office this was known as the Spring Sales.
"Our budgets are not about parliament authorising spending by government"
Actually the authority of Parliament stems from its having wrung from one of the medieval kings (CBA to look it up) the right to block expenditure by blocking taxation. The two are directly connected. I'm fascinated by the fact that Parliament is finally facing up to its responsibilities and one way it's just demonstrated that is by an amendment to the Finance Bill.
"All I'm trying to saying is that if the Executive in a democracy gets voted in after campaigning / about a certain policy, then is it not rather undemocratic for the House to block / prevent / refuse funding for the policy?"
The individuals we (including the US electorate) elect have their own responsibilities and that includes holding the executive to account. That includes preventing them from undertaking something wildly impractical or harmful and maintaining a control on the purse strings. In fact, it's the latter which is one of the main tools they have to do that.
They have their own democratic mandate to do this.
"Saying that, if my understanding is right then surely Congress should allow the money for his ridiculous wall to be released as it was a campaign promise."
What if his promise was to saw through the continent at the order to cut Mexico adrift; should Congress allow him the money for that?
And remember his campaign promise also included the claim that it would be Mexico, not the US that paid. It's up to him to make good on that part if he wants his wall.
I can, however, see one argument for letting him have his way. In future it could be pointed out as part of mocking future candidates' wilder promises.
IANAL, however in civil court you don't have to 'prove' something to the same standard as criminal courts .... All they would have to show is "on the balance of probabilities"
There's also scope for lots of legal argument about what constitutes an act of war in terms of what befalls an innocent bystander.
"INNOVATE with the next lines."
Why? If the product does what the user needs what are the results of innovations? Quite possibly a product that does it worse. Or a product that's actively anti-user by continually spying, something that seems to be most of what innovation means these days.
"But the [stock] market also attempts to price in long-term risks"
It seems to fail at pricing in something that's more of a certainty than a reality: that the product market will mature. It's all very well setting a stock price at $SILLY P/E in the early stages because it anticipates what future earnings are anticipated. As the market approaches maturity maintaining that is just foolishness as the future earnings will stabilise at a lower level.
There's nothing wrong with a product settling down to be a steady earner. There's a lot wrong with thinking that it won't and everything wrong with failing to accept that it has.
"standardising startup scripts to make them easier to manage"
Easier to manage by whom? WIndows admins? SysV scripts are shell scripts. Anyone setting up a startup script on a Unix box will be familiar with the shell. Anyone who wants to treat it as if it was another OS really shouldn't be doing that.
"the current state of democratic derangement"
I've often wondered about the arrangement whereby the head of state is also the head of government and the leader of the majority in the legislature is neither. It seems guaranteed to produce this sort of instability. I understand about checks and balances but those need some element of goodwill to make it work. As that joint head role is a pretty good definition of a dictator it's largely goodwill on the part of that head that's needed to make it work.
It has all the makings of a constitutional crisis. I wonder if the US will just sit it out and then carry on once there's a change of president or whether they'll recognise a need to rebalance in some way. That one piece written constitution they're so proud of is going to make the latter more difficult.
By way of comparison we also have something of a constitutional crisis in the UK and it seems as if Bercow is handling it by helping the Commons rebalance itself against Government.
"Can't they bother to keep his identity private?"
If they've revealed who did it in terms of function I think the cartels can work out the rest. It's a bit like all those people who post here saying "Anon cause otherwise they'll know it was me". Well they knew at the time and even if they forgot since they've just been reminded.
The time to use a false identity is when you're working for the bad guys.
"I feel dirty for saying this but you mean like Exchange can? Or dirty in a different way Google Calendar?...cant see the calendar itself being that tricky."
I rather suspect it's this sort of thinking that lead them into the whole minefield in the first place. It's a really complex resource optimisation.
It probably doesn't actually have to allocate every trial, judge, barrister and witness in the country but it does have to cope with substantial subsets. What's worse nobody can tell you with any certainty how long a trial will last - that's in terms of days or weeks not hours.
You might think you've got the calendar for the Bristol area sorted and then an expert witness calls in to say they can't make the court when you've got them down because they've already got a summons for Carlisle that day. If you try to reschedule that case you find you've got it down for a date when the prosecution leader is due to start a three day case in Northampton. Then an accused changes his plea in mid-trial and you're left trying to see if anything can be brought forward.
There really has to be a better way than what happened in the past. I've spent two or three days, or at least several hours of each, hanging around a courthouse waiting for half an hour in the witness box. I've also been called from the other end of the country to the other to go to a court that wasn't, as far as I knew, going on that day.
"So we'd have to put up income taxes and tax on dividends"
If you have a company selling in country A and sending its profits to country B no matter what level you set for dividend taxes in A they won't collect a penny tax because the dividends are paid in B. You can tax the company's employees in A or you can tax their customers. Once the money's moved to B A can't touch it.
"Shareholders have not asked for profitability only share price appreciation."
If there isn't a prospect of profitability to justify the increase in share price the shareholder has just bought a piece of the underling assets and would probably be lucky to get more than a fraction back were the assets to be sold off. Good luck with your retirement if your pension is based on investments like that.
"I thought corporation tax was generally considered to be incident on shareholders and customers?"
The money to pay shareholders comes from customers - unless there's something dodgy going on or the firm's flogging off assets there's nowhere else to get it from.
The point she makes about what happens if a revenue tax on items with a thin profit margin is valid. Either the line gets dropped or the price has to be raised in order to break even let alone contribute to the shareholders' dividend. In order to determine whether it really is a thin profit margin one does have to check on the source of course and make sure it's not being bought from another arm of the business in a jurisdiction with a lower tax regime.
"The people who pay VAT are the consumers at the end of the sales supply-chain who can't claim it back."
And just who, ultimately, do you think would pay a tax on revenue? If you put another 20% on sales it would simply result in prices being raised to pay it.
she would like there to be more public efforts to "demystify" the tracking of people's buying habits online.
What I find most mysterious is why they're so bad at it. Their search throws up a large percentage of false positives and is less responsive to attempts to set search terms that what I was used to over 30 years ago. Then there's the repeat offerings of things which were unlikely to have been repeat purchases.
As the article quotes "This case is a discrete part of a broader matter,"
I'd like to think the ICO will end up pursuing former directors when they deal with the broader issues although they aren't in as strong a position as they'd have been if the events had happened under GDPR.
"it could be argued that the administrator has a responsibility to retain enough BOFH's to be able to do so to meet their legal obligations such as this one."
Assuming the administrators even have the technical competence to work out who to retain - and assuming the BOFHs haven't already done a runner.
"Make the third party software companies provide their own DLLs instead of installing 50,000 files that no one will ever use unless they install a Printronix printer."
That's how you get DLL Hell. There is a reason for providing standard libraries. The real problem comes when the 3rd party vendors decide they can't trust what's on there and provide their own anyway.
