* Posts by DavCrav

3894 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

DavCrav

"70% of constituencies with Labour MPs voted Leave."

It's amazing how you can find out this stuff when the count wasn't done by constituencies.

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

DavCrav

Re: Because the reception is better

Are you someone whom people greet more warmly the further you are away?

Me, too.

Judge shoots down Trump admin's efforts to allow folks to post shoddy 3D printer gun blueprints online

DavCrav

Re: Judge Canut was it?

"Judge Canut was it?"

No. It was Cnut.

"Issues order that the tides may not come in - aka that things posted on the internet must vanish."

This is one of those annoying memes (using the original Dawkins definition), a viral idea that reproduces and gets stuck in people. Cnut forbade the tide from coming in to demonstrate that his power to decree was clearly limited.

DavCrav

Re: Why a 3D printed gun?

"If any idiot can print a gun, then everyone has access to guns, and it doesn't matter what the law says if it cannot be enforced."

I suspect the ten years in jail (UK law) if caught with it probably would have a deterrent effect though.

DavCrav

"If money changes hands then even in the UK the minimum legal age for sex is 18, not 16."

If money changes hands then it's not legal, at least for the payer, of course. Sex is the only service that it's legal to sell but illegal to buy in UK law. I understand the reason for this, but it still offends my sense of logic.

DavCrav

"Less good was his decision in 2018 to, allegedly, pay $500 to have sex with a 16-year-old girl he met through the website SugarDaddyMeet.com."

Amusingly, in the US it's legal to own a gun, but illegal to have sex at age 16 (I know, not in all states, before you start). In the UK, it's the other way round.

They terrrk err jerrrbs! Vodafone replaces 2,600 roles with '600 bots' in bid to shrink €48bn debt

DavCrav

Re: 600 bots

"How do you actually quantify how many 'bots' your company has?"

I wondered about this as well. I eventually decided it must mean that the bot system will have the capacity to handle 600 calls simultaneously. They seem to think it'll take a quarter of the time to resolve calls with the bot than a human. Somehow I find that unlikely.

Teachers: Make your pupils' parents buy them an iPad to use at school. Oh and did you pack sunglasses for the Apple-funded jolly?

DavCrav

"I don't rewrite my C example code just because someone won't install the C compiler that requires, or wants to use some other programming language - not unless I'm being paid and given the time to do that."

Do you work in the public sector, where people are required to use your services, and is the C compiler paid for? If not, bad example.

All bets are Hoff: DXC exec is standing for Brexit Party in UK General Election

DavCrav

Re: West Worthing?

SNP vote in Scotland: 1,454,436, 50% of voters.

UKIP vote in Scotland: 47,078, 1.6% of voters.

Even places with PR tend to operate PR regionally, not nationally, especially when they are made up of constituent nations (e.g., Spain).

ZTE Nubia Z20: It's £499. It's a great phone. Buy it. Or don't. We don't care

DavCrav

Re: I am from Gdańsk and I beg for help

"Or a 3rd placed rugby team."

They are called All Blacks, not Kiwis. Like the polish.

DavCrav

"(Russian firm Yotaphone made three, although it collapsed into bankruptcy earlier this year)"

I know why they went bankrupt if they only made three phones...

IT contractor has £240k bill torn up after IR35 win against UK taxman

DavCrav

Re: Why...

"...Do HMRC seem to target IT contractors almost exclusively?"

They don't. But if you think about who all the 'independent contractors' are, they are either zero-hours delivery drivers, or high-earning IT contractors and TV presenters. I bet the DPD driver pays the right amount of tax, and as we know here many IT contractors have set themselves up as John Smith Ltd (unlike the DPD driver). So where exactly do you expect the Eye of Sauron to fall?

DavCrav

"unfortunately the brunt of their dying will be borne by the contractors"

I have no sympathy with contractors who went looking for tax schemes that promised 1% income tax. They knew what they were getting into, it's obviously a scam and hey were hoping to make like bandits. There are (not many, but a few) permanent, normally salaried people whose companies paid them like this so that the company itself could evade the tax. Save your sympathies for them.

DavCrav

Re: I cannot understand why HMRC pursues contractors so much.

"RTFA. He didn't "dodge" a tax bill of £240k."

I did read it. He did dodge taxes. Tax avoidance and evasion are both dodges, the difference is which is legal.

People say Starbucks (for example) dodges taxes all the time, and there's no suggestion that that is evasion.

If you're going to exploit work's infrastructure to torrent, you better damn well know how to hide it

DavCrav

Re: i don't know...

"He put his coverup ahead of backing out of the problem he'd caused and restoring normality at the first opportunity."

Sure, but why wouldn't you?

Option 1: Confess. Get fired.

Option 2: Try to cover up, fail, get fired.

Option 3: Try to cover up, succeed, keep job.

Come on, you can't be serious: Now Australia mulls face-recog tech for p0rno site age checks

DavCrav

Re: Ok that's it.

"Oh great, so we invent another sport and have the Aussies win every time ?"

Have you seen Westminster recently?

DavCrav

Re: Soooo...

"You wanna buy kit from a company that walks around aking "who are we? who aaare we??""

It would have been an even better joke if it weren't pronounced 'huar-way'.

The eagle has handed.... scientists a serious text message bill after flying through Iran, Pakistan

DavCrav

Re: Global roaming charges are evil

"Nobody would mind paying 20% more, say. But 10,000%! My provider charges $1000 / gig. Needless to say I just turn it off."

For me text messages are free. So if they charge 1p on roaming, that's infinity percent more.

Plan to strip post-Brexit Brits of .EU domains now on hold: Registry waves white flag amid political madness

DavCrav

Re: Self inflicted thrashing

"Because the lying scumbag remoaners in Parliament have done everything they possibly could to renege on their election promises?"

Yeah, filthy remoaners like those who voted against May's bill. Like, er, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

DavCrav

Re: Does the UK require citizenship for .uk domains?

"I do love this kind of statement. Do you really think advisors should be elected?"

Hey, England used to elect its coroners. I think this was long ago though, when only the 'right' kind of people were allowed to vote.

DavCrav

Re: In defence of bureaucracy

"I wonder where the Labour Brexiteers are?"

One of them is in an office marked 'Leader of HM's Opposition'.

One of Blighty's most-loved charities hands £46m to one of Blighty's least-loved outsourcers

DavCrav

"second year of a turnaround programme by CEO Jon Lewis"

I know a department store that needs turning around when he's done. It'll be a perfect fir.

Chinese customers to unfold their Huawei Mate X on 15 November

DavCrav

Re: UK versus US meaning of moot

"Moot in English means it is something worth debating at an Anglo-Saxon moot."

From what I'm reading it looks like something that should be decided at a moot, originally.

I was only aware of the US definition, of a debatable point that no longer has practical consequences.

A poster below links to an article that suggests not using moot in an international publication. I think that's a wise move, although I am glad to be aware of this alternative definition.

DavCrav

"Whether that will close the gap enough to satisfy the ordinary phone-buying public is a moot point"

Is it moot? I don't see why it's irrelevant.

Republican senators shoot down a triple whammy of proposed election security laws

DavCrav

Re: 'if you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result'

To be fair, there are still Republican dicks in the Senate, so you would expect the same result.

We read the Brexit copyright notices so you don't have to… No more IP freely, ta very much

DavCrav

Re: TL; DR

"It's done wonders for banking and financial services in Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin and Amsterdam"

It hasn't done that much for those centres. It's made banking cost more across the EU, since it's now decentralized and more difficult.

DavCrav

Re: TL; DR

"Australia and IIRC China have also made similar noises."

That would be the same Australia that has a virtual hermetic seal around their border?

And who actually wants a free trade agreement with China? So tariffs of their goods are reduced, and they still find some excuse not to buy anything from us? No thanks.

DavCrav

Re: TL; DR

"They don't need to. The regulation is very simple - EU citizens get treated the same as natives. If the NHS is free, it is free. The end."

Yes, and it ended with Brexit, so slow hand clap there.

"Of course, many of these problems would be utter non issues if English people didn't have such a phobia of carrying identity cards like, well, everywhere else."

Or the EU could grow up and realize that not all regulations can work across 28/27 completely different countries.

DavCrav

Re: TL; DR

"Add the UK having "free at the point of delivery" residency-based healthcare, it should have done more to implement such rules."

The European Court already put the kibosh on that. Because the NHS is free at point of delivery, the Court said that there were no requirements for private health insurance in the UK.

One of the main issues (for me, not for Brexiteers) with the EU was the way their regulations didn't take into account the different systems that existed in different countries. It seemed as though the authors of regulations looked at the situation in France, Germany and Belgium, and then just assumed everyone else had the same system.

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

DavCrav

This was, technically*, in Hollywood. I guess there it's called a California roll.

* As in, just about at the time it was said.

DavCrav

Re: It depends

I am reminded of this xkcd topic, which debunked that particular myth.

DavCrav

Re: Would someone explain

"Only box junctions are directly covered for entering a junction."

And you can do that if oncoming traffic is preventing you from turning right.

DavCrav

I was told that, because of all of the stop signs in LA, people slow down to a crawl but don't completely stop. This manoeuvre is called a 'California roll'.

Guess what's on the receiving end of more NASA dollars for SLS?

DavCrav

Re: 2024...hmm...Trumps 3rd term??!

Speaker of the House. Then Senate Pro Tem.

Deus ex hackina: It took just 10 minutes to find data-divulging demons corrupting Pope's Click to Pray eRosary app

DavCrav

Re: Unlimited Password retries? Sloppy coding?

Four-digit PIN?

That would be a numerical matter.

UK culture sec hints at replacing TV licence fee, defends encryption ban proposals and her boss in Hacker House inquiry

DavCrav

Re: Hmm

"And was proved wrong."

Thank you for correcting me. I have withdrawn my original post, and (boo hoo) all 11 likes it had garnered were lost.

I knew that C4 was publicly owned, but it appears to be commercially run. It has been floated on several occasions to receive some money from the Licence, but it has never happened.

GitLab reset --hard bad1dea: Biz U-turns, unbans office political chat, will vet customers

DavCrav

Re: I don't understand people

"You can't have it both ways."

There's a difference between rejecting service because of who someone is, and rejecting service because of what someone will do.

It should be illegal to refuse to bake a wedding cake in general. However if,when purchasing it, the person said they were going to strap someone down and force-feed them the cake, then you probably should refuse to serve then. Regardless of who they like to screw.

DavCrav

Re: The only way ...

It wath meant to be a joke.

DavCrav

Re: Congratulations

"Or, did I somehow get it wrong about what you meant?"

Yes, you did. These are business to business transactions.

Register Lecture: Is space law 'hurting' commercial exploration?

DavCrav

"No taxes, no space police, fiat law. Colonists of the new world did much as they pleased when they landed, why should space be any different? It's even easier without any natives (that we know of)."

Any Martian colony will be completely dependent on resupply from Earth. That gives Earth-based authorities a pressure point.

Three UK goes TITSUP*: Down and out for 10 hours and counting

DavCrav

Re: No Wi-Fi calling either

Wi-Fi calling is out for me too, but normal phone, texts and data are still working. This is in both Oxford and Birmingham.

YouTube thinkfluencer Siraj Raval admits he plagiarized boffins' neural qubit papers – as ESA axes his workshop

DavCrav

Re: 700,000 YouTube subscribers and 70,000 Twitter followers — Is that a lot?

"numerous academic titles and achievements."

What exactly are those? I could find that he did a CS degree, and that was it.

DavCrav

Re: turnitin

"and its false positive rate was pretty high"

When Turnitin was first introduced to the maths department, of course someone would decide to break it. It turns out that by replacing whitespaces by non-breaking spaces, you can take a page of text from another source any obtain any percentage plagiarised you want.

Of course, our students are not clever enough to actually do that.

DavCrav

Re: My relentless workload...

"YouTube is pushing solo producers to knock out around an hour of video per week to get a basic income."

Or, you know, you could work for a living rather than try to make money with Youtube videos.

DavCrav

Re: reputation continues spiraling downward

"I find nothing strange about that, the more you dig, the more you dig up, and this applies to, methinks, everybody."

It just applies to, methinks, charlatans.

Welcome to the World Of Tomorrow, where fridges suffer certificate errors. Just like everything else

DavCrav

Re: That last paragraph ..

"...we're pretty sure the subsequent numeric overflow..."

Of course, this should be a buffet overflow.

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

DavCrav

Re: "why was it written by one guy with no oversight?"

"Very simple - the results looked reasonable so everyone assumed it was working as intended.

Proper testing would have revealed the problems."

I just found a problem in a short script that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I had a list of variables and as I slowly solved the equations I substituted in the determined variables. What I hadn't noticed was that I searched the list for the variable name and then changed it. If one unknown was proved to be exactly equal to another, then my script changed the first instance of it, not the correct instance of it.

This problem did not appear until quite a long time after I started using it.

How bad is Catalina? It's almost Apple Maps bad: MacOS 10.15 pushes Cupertino's low bar for code quality lower still

DavCrav

Re: All’s good here...

"Fascinating that folk downvote personal experiences."

Because it's stupid posting a 'I am not experiencing issues' comment. It would only be useful if the question is whether something was down for everyone or just a portion. But we know the software is buggy, because lots of people have experienced bugs. The fact that you haven't is uninteresting and unimportant.

Oh dear... AI models used to flag hate speech online are, er, racist against black people

DavCrav

Re: Is anyone surprised ? Really ?

"Seems to be working pretty well for most of us."

Indeed. A big part of 20th century philosophy worried about why this is so.