Re: No, just don't
"Marketing people are the most goddamned arrogant, self important assholes you will ever meet."
Why do you think I included the word "intelligent"?
33002 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"If you work in IT you're just making yourself outdated."
If you work in IT you become very cynical about upgrades. You become very cynical indeed when people try such extreme tactics to force upgrades onto you systems. And, if you've got your wits about you, you read the T&Cs very, very carefully. Just go and read those. If you can't grasp the problem you should take up a job that doesn't require reading skills. Note that I avoided saying "if you can't see the problem" because the problem lies in what's omitted.
"use the advanced installer to opt out of the telemetry."
How do you know that you're opted out? How do you know a future update won't opt you back in without telling you? How do you substitute a more restricted set of T&Cs than the standard ones? Have you ever read those carefully? If you think you have, read again and try to find any restrictions on what they can take. I would not be prepared to put anything with those T&Cs on anything other than a burner test box.
'They have never explained the term "supported lifetime of the device".'
As far as the UK is concerned there seems to be a likely collision with Trading Standards at some point and with the corresponding regulators in other countries with strong customer protection legislation. Maybe not in France if it gets banned completely due to their run-in with CNIL
"Apparently once we leave the EU we wont be able to employ Engineering talent from europe in our car factories"
Probably because at least some the car factories here will be run down.
1. They belong to foreign companies who are here because it provides them with a manufacturing base in the EU. Note those words: in the EU.
2. When we leave the EU we won't be providing a manufacturing base in the EU.
3. If we're not providing a base in the EU the owners will make their new investments in countries in the EU because that's what they want.
4. That means that new products will be made in EU countries, not the non-EU UK.
5. When the product lines made in the UK reach end of life there'll be no work for the factories and they'll close. Or maybe made into museums so people can see that a car factory looked like back in the olden days when we had no control over our destiny.
"no one had a plan for the result of the referendum to be 'leave'."
I think several did.
A good many of the leavers took Cameron at his word, that he'd stay on, so their plan was to leave it to him. That one's obviously failed.
The rest are just waiting for their plan to kick in, namely, magic happens. Was that a unicorn I heard or just one of next door's bullocks?
"We recommend that the government sets out in its digital strategy the implications of withdrawal from the European Union, in reference to specific, current EU negotiations relating to the digital economy,"
Yes, now we've got greater control by deciding to exit we'll simply be able to decide what we want and then dictate that to the cowering remnant of the EU. It'll all work out perfectly.
"If you're commuting from e.g. Bath to London, the train season ticket will cost you £10,000 a year. A contractor can pay that out of pre-tax income, whereas an employee (even a short-term one) simply can't."
And if the headcount gets cut 3 months in it'll be the freelancer's head that's first in the queue - or maybe it'll just be enforced rate cuts.
The essential point about using freelancers is that it enables the engager to transfer such risks to them. It's the taking on of those risks (including those which might need professional liability issue) that differentiated between being in business and being an employee.
"If HMRC came up with one, single, simple and straightforward set of rules for everyone - no exceptions"
I have an alternative scheme. Everyone has the same tax rates but the stability of the job is viewed as a benefit in kind and taxed accordingly so if you have a nice steady job with long term prospects, say working in HMRC, then you pay accordingly. The honourable friends should be OK with that; after all they can be turfed out at the next election so their job security is much less than Sir Humphrey's. I always reckoned that if the PCG had started a campaign for such an arrangement IR35 would have been dropped PDQ.
@ Preston Munchensonton
I wonder what your experience of freelancing is. It's essential to have a contract for services, not a contract of service, AKA an employment contract.
It's a good while since I retired but after IR35 came in I made sure I had non employment terms. It helped that I had a number of direct contracts and very few through agencies. However there were many reports of contract problems. One situation was that the agency would issue business-like contracts to freelancers and employment-like contracts with the engagers and got a precedent set by taking a guy to tribunal who was so ill the hearing had to take place in his home so it didn't get properly defended.
The consequence is that the engager is able to load the risks onto the freelancer so that in the event of a downturn or a project being canned they can be dumped without any redundancy payments but are in danger of being taxed like a permie with all the permie protections.
The problem is HR drones who don't understand the difference and CBA to find out. If they had the responsibility for ensuring proper B2B terms they'd simply get a different set of boilerplate clauses and that would be the end of the matter.
"public sector employers"
The term "employer" is prejudicial here. The better term in "engager". If a freelancer contract is fit for purpose then the engager should not be an employer. Naughty HMRC.
If the burden were shifted to them engagers - and agencies - would have a simple solution: ensure that all contracts were unambiguously contracts for services. It's what they've been told for years but they couldn't be arsed to sort themselves out.
Legacy IT is what keeps the business running that brings in the money that pays (inter alia) for new developments. Experienced sysadmins know this. Inexperienced ones will discover it and become experienced. (Who cares about what the hipsters know?) Disrupting the smooth operation of that legacy is very expensive.
Historically MS have been simply pushing the burden onto in-house admins; the disruption simply hasn't been on their radar. Now they're discovering for themselves that it's not just a matter of installing new shiny every couple of years or so.
"BT Openreach must get their fingers out and roll-out FTTP a lot faster to replace half-arsed FTTC already!"
Are you prepared to pay for them to dig up the road and whatever else lies between you and the nearest point where they can connect to existing fibre maybe even lay more fibre from the exchange if necessary? If not, who do you think should pay for that? And who should forego their FTTC installations whilst you've commandeered a gang of diggers to do that?
"He seemed a bit surprised when I said that."
Probably the only ones they can successfully recruit have no idea to start with and then get put through an induction that tells them how wonderful the company is. Take it as an opportunity to explain at considerable length, and clearly audible to passers by just how dreadful the company really is. Ensure that the name TalkTalk is mentioned at sufficiently regular intervals so the passers by are in no doubt who you're talking about.
"Nobody cares about the client/salesperson/sales order/HR table referential integrity that RDMS obsess about."
In order to play about with your large scale data sets you need a working business to pay the bills. A business that sells goods and services. If there isn't someone to obsess about ACID qualities in the database* that supports that business then your big data is going to get its budget yanked from under it and will, in any case, be pointless.
*The database may well be providing the data sets in the first place.
"At the moment, BT would just appeal to the EU and it would be overthrown as there's a similar problem in Germany with Deutsche Telecom."
And if OR were to be split off how long do you think it would be before it was bought by Deutsche Telecom, or Telefonica - or maybe SoftBank?