Posts by Doctor Syntax

Fear and Brexit in Tech City: Digital 'elite' are having a nervous breakdown

"I don't know enough about Parliamentary Law to know if a Government can ignore a defeat in the House of Commons, but if they do, they certainly risk a vote of No Confidence by the Opposition, which might just be carried by a few dissenting Tory MPs and result in a General Election."

I don't think it's law, just procedures of the House.

If it was a free vote then AFAIK there are no consequences at all, likewise if it was a minor element of a govt. bill.

If it was on a key principle of govt. policy and the govt. had an overall majority then a govt. might resign although resignation as a point of honour seems to be out of fashion these days. If it didn't there might well be a vote of no confidence (respecting votes of no confidence also seems to have gone out of fashion, doesn't it Jeremy?).

With a minority govt. there'd be more of an expectation of the govt. just continuing on the basis that it couldn't really expect to get everything through and there might not even be a vote of no confidence if the opposition didn't fancy facing an election at the time. In any case there's no precedent for this with the current law on elections which was partly intended to avoid this turn of events for the late coalition.

The real issue here is what happens in the event of a motion that most members of most parties don't want, isn't govt policy (assuming a remainer becomes PM) but has come about as a result of a non-binding referendum. I'm sure that must be totally unprecedented and very hard to call. Labour might try to play politics and abstain, turning it into a Tory in-fight. However with their own party having its own problems at the minute do they really want to provoke a major constitutional crisis?

There could well be a case of here's the referendum result, here's a free vote on it and let's tip-toe around it and carry on.

Re: Really its up to Boris to take the lead now

"They need to find a victim who will take the job, serve section 50 notice and then resign, clearing the way for Boris (or whoever) to place ALL the blame for the big mess that ensues on the sucker."

No, your victim's successor will have to do some real work clear up the mess, if that's possible. The only possible good job on the horizon is the one after that.

Re: Cheap labour? Wait until the Convervatives get busy

"There is a pool a people ready to jump at £7.20"

I'm sure this is one answer to the lack of increased productivity in the economy that puzzles economists. It's cheaper to simply add more cheap labour to cope with an increase in demand than to invest in more productive machinery. The other answer, of course is multiple layers of management occupied in pitching PowerPoint presentations at each other, probably about the advantages of using more cheap labour instead of investment.

"Dumb question, but I confess I dunno UK specifics."

Not at all dumb and deserves an answer.

The leader of the largest party after an election is normally the one asked to form a government. If that party has an overall majority that's pretty well a shoo-in. If not then someone has to try to form a coalition or even run without a coalition or overall majority.

It's possible for a party with no formal coalition or no overall majority to govern; they might not get all their policies through and can be displaced by a vote of no confidence - that happened to Callaghan when he lost the support of the Ulster Unionists. In general that's not a good form of government because it's apt to hand disproportionate power to a very small fraction of the electorate.

There's an extra twist when there's a no-overall majority in that the previous governing party might try to form a government even if they're not the biggest party so everybody has to wait until they decide it's a non-starter which caused some hesitation after the 2010 election.

Once a party is in government they generally have the option to change leader and hence PM without having to call an election. That could be through ill-health (Eden and Wilson, for instance, within living memory) or by revolt (Thatcher), because the PM sees the runaway train coming down the track (Blair who handed over to Brown just in time for the latter to catch the consequences of his 10 years of pretending that housing costs could be ignored when measuring inflation, even if that meant ignoring rampant house price inflation /rant). It could also come from an intention to hand over to a new leader who'd then have time to establish himself before a general election which was Cameron's stated intent although he might have intended to leave it a little later.

During the course of a parliament a government can lose its majority by by-elections which, IIRC, was what happened to Callaghan, and then becomes victim to a vote of no confidence.

The current situation has the extra factor that there's an Act in place which imposes a strict 5-year interval on general elections. That was part of the previous coalition arrangement; it protected the LibDems against a snap election and also limited the Tory right wing's ability to rock the vote. It could, however, be repealed any time if Parliament wanted and presumably the Queen could, acting with the Privy Council if necessary, ignore it in an emergency.

An incoming Remain PM could have the option of asking Parliament to repeal that act and hold a general election fought primarily on that issue so that it would be a new Parliament that would (or wouldn't) invoke section 50; there seems to be a general feeling over the last few decades that kicking stuff to the other side of a general election is a Good Thing in that it gives the electorate a chance to reflect. Irrespective of the next PM's views it would still be a Good Thing. In fact I think even some of the Leavers were saying that - or it might just have been Boris.

HTH

Re: The current plan does not matter

"Firstly, May backed Remain. She pretty much kept her head down, but she was on the Remain side."

ISTM that she backed it only sufficiently to enable her to stay in the govt. if Remain won. She seems to have been strongly against anything from the EU that concerned her department.

Re: The current plan does not matter

"the explicitly declared will of the people"

A small minority is not the explicitly declared will of the people. It's the vague feelings of a small percentage who could have voted differently the week before, could vote differently now and could vote differently again next week. It's the tail wagging the dog. An explicitly declared will is more like 2/3 of the voters - or even 2/3 of the electorate. A change of the status quo of this magnitude should require a referendum but it should also require a majority sufficient to demonstrate that the people are whole-heartedly behind it.

Re: So any company that trades with an EU country has to open their borders to EU inhabitants?

"doesn't magically result in magical ponies roaming the countryside"

You've just shot down the whole of Leave's economic policy.

Re: So any company that trades with an EU country has to open their borders to EU inhabitants?

"No wonder Dave ran as soon as he realised what he'd been lumbered with sorting out...."

Given that he was with remain why should he sort out leave's problems. Now Boris, first coming out with the "but not just yet" line and then ducking out completely...that you can certainly describe as running away. Did he ever think about what might be involved before the result came up? And have those who've signed up to run for the leadership thought about it at all?

A trip to the Twilight Zone with a support guy called Iron Maiden

Re: Depressing

"Would you like a constitutional crisis with nobody having any idea what happens next, no effective government, a power vacuum, and politicians stabbing each other in the back for possibly weeks on end?"

Can I just have the last bit of that, please.

Bank tech boss: Where we're going, we don't need mainframes

Thank goodness for small mercies.

It's ING, I don't have an account there and if it's Dutch, as a UK taxpayer I presumably don't have to bail it out - and certainly not after Brexit.

Pollster who called the EU referendum right: No late Leave swing after all

Re: Luck, not skill?

"If you look into it in more detail, you find that Isos/ComRes's telephone polls were much less accurate than online polls like YouGov's, which more or less said it was within the margin of error."

There was a report on the Beeb saying much the same thing. However we're told that the Leave vote majority was due to all those old folk who wouldn't recognise the internet if it bit them in the leg, etc. etc. That doesn't quite fit.

"Anything can be verbed."

What does "anythinged" mean?

Isis crisis: Facebook makes Bristol lass an unperson

"Spare a thought for Isis Thomas, a 27 year-old from Bristol, who found this out when she was locked out of her Facebook account."

She should regard this as a positive thing.

Man killed in gruesome Tesla autopilot crash was saved by his car's software weeks earlier

"If you can't do that, get a taxi."

And let the taxi driver not be alert instead. On one of the few times I've ever taken a taxi I watched for several hundred yards whilst the driver ignored a car pulling out from a junction in front of him and eventually T-boned it.

Mystery black hole hides by curbing its appetite

If this is the first such survey and it turns up one then the probability that it's a one-off seems small.

The immediate thought is could this account for the missing mass? Given that it's a small black hall you'd need a lot of them.

Those Xbox Fitness vids you 'bought'? Look up the meaning of the word 'rent'

Re: Refund? @Doctor Syntax

"That case relies on the particularly consumer friendly court system in California. It's pretty much not applicable anywhere else in the world."

It might be unusual in California but consumer protection is widespread in Europe. I don't know about the rest of Europe but the UK has a small claims court.

"how many people are prepared to try to claim back the cost of their VHS fitness tapes, because you can no longer buy a tape player"

Not a good analogy. The equivalent would be Jane Fonda knocking on your door and demanding her tape back because you'd watched it.

Re: There's an old saying

"problem is that Microsoft has billions still to burn before they finally fold"

But it wouldn't be yours.

Re: Refund? @Deltics

"but how many people are prepared to take on a company like MS in the courts!"

Maybe you missed http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/27/woman_microsoft_windows_10_upgrades

The trick is to go for a small claims court - and presumably the amounts here are within those limits - which negates MS's size advantage.

I wonder if it will find its way onto this guy's to-do list http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/28/chatbot_kills_parking_tickets

Chatbot lawyer shreds $2.5m in parking tickets

Re: A small omission?

"So, by your definition, anything that is legal by the letter of the law is automatically morally and ethically right as well?"

Who were you replying to?

If it was me, then let me restate my point. If it's legitimate it's legitimate by definition. It would be a non sequitur to imply that something is moral, ethical, both or neither on account of whether or not it's legitimate. Or do you think that legislatures invariably act in moral or ethical ways?

I'm convinced I've seen similar bots handling customer disservice queries for years.

Re: A small omission?

legitimate vs moral and/or ethical?

If parking tickets in general are sanctioned by legislation (the similarity of the words should be a clue) then they're legitimate. I don't see why you expect moral and ethical issues to be involved. The only question, in each case, is whether a particular ticket was issued according to the legislation.

Florida man sues Apple for $10bn, claims iPod, iPhone was his idea

"It looks exactly like an iPad type device except its square not rectangular. Yes, it has round corners."

And don't forget http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-04-03

Evernote riles freetards with two-device limit

"lifetime upgrades"

Whose lifetime?

No means no: Windows 10 nagware's red X will stop update – Microsoft

"Yes it has telemetry enabled, but that is easily switched off and helps provide valuable feedback on how people use the OS so Microsoft can improve it even more."

1. What's easily switched off is easily and surreptitiously switched back on by the next unavoidable update.

2. If the telemetry is so harmless, not to say benign, why do MS's T&Cs make no attempt to exclude themselves from recording what's none of their business? If you don't believe me go and read the privacy policy for yourself and try to find the bit where it confines their rights to recording transactions and access credentials to those relating to themselves.

"a class action is on the cards if they bork thousands of pc's with unwanted upgrades."

They'd almost certainly prefer that to a death of a thousand cuts in the small claims courts. They'd be able to settle a class action with a big payout to lawyers, and either peanuts to the losersplaintiffs or a donation to EFF or maybe a charitable organisation of their creation choice.

Re: Loving windows?

"When there are more mainstream GAMES for Linux than for Windows, THEN they'll pay attention. Otherwise, they pretty much have a captive market."

So what you're saying is that Windows is only fit for playing games? For real work something else is better?

'Trouble is, as later drug ads showed, "They don't take no for an answer."'

I see you've understood the analogy.

Re: Gun, meet foot

"a machine purchased without an OS is a lot cheaper."

I'm not sure about that. The Windows free-trial bloatware can more than subsidise the Windows, at least that used to be the case - I haven't looked a buying anything new for some time.

Re: Gun, meet foot

"Web browsers get pwned more easily than custom software. Didn't the Target and Home Depot attacks teach them anything?

As for LibreOffice, that's all fine and dandy unless you use a lot of macros and other stuff Libre doesn't do very well (if at all, like macros)."

Macros get pwned more easily than custom software. I'm not sure about Target & Home Depot but in a lot of cases the attack that came in through a browser and/or email was actually in a Word document with a malacro (TM) in it.

"We started our journey with Windows 10 with a clear goal to move people from needing Windows to choosing Windows to loving Windows."

It seems to have moved some people from needing Windows to realising they don't need Windows.

Re: Yes, I know, but Apple --

"But then Sid Stupid doesn't realize this, the update goes uninstalled, and he gets pwned due to a wild exploit the update would've quashed."

There are a couple of issues here.

Firstly, IME, Windows updates take a very long time to install and give the user very little feedback if they want to see it whereas Linux updates, again IME, are applied quickly and, if you're interested, tell you what's going on. This is exacerbated by Windows updates being saved up for big monthly releases while Limux updates are released as available so the updates, although more numerous, are individually smaller.

Secondly Linux updates do not call for reboots. If software for an individual service is updated the service is stopped and restarted whilst the rest of the system continues to run. Even if the kernel is updated the original kernel is left in place and running until such time as the user finds it convenient to reboot in order to run the new kernel - in some distributions there are even live kernel updates.

Taken together these mean that there's no particular incentive to bypass Linux updates.

MPs of Europe unite: Listen up big biz, air your tax deals in public

"And who do you think the corporations pass that tax bill onto? Consumers DUH!"

And how many times does that have to be said before it gets through people's skulls?

Re: Bad move

"And what has a UK body got to do with the EU?"

I think you must have been reading a different article. The one I read was about the finance committees of individual European nations. What was yours about?

My plan to heal this BROKEN, BREXITED BRITAIN

Re: Parliamentary Sovereignty

"It was the people, and we spoke clearly."

Nowhere near clearly enough.

A constitutional change should, in my view, require a referendum (in fact there should have been one before we joined the Common Market and there should have been referenda in all the countries to validate each of the treaty changes since then). But the referendum should require a substantial majority in order to change the status quo. A change should reflect a consensus.

Accepting the smallest majority means that major, long term decisions are made at the whim of a small group of swing voters who might not vote the same way next year, or even next week when they realise the consequences of their vote. That's just plain daft.

Osborne on Leave limbo: Travel and trade stay unchanged

Re: Irish passport

"While our marriage would not be recognised in Ireland,"

What? Do you mean the UK ambassador to Ireland is living in sin?

"we'll just take it."

So, outside the UK and outside the EU? That's real independence. What, you thought they'd let you join, just like that?

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

"Leave is what exactly? EEA, EFTA, bilateral trade deal, WTO rules? Free movement, EU budget contributions, co-operation on science and policing?"

You missed out that magic happens once we're out of the EU so we don't have to worry about anything ever going wrong again. I think that was the main thing they had in mind. Either that or the Remainers would sort it all out for them.

"If we have those figures in 6 months time, after Brexit plans have been published and refined, then we'll have a problem."

True. What do you expect the value of that if clause to be?

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

"90-95% of economists"

Economists? Probably 110-115% of them. You always have more opinions than you have economists.

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

"The vote was Leave, now we have to make it work."

Who's this "we"? The Leave campaign got what they wanted, now it's up to them to make it work. AFAICS the only thing Boris & co seem to be offering is back-pedalling. Perhaps they're waiting for the pixie dust to arrive.

'I urge everyone to fight back' – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

Re: puzzled

"Do US small claims courts findings trigger precedents?"

I shouldn't think so. Precedents arise from rulings on what the law means as other courts would then apply the same interpretation of law. In a small claims court there's no legal argument to present so no scope for rulings of law, the court just has to make a finding of the facts in that particular case.

Re: Now the precedent has been set ...

"historically all a class action suit does is make the lawyers rich."

I think the parties, in diminishing amounts they have to gain are:

1. Lawyers - they get big costs.

2. Companies - only one case to fight.

3. Plaintiffs - peanuts if they win.

Re: Who's next?

"For precedent, look what happened to Sony with the recent Linux-on-PS3 settlement."

And any of those who got peanuts in the settlement will be looking at this & realising they should have gone with the small claims court.

"I have done this twice recently for friends who wound up with Win10 and didn't like it."

And presumably, the MS techies could have done this. Were they under instructions not to let any user escape the clutches of W10?

Parliament takes axe to 2nd EU referendum petition

Re: 4Chan pranked

"The amount of middle aged and older people I saw on election day asking why we used pencils instead of pens really lead me to despair. How can you get to that age and never have been in a polling station before?"

It's a valid question irrespective of how many times you've voted. Did you have an answer for them?

Re: Dimwits

"the dog which has finally caught the car - WTF do I do with it now...?"

Quote of the week.

" suggest it's more useful to see what David Allen Green , a legal writer has to say on things, such as reminding us the referendum is not legally binding or this on Article 50

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1200279093330132&id=137432829614769"

That's a very interesting read, particularly in regard to what constitutes a decision. AFAICS even without a second referendum it would be open to a PM, Privy Council, cabinet or the HoC as appropriate to look at the existing vote and decide that a 4% majority in a non-binding poll isn't sufficient to allow such a far-reaching decision to be made.

Re: Democracy in action...?

"So my only wish is that the geriatric majority which brought us this vote takes the responsibility proportional to the way they voted."

Are you privy to information about the actual distribution of votes by age? Nobody else has. All you have is anecdotal evidence. Other anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the younger voters didn't understand what they were doing and had simply voted Leave as a sort of protest vote.

FWIW this 70+ voter voted Remain, as in the previous vote 4 decades ago.. The Facebookers who thought it meant no more than a Like will have to live with the consequences of their votes. Unfortunately so will my children and grandchildren.

Re: wtf?

@Fibbles

A UK citizen is a UK citizen irrespective of how long they've been out of the country. Not quite the same as out of the UK but I spent about 19 years in N Ireland before returning to England. But one of the issues was freedom of movement and these were UK citizens who were directly affected by it. I can't think of any convincing reason why they should have been excluded.

Visiting America? US border agents want your Twitter, Facebook URLs

Re: I guess it's good then that I'm a citizen and not a visitor....

And, for similar reasosns, as a non-citizen it's a good thing I have no intention to visit there.