Posts by Doctor Syntax 42534 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"IR35 is to stop the tax dodging bastards"
If you think it's just a tax dodging wheeze why aren't you taking advantage of it yourself? Would it offend your moral principles or don't you fancy the risk of stepping off the edge of permie status? If the latter then you might like to reconsider and wonder if may there's something in this notion of freelancers being businesses and being a business not the same as being employed?
"unfair management practices – like passing people over for promotion"
'Twas ever thus. I quit on this basis over 30 years ago. Odd that as soon as I handed in my notice I was offered a promotion without any of the formalities that normally ruled in that organisation, right out of the normal annual cycle and without the normal promotion board. Things don't change. If employers think they can get away with being cheapskates they will. They're helped if their employees have a very niche skill set with not much competition from other employers.
For employees the answer is to develop a second, less niche skill set if you can. That and an FU fund.
"The IR35 changes have not a lot to do with HMRC collecting more revenue...it takes politics and vested interests to screw things up."
In this case, at least originally, Labour party politics and trade union vested interests. Freelancers don't join unions. By trying to shift them into permies the unions would hope to drag them into membership.
Computers in reprographic shops are likely to get clogged up with toner dust. We had a SCO server in a remote site in client's premises in London. If I had to do any work on it which required taking down a floppy disk I also took a spare drive. I think the only reason the QIC drive survived was because it always had a tape in it.
The end came when the lad who ran the shop rung up to say the ceiling had just fallen down and there was plaster all over his desk. After that we relocated the operation off-site.
"we (I'm in the UK but I'm guessing we're next to some extent) don't have traffic management"
Doesn't traffic shaping count. After TalkTalk took over my old ISP they traffic shaped Usenet more or less out of existence during a good portion of the day. So I left them and take the opportunity of informing those sales droids who try to sell it in public places why I'm not interested. In a loud enough voice for any passing sales prospects to hear, of course.
On the whole those honeypots seem to be directed at detecting and analysing attacks. What I had in mind was to provide content that could be sold on the industrial espionage market but would waste a lot of the purchasers' time by being a known dead end. Something like, say, a production process that had been looked at and abandoned because it was too costly and had too low a yield.
"Seven universities, including those with GCHQ-certified degree courses"
Why should having a GCHQ-certified degree course make a difference? It will only involve a tiny percentage of people in the entire university.
It must be a slow news day if undigested PR bumf like this is making its way into el Reg.
"excluding members of Parliament, who are exempt from being profiled and / or tracked, because they added that clause in to the bill"
You think that's wrong?
Consider this. You have some issue which you wish to take up with your local MP. You regard it as confidential. How can it be confidential unless the MPs communications are confidential. That exemption protects you.
The problem isn't that MPs are exempt, it's that there's something for them to be exempt from.
"If they did stop one, wouldn't they be announcing it from the roof-tops?"
Actually, no, not in any detail because that would enable opponents to understand where they were going wrong. The best they can do is make unverifiable statements about how many attacks they claim to have prevented. Because such statements are unverifiable in order to be believed the intelligence services have to be trusted and there they have a problem. Trust and its opposite, mistrust tend to be mutual. They act as if they don't trust us therefore we don't tend to trust or, in consequence, believe them.
"All the recent terror attacks have been lone-wolf affairs"
And yet, after the event, it seems that the perpetrators were previously known. It then raises the question of whether focussing attention on people they previously knew about would be more productive than trying to spy on the populace at large.
"Like it or not, actually paying politicians well from the state's purse is a good way or reducing corruption, since otherwise they'll sell influence."
I doubt it. However much you pay them while they're in office there's still the same scope when they leave.
"greater personalisation of BBC content"
I helps to spell that out: "greater personalisation of British Broadcasting Corporation content".
The essence of broadcasting is that it isn't personalised. Whet they're pu to is a contradiction in terms. So they can save money there. Or are they selling the collected data that's the essence of personalisation?
"However, you omitted the obligatory <pedant> </pedant> tags."
This deals with a court case. It helps if the law is required to be exact about such things. If you were caught speeding in a hired car you wouldn't think it pedantic to argue that there was a mistake when you found you'd been charged with stealing the car.
"With trademarks, companies have to defend them, as that is the law."
Defending is one thing, looking for fights is something entirely different. Not only do the eponymous fruits look different, they're not even members of the same botanical genus. Apple do seem to have chosen the appropriate genus, however; botanically apples are Malus and Apple's behaviour certainly seems malicious.
