Posts by Doctor Syntax 40413 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"The point here is that it's 4.2 billion, once."
Indeed, but as Avatar said, clear the debt. That would release cash from the current account which now goes to pay interest into actual health care. The situation at present is that those PFI debts are so expensive to service that A&E, e.g http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/huddersfield-royal-infirmary-shock-anger-10742794
"I thought it was a joke operating system from the 1940s"
Citation needed for operating systems, joke or otherwise, from the 1940s.
"when I first worked on it in the late 1980s."
Hmm. Back then I'd been involved in using Unix for casework administration in a busy forensic science lab, distribution & service of mobiles, administering social housing, administering a professional society's membership list & maybe other stuff I've forgotten. And many other people were using it for many other applications. So what was your problem? PEBCAK?
"something approximating a netbook by buying a cheap windows tablet"
Approximating is spot on. The original netbooks were Linux only. MS stomped on that market by twisting vendors' arms to run Windows which meant the H/W spec and therefore the price had to go up. Unless those tablets allow loading of another OS they are only approximations to netbooks and certainly not replacements.
Came with W7 starter but intended from the start to be a Linux machine. Left W7 there to dual boot (always a good idea to keep the original OS in case it develops a hardware problem & needs to be returned). Still has a now elderly version of Mint, running Informix database & used in libraries & archives on research visits. A tablet? Useless for this application.
"We know she is pally with David Cameroon and loved by the establishment, but its getting ridiculous."
Irrelevant. This is not a matter of public policy unless OIC feel it appropriate to prosecute her personally, even assuming that's with her powers.
It's a matter for TT's board in the first place and ultimately for the shareholders if they think it necessary to pressure the board. The media have, to their discredit, given her a free ride on this; had they taken a more critical approach the board might have had to act.
1 year's free credit monitoring. It's getting to be so routine that the crims will equally routinely wait a year for the monitoring to end. How about paying for a lifetime's free credit monitoring? That might make paying enough to do the job right in the first place a good enough investment to do it.
"a mutual legal assistance treaty, but it's a lengthy process that can take months"
The US's experience with Ireland should be a reminder that trying to bypass MLAs can take years. I suspect that the reality is that using MLAs takes effort; they have to actually put together a case that will convince a foreign court.
"Take their predictions for the last 5 years"
If an analyst makes a prediction for N years hence they should accompany it by their predictions from N years ago. And even if they don't I'd like to see journos pick them out of the morgue & print them alongside the current stuff. It'd make much more interesting articles than more DevOps & software defined hypergasmscale.
Take a few points. Draw a line through them. Extrapolate until whatever it it you're "analysing" exceeds the mass of the Earth. Then be amazed when it doesn't happen. And if you're investing in the business involved draw out all your investment as soon as reality and the projection part company.
"I'm delighted to see that the industry are being defrauded."
If I read the article right it's not the ad industry that think they're being defrauded, it's the industries clients, the people whose goods and services are being advertised. For them it should be a rather more complex issue. They're paying the costs of advertising but they're not suffering the downside of annoying potential customers who might otherwise buy from them. As I've said before, the one thing you can be sure the advertising industry is good at selling is their own services.
".. who transferred $11 BILLION to another account (that of Autonomy) only to find that there was nothing of any value left after they'd sent them the money"
It seems they've now decided they can sell this apparently valueless product as a service: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/04/hpe_chases_risky_business_customers/
'"“This has left the realm of law and is now in the realm of politics.” I think that happened a very long time ago, perhaps from the very beginning.'
Indeed. In fact the Schrems case dragged it back into the realm of law where it belongs. And I think it'll keep getting dragged back there. The prof seems to have it arse about face.
"But given that the UK-USA treaty basically guarantees that the UK will hand over anybody on request"
a) Sweden has a European arrest warrant out for him. They have precedence.
b) He was here for several months without any request from the US.
He only did a runner when he was getting close to the end of the legal proceedings to extradite him to Sweden.
"The UK, however, could have done so before the EAW was issued; their agreement with the USA, with which Julie is very familiar, means the UK bends over when the US roars, and hands over the suspect almost without question."
If he was so concerned with being sent to the US you have to wonder why he came here.
"I think it is the potential to download, keep and/or re-use that makes it certain that the Internet case is a breach."
No, it's the actual act that's the breach, not the potential. If a book is sitting on a shelf there's the potential to make a copy that breaches copyright. But if nobody does make a copy then the copyright isn't breached, even if the book stays there until it crumbles to dust.
And to be clear, if someone takes the book off the shelf, copies it & puts it back it's breach of copyright but NOT theft.
"So you're saying that once a thief has stolen something it becomes legally his?"
Completely different set of circumstances.
If you put something on a web-server accessible from the net then it can be accessed by anyone. They don't need to have been provided with a direct link if they can navigate to it. That's how the web works and if someone puts something on the web and weren't aware of that it really should be their problem. That's especially the case if it's a media company that put the file there because having such knowledge should be part of their business. It might be a different matter if it was only accessible via some trickery such as SQL injection.
There is, however, a question of whether there's a copyright in the URL. But if there was this would make the whole use of the web more or less impossible.
The file wasn't stolen so comparison with theft is meaningless.
"For me to recurrently pay you each month, you have to actually DO something for me each month, not just allow me to keep doing the same thing I did last month."
Millions of people rent accommodation by the month. However they have a choice. If they can get together the capital to purchase, or at least put down a deposit, they have the option of buying a different property. The question here is whether there is an effective choice. Adobe's users, on the whole, seem to think there isn't. Is this true of Autodesk?
Whilst the rental model may be fine for occasional users (the comparison would be with staying in an hotel for a few days) it does seem to me to be a possible abuse of monopoly for regular users if there isn't an effective non-rental alternative. I'm surprised the various competition regulators haven't looked at this. If they do, expect to see the landlords contributing to Gimp, etc.
What exactly is the "arbitrary detention" that the UN's ruling on?
It can scarcely be questioning in Sweden and any possible imprisonment after due process of law. There's nothing arbitrary about than.
Nor can it be arrest and possible imprisonment in the UK as there's nothing arbitrary about that.
Nor can it be about being holed up in the embassy because he's there entirely voluntarily and could have walked out through the front door on any day since he entered the place.
I don't even see that it could be extradition to the US through legal channels as that would also require due process of law in Sweden or the UK so that too wouldn't be arbitrary.
The UK, if they don't extradite him to Sweden, or Sweden, at the end of the legal process there could deport him but presumably that would be back to his place of origin, Australia. I don't see that being repatriated is arbitrary. Would Australia send him to the US without going through a legal extradition process?
So AFAICS the only thing he can appeal about is the possibility that he could be taken to the US without going through an extradition process. How does the UN rule about something which hasn't happened and seems to exist primarily if not entirely as a possibility in his own mind?
"They aren't even the sharpest spoons in the box."
My view was formed nearly 50 years ago when the company I'd joined a few months earlier went bust (I don't think there was a causal connection) and I was out of work. One of the staff in the local employment exchange tried to argue that because I was unable to sign on on the appropriate day I wasn't entitled to that week's dole as I was unavailable for work.
The reason I couldn't sign on in his office was because I had a job interview at the other end of the country.
It took a little explaining before he realised that he couldn't sustain an argument that being interviewed for a job was inconsistent with being unavailable for work.
I didn't get that job which was just as well; I ended up with a research assistantship in the field I'd always wanted which in turn lead to meeting the research student who became SWMBO and also learning about these big boxes which ate punched cards.
"Many times in my career I have given up on a problem and left the office. Then 100 metres down the road had to turn back as the answer had just occurred to me."
I think the explanation is that we have a fairly full mental model of whatever it is we're working on but what's on the screen focuses us on a tiny part of it. Leaving the screen removes that focus but the model only decays slowly so that the brain is able to keep working on it unconsciously for some time.
I found the solution might pop up as I walked across the car park. Or just having joined the motorway - concentrating on driving must have been particularly effective at removing the last elements of the screen focus.
"The comment is just too perfect and makes no explanation at all as to the mechanism or what the minor glitch is."
It sounds to me like the result of some PHB dictating a kludge RIGHT NOW instead of re-writing a section of code to do a proper job.
"But I've seen too many project start as a custom project for customer X and its peculiar needs, then trying to sell it to Y and Z, of course trying to customize for their peculiar needs also."
I nearly got sucked into one of those. It was also a case of "If that's where you want to go I wouldn't start from here", largely in consequence of the peculiar needs of X. It was monolithic so every user had access to every function in the system. It needed a re-write just to remove the spaghetti tying the multiple functions together.
Then the salesman persuaded Z that it would be a drop-in replacement for their existing system despite a misfit of data architectures...
I managed to escape PDQ.
"Or go direct to an apparently legitimate free download"
That's the 1st edition. There was a second edition that celebrated the 20th anniversary of publication. THAT was published in 1995. The original is over 40 years old and we're lumbered with manglements who still don't get it.
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