Re: That's not the complaint
I am! I'm programming with it right now on the other screen.
95 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2018
>> Those of us with professional qualifications, or chartered status, have standards that we may be held against. I do work across multiple jurisdictions, but the chartered status standards are always (in my experience) higher than those of the laws of the land.
Here in the US, the accountant test is "What is 2+2?" The winning answer is "What do you want it to be?". My accounting teacher (a minor for me) said to check your ethics at the door. It is OUR job to lie in behalf of the customer.
The oldest phones used 49 Mhz for one side of the conversation and 1600 Khz (the upper side of the American MW Band) for the other side. Under Part 15 of the FCC's rules about low power unlicensed transmitters, you could have up to 100mw of transmit power (at least at the time) I worked for a Radio Shack then, and the manager used to take one of those phones and go two doors down the street to eat dinner and still be able to answer the phone. At that time, radios (such as scanners) that could pick up random frequencies around 49Mhz were not that common, but you could pick up the 1600 Khz signal on just about any AM radio. And it included the sidetone so you could hear both sides of the conversation. I lived in an apartment complex and you could hear some very NSFW conversations on the most ordinary of radios. Also, it wasn't that hard to hot-rod those phones (just change a resistor) and you could go to the next block.
I'm not sure how it works Britian (I still can't get over the fact you have to pay the government a hefty tax to watch TV). However, that alert tone is DEEPLY embedded in our psyche. If you are from England, watch your parent's and grandparent's reaction to an air-raid siren. Same thing. It was cemented into our brains that tone signaled the impending end of the world. My parents, and then I were drilled MONTHLY on what to do if we heard that tone. You walked around with a keen awareness of where the nearest shelter was in case the Russians dropped the big one on us. In case of emergency, that tone was on EVERY communications channel simultaneously. It elicits a very real flight-or-fight response.
Also, there are (or were) automatic systems tied to those tones. Places like hospitals had dedicated radios tuned to a station (usually a clear-channel AM) and when the alert was tested, that hospital radio alerted and a human was supposed to check on it. Because they did test it, the alert never directly resulted in an action; some human had to push the button.
These days there are other systems now, but all of those are a lot more vulnerable to failure and sabotage than the old fashioned EWS system. So, hands off the tones.
What? Why is it your automatic assumption that everybody listens to music via streaming? There's a world of people who (a) don't have smart phones (b) refuse to pay more than once to listen to a song (c) want to listen to things not available via streaming (d) while they find them annoying, they are mostly OK with ads. And people are keeping their cars a lot longer now (mainly because new ones are much more expensive). My 2005 big-grandpa sedan doesn't have Bluetooth anything, just a good AM/FM radio. Still runs, so why change.
Well I've been in meetings where the fire alarms went off and the boss said "Anybody who leaves this room is FIRED!!!!". Somebody left, and he was fired for insubordination. When somebody in security tried to bring up the security violation, he was fired. Eventually everybody learned to ignore the fire alarm. Remember, this is the USA and laws are for the little people.
American here: I tried Earl Grey and really didn't like it. It tasted like perfume to me. I like my super-strong Chai tea (tastes like mulled cider). But for everyday consumption I prefer whatever tea Lipton is. If I drink it hot, I change between black and some milk and touch of sugar. But I'm from the South, and the official beverage of the American South is STRONG Lipton tea, over ice, with about a pound of sugar. Iced tea is my preferred beverage too, but diabetes runs in my family so it is unsweetened. And iced tea has the advantage you don't have to light the kettle every day at 4pm.
> I was working under IR35 at the time...
Can you explain this to the token American? I did Google it and it appeared to be something like "Getting Paid Under The Table" or "Unpaid Work (do it for free or lose your job)". How would the airline suffer if they were discovered?
The latter is pretty common in the USA, so much so that companies brag about how much free overtime they can force people to do. E
Musk to Irish court: Put a sock in it. We're a big American company and I'm richer than your whole country put together. My company can put your country out of business. Your puny little laws don't apply to us. He's not getting a penny of our money and there's nothing you can do about it. So go fish.
I think you are all missing the obvious. All Tesla cars are online and can be reprogrammed. So he gets on X, makes a post that says "If I don't have that 56 Billion in my bank account in 3 hours, I'm going to push this big red button and disable every Tesla in the world 'on the spot'. Middle of the interstate, on the way to the hospital, doesn't matter. If somebody dies it's YOUR fault, not mine. Signed Elon".
When I was younger I could drive about 1000 miles per day, but that left about an hour for a catnap at a truck stop. Now my limit is about 1/2 that; 500 miles in 10 hours (that includes gas and toilet stops and time for some fast-food). If you are in a hurry and have multiple drivers, you can make about 1400 miles in a day. That's a rule of thumb however. On the Eastern seaboard it is less. Out west it is higher, and there's a stretch of road in Texas where the speed limit is 85 mph.
But they aren't doing things the old way anymore. If they were, the planes would not be falling out of the sky or explosively disassembling. It doesn't matter if they are using PDF or dead-tree or even hieroglyphics. If they are ignoring the instructions and falsifying the reports (which they are) then who cares how it is documented?
Well, the trouble is that "Scientific Inquiry" is no longer a sufficient reason to launch any spacecraft. These days there has to be a ROI within this quarter, or it will not get done. I predict that nothing on the order of the Hubble will ever get done again because there is no immediate profit in it. After all, who cares if the universe is 13.1 or 23.2 billion years old? How does that get me any goodies? It doesn't? Well never mind then. Nobody was interested in revisiting the moon until they found minerals they could mine for $$$$. Now there is a mad rush to the moon.
"If a business cannot exist without the unlawful and unethical exploitation of data subjects then in the public interest is should close. Shareholders should not be the number one consideration in every matter regarding business. If they lose out for investing in an unlawful unethical business then they should lose their money."
Obviously not an American. In the USA, unlawful and unethical is the very definition of business. When I was in Business school, a professor said "You know what they call people to obey the law? LOOSERS!!!, Soon to be bankrupt and unemployed. And Shareholders are GODS and their profit is the ONLY consideration. They can do anything they want, any time they want, to whomever they want, so long as it makes a profit. The government and the courts will back them all the way.
My great uncle told a story. He was working for the FAA in the 1950's, generally doing stuff with radar. The transmitter house featured long lines of high power tubes with wire caps on top for the high voltage. Well one day some big-wig demanded an inspection tour of the transmitter house, and insisted it be live and the cages open so he could see all the pretty tubes (a BIG violation; it should be power (or at least HV) off and cages closed). But big-wig had the power to demand, so off they went. As he's walking down the line of tubes. one of the caps was crooked. So he reached out to straighten it. Woke up 2 weeks later in the hospital.
> Oh and agile is shit and we all know it,
Yes, but it's CHEAPER. Not only do you no longer need to do testing, but when the product fails, the contract temps that wrote it are LONG gone to another project at another company. The CIO only needs to point to the cost savings and no further questions will be asked. The shareholders only look at that cost and never at the cost of the failure (so sad, too bad). If you are a customer that lost money, oh well, that's life in the big city. Complain to the regulators? LOL, they are in the Bahamas partying with the CIO.
Yes, but when the cloud companies go to the pointy-haired-bosses and say why are you paying for computers, space to store them, and engineers to keep them running? Instead, outsource to us. We'll pay for the computers, space, and engineers, and rent them to you for a very modest sum.
So, they move to the cloud, sell their computers and their building, and fire the engineers. Just then, as if by magic, the cloud provider starts raising their prices and charging by the transaction. The resulting bill is DOUBLE what it used to be, and they're now in the grip of another company for their existence. And they can't go back, because they jettisoned everybody who knew how the old system worked.
But by this time, the CEO has been rewarded for cutting costs, and the stockholders have taken their money and run.
Happens.Every.Single.Time.
Oh, around here Higgins would be fired! The chorus of "he's finding too many defects" would be so deafening that development management would waste no time in showing Higgins to the door! How many times have I been ordered to change sev-high defects to a feature request or lose my job, and told "Stop Testing; your finding too many defects, and we won't be able to release".
Amazon can do anything it wants in the USA. Remember that money = power and now Amazon has so much money they are FAR more powerful than the government. If really pushed, they will just lock the unionized warehouse and move next door. Yes it's against the law, but who cares; Amazon is now above the law. Remember in the USA, wealth equals absolute power, well above any government.
So, if I'm Amazon, I know that all these government and banking systems have long since moved all of their computing to the cloud. So, I just put up a bold and brazen warning; if you implement any measures that bother us in any way, we'll just turn off your cloud computing accounts. In 1 hour all of your governments and all of your banking systems will collapse. We will turn them on again only if you make us king and give us absolute autonomy. Long Live King Amazon!!!!
What's to prevent it?
> The thieves turn up with a large powerful pickup...
They have Large Powerful pickups in the UK? I'm actually astonished. From what I've seen on TV the biggest pickup trucks I've seen appear to be about the size of a Tuk-Tuk, and would easily fit in the bed of the average size pickup truck here in the US.
Or better yet, the only person who either had permissions and/or knew how to do the maintenance quit long ago because the company across the street was offering 2X the salary and was offering benefits like not being on-site 24/7/365 because you were the only person on staff. And BTW, he was the only one that knew the key-codes to get in the server room door and the only one who knew how to change them. So, as time goes on, the company has less and less access to its computers.
Or, how about maintenance is required but nobody knows where the machine is? Indeed in one case they didn't even know what CITY the machine was in.
Because generating revenue is only one purpose of the tax system. The other is social manipulation. For instance, you can deduct the interest on your house mortgage, thus encouraging home ownership. Also VAT taxes only tax the money that you spend. Income taxes get a piece of any money you receive. So, if you win the lottery, the government gets about 1/2 of it even if you never spend a dime of your winnings.
> How would you prefer your company to be regarded?
Well it depends. A lot of Wall Street types and Boards of Directors PREFER heartless SOB CEO's. In the Al (Chainsaw) Dunlap school of management (we worshiped him when we were in business school), being a sadistic ass is a sure way to greater profitability. Reputation means NOTHING. However, I wonder how long it will be before said employees make it their life mission to punish these sadistic people.?
.-> Let's not even get started on the US's weedy 110V system which means that an electric kettle draws so much current it melts wires. At least they finally settled on AC as a sensible system, despite Edison.
We solve the electric kettle problem by not drinking tea. Of if we want tea (generally iced and sweet) we boil it on a stove.
But don't forget about our other odd electrical voltages. My great-uncle's farm ran on 32 volts DC. His lights were all 32 volt. You could even get a vacuum tube "farm radio" that ran off 32 volts. The system was charged by a windmill. I was a tiny boy when I saw it so take my observations with a grain of salt.
"He confirmed the same situation on US ships: no paper charts. The reason given was that they're a huge problem to store and keep updated."
Because I don't know: Why do paper charts need updating? Land masses don't generally move very much. Yes I understand that near a coastline you might have changes, but I'm thinking more about where on the face of the Earth are you. And storage? How much does a nice closet cost?
IMHO sailors need constant practice and refresh on the ancient ways. All you'd need to do is generate a nice EMP (even a "Carrington Event" would do) and all that electronic storage is toast. All they needed in the 19th century is a sextant, a paper chart, star tables and an accurate clock.
Spaghetti code and lines-of-code = pay. Sounds like an outsourcing company I worked with. We used them for software development AND writing test cases. Their metric was number of test cases per time period. They actually wrote a system that automatically generated unique test cases. As an example, instead of opening the app and clicking on options 1 through 100 in a loop, they wrote 100 test cases, all the same except for which option to click. 100x increase in productivity, so they asked for (and almost received) extra pay. Turns out the guys writing the checks knew nothing about code but just saw the spreadsheet metric and were taken in.
Needless to say the guys who pointed that out were not very popular with the contracting company.
In defense of the suit wearers: I took typing in high school when typing was still done by girls in typing pool. I actually had to get SPECIAL permission from the school's principal to take the class since that was designated as "girl only" (like shop class was boy only). I also got my manhood questioned and received a few beatings from the jocks to remind me to stick to boy-stuff.
>>All too often, we see situations where we'll pay more but claim to be saving money) just to be sure "they" don't get a free ride.
In a modification of 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (which at least in America is a root-level national policy, beaten into us as Children) "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not PAY, neither should he eat."