Posts by I ain't Spartacus

I thought the first chapter of Genesis went something like:

¹And lo, it came to pass that Peter Gabriel had left the building and gone unto the land of the poptastic. ²So Phil Collins laid down the care of his drumsticks and raised up his microphone of destiny. ³And he vouchsafed unto the people, "turn it on again." ⁴And there was great rejoicing in the land. ⁵Not 'alf pop-pickers.

Legalese isn't just written that way to preserve the income of lawyers. It also has to be written that way in order to avoid ambiguity, at least as much as is possible. Otherwise you'd have even more arguments about how law should be interpreted - which would actually mean more legal opinions required and thus even more money for lawyers.

Like any industry jargon, certain words have specific meanings - which should be the same across different laws and contracts. And thus allow you to avoid defining every single term in every single piece of legal writing, every single time. That requires expertise to interpret of course - but so does any important area with a large body of knowledge.

Re: I wish they'd make up their minds -- "not controlled by any one group"

GnuTzu,

That's just what they want you to think...

Maybe. But nobody is massively worried about the script kiddies. What they're worrying about is things like the Russian government sponsored cyber-attacks on the whole internet infrastructure of the Baltic States that have happened during times of political tension. A several week long period where people were unable to effectively access government services online, made worse by the fact that the Baltics all decided to do lots of their government online, so they're much more reliant on it than say Western Europe or the US. Even though we're going in the same direction.

What happens if some state has a major political falling-out with another, and decides to use a cyber-attack to disable their electricity system? It's never happened on that kind of scale yet, so we don't know how hardened those systems are or how much damage it would do, or how long it would take to recover? Are we talking a few billion of damage and a major inconvenience, or throwing a country into recession for a year?

That's not to mention all the recent shennanigans on social media trying to influence elections. I suspect that this will have no more effect than propoganda did in the Cold War - it's just that social media is new and people weren't used to it and how it impacted on the way they saw news.

Re: I wish they'd make up their minds

The other problem with that kind of thinking is that there is no "they". The internet (and in fact the world) is not controlled by any one group. That's the error the conspiracy theorists make.

Sure we have big corporations and governments - and lots of those types meet at places like Davos and have a good old powow over the canapes. And being a group with a lot in common, they're often subject to groupthink. But they don't all agree on anything, even if they were as powerful as some people make out. There's nobody in charge of everything, and so there is no "they" to decide whether to make the internet safe for the kiddies or turn it into a global battlefield.

Re: Berlin - Roten und Chaoten

Well the Nazis were collectivist/corporatist economically, which is the left wing end of the economic spectrum. While also being nationalist, which is more the right's territory. So there's some argument to be had there. Although my favourite is seeing arguments in places like the Guardian where the lefties attribute all nasty regimes to the Right, because Communists aren't really lefty either, they're nasty right wingers just like Nazis.

Which I guess works if your worldview is left = pure and good - right = nasty if not evil.

In reality "left" and "right" were descriptions of where parties sat in the Assembly after the French Revolution, and have always been of dubious use in describing actual politics. Then you've got that slightly better 2-axis "political compass" chart with liberalism/authoritarianism in social policy on the x axis against left/right economics on the y axis. Although I'm not sure how any of this describes the more extreme parties, who don't really believe in democracy - and though they have an ideology, will often happily ignore that in favour of keeping themselves in power or feathering their own nests.

Well, OK. The OED has both the "ised" and "ized" spellings of many words listed. Which means either are correct spellings. Which you pick is a matter for a style guide obviously - but the dictionary is saying either is acceptable. Whereas it doesn't list yzed for the same words - meaning that would be incorrect.

Re: so...

It's totes de stress - this whole lingo malarkey.

I think from now on all select committee evidence should be given in the form of interpretive dance...

I don't believe so. All those "ised/ized" words seem to be equally correct either way. As I understand it the "z" spellings are the original, which changed in proper English after the US had been colonizsed - and thus they didn't get the memo on the new way of doing things. If you check your OED - both are still listed as correct.

Re: Well I sure hope they also banned "Semprini"!

Then we won't be able to buy belgian buns! So shut up you stupid Ghent!

Re: What did people think would happen?

Anon,

You may be correct. Google may be allowed to get away with taking the piss. Or, the Competition Commissioner may rule that this remedy is also an abuse of market power. In which case we go back to the start, do not pass Go do not collect €200. We shall see.

Re: Fail to be outraged

heyrick,

Doesn't GDPR already cover that? They're asking for your data in order to perform a service that doesn't require it - and the alternative is no service. Which as I understant it breaks GDPR.

You're allowed to do a no data / no service take-it-or-leave-it, but the legislation says that shouldn't be done by consent. But you get the permission for the data to be held on the grounds it's required for the service. Which means you've no consent if the data isn't required. Whereas using the permissions model, you're not allowed to do the take-it-or-leave-it thing, you have to request the data and have refusal as an option.

Or does that fall under the heading of "how this law is supposed to operate" rather than how it's actually been written?

Basically the universe is very weird, but we knew that.

Then it should damn well stop being weird and behave normally! And it should get a bloody good haircut and stop listening to that awful music. You can't hear the words, and you don't know if the singer is Martha or Arther.

In my day universes had to make their own entertainment...

No, I assume they mean that the spacecraft will be down to 1.15kg by the time it reaches Mercury from all the bits it keeps dropping off and the fuel it's burned in order to get there.

So the 1st stage weighs something like 190 tonnes + 2 x 277 tonne solid rocket boosters + an upper stage, normally used to get to geostationery transfer orbit with 10 tonnes of propellant. All to get about a 10 tonne payload to GTO. But I assume it'll be different on this mission, using most of the payload weight as fuel in order to get to Mercury. We're talking nearly 700 tonnes of stuff, to get just over 1 tonne to orbit Mercury.

Re: Senior European Politician

He's been an MEP, worked for the Commission and been a part leader and Deputy Prime Minister of one of the major members. That makes him a senior European politician. It's quite simple really.

Re: Good luck to the guy.

I imagine that stipend is to pay for some secretarial support. As the quote even links it to his office in the UK closing. That could be part of the Lib Dem's Short Money (government cash parties get to support party activities and policy research) - or it could be a separate thing that ex senior ministers get that I wasn't aware of.

Re: See, we're determined to join the main business community

There's only one "lucrative EU Commission job" going per 4 year cycle. That's not exactly that much of an incentive...

Re: What's the point of Nick Clegg?

He can't have been utterly incompetent. The coalition government survived. The first one in peacetime British history in 80-odd years - and they managed to sort out a working relationship with less backbiting than New Labour could manage in the same party with both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

Actually I'd say that's the other reason the Lib Dems could ony have done a deal with the Conservatives. Even if Labour had the numbers to make a coaltion work, they were led by Gordon Brown (who struggled to share power with people in his own party). Also, if you think how rude people are about the Lib Dems now - imagine the flak they'd have copped if they'd propped up a PM who'd only ever faced one election and lost it?

Also a lot of credit needs to go to the Civil Service for coming up with a draft procedure for coalitions before the election.

I know it's fashionable to be massively rude about politicians. But it's a bit depressing the levels people seem to go to.

It'll be interesting to see if Clegg has any effect at Facebook. He's got the power to publicly resign, and massively embarrass them. So he could do something useful there. Or he could just be a money-grubbing bastard. Ah you might say, but all politicians are out for themselves. But if that's true, why the hell did he join the Lib Dems?

Depends. If they're worried about following Google through the office of the European Commission's Massive Fines for US tech companies Commissioner - then Clegg might be useful. I'm pretty sure Google could have easily got away with abusing their search/advertising monopoly, had they not been so stupid and actually shown some interest in working with the Commission when it was more friendly. Someone a bit more plugged into European politics might have been very useful - but they were too arrogant and stupid to listen. And now they're probably going to end up on a repeated treadmill of fines and failure to agree remedies for the various areas where they've abused their market position.

As happens, I don't think Facebook are abusing their monopoly in other markets that much, so are probably safe from Vestager anyway. But there's all the fake news and data protection stuff happening. Personally I'd have thought they'd be better hiring a German - as it's Germany that's the real driver of data protection in Europe - it's been a live political issue there for at least 25 years. But Clegg has good connections across the EU and Britain - so ain't a bad choice.

It could even be (gasp!) that they're making a genuine attempt to change their corporate culture - and have got in someone to help them show governments they're actually doing that. But I don't believe that Zuckerberg is capable of that. So I suspect it's more trying not to get blindsided by the EU in the same way Google have been - and from the way they're failing to learn, I think will continue to be.

Rich 11,

The Lib Dems went into a coalition with the Tories, so voting Lib Dem turned out to be functionally indistinguishable from voting Tory.

So let me get this straight... You voted for a party whose major policy has always been electoral reform to bring in a system that virtually guarantees coalitions. Because they say they genuinely believe that this is a better way to run the country - by forcing parties to compromise when forming coalition governments. And of course having more and smaller parties gives more voters a chance at being represented.

And you complain that they joined a coalition with the Conservative party, when a coalition with Labour was mathematically impossible.

What else did you expect them to do? Say that "our whole political philosophy is bollocks that we didn't really mean and we don't believe in coalition politics after all" - or do the thing they've always said they'd do since the party was founded?

As for the pathetic comment where you call an entire political party that you disagree with "lower than vermin" - have you considered that sort of childish comment might just not be very good for democracy? A bit more understanding and nuance and a bit less childish arseholery would make our politics a lot healthier. As well as a lot more pleasant.

Re: I really hope he gets the boot

imanidiot,

Nope. The Swedish charges haven't expired. Most of them were on a 5 year statute of limitations, they were the more minor sexual offenses ones, and expired 3 years ago. The 2 rape ones are on a 10 year timer. So he's got a couple of years yet to hide.

In my opinion, he's waiting a couple more years for the 10 year statute of limitations on those 2 Swedish rape charges to run out. The Swedes can always re-request extradition, if he leaves early.

No. The Commission have called off the lawyers over Ireland not having collected the money from Apple - because supposedly it took them a year to set up the escrow account.

The appeal agains the Competition Commissioner's ruling on the tax advantage Apple were given is a separate case, also to be hard in the ECJ, and that's still ongoing. If Ireland win, then their tax agreement was fine, and Apple get paid back. If Ireland lose, then their tax arrangement was anti-competitive and they are "forced" to keep the money. At which point they could give every Irish Citizen a couple of thousand Euro and have a massive nationwide party! Or could decide to hold the Olympics - that should about cover building the venues and all the bribes to the IOC. Or host a World Cup perhaps? Anyone for a giant gold statue of an iPhone in the centre of Dublin?

I suppose they could even spend it sensibly...

Re: Next step: CumEx

I'd never heard of this, and just briefly looked it up. Apparently the first 6 people have now been charged, with presumably more to follow. But it's really unlikely that it'll be €55bn of tax missing - that's an absurdly high amount of money. It might be the tax on €55bn of transactions of course - but I've not seen the figures.

Re: Weren't there protest in Dublin about hosuing costs recently?

As I understand it, Apple were paying the corporation tax due on their Irish profits. It was profits made in the rest of the EU single market that were being assigned to a head office that was supposedly in no country, and therefore due for no tax. So it's not like the Irish government were failing to collect all their tax taht was due. The argument is that they were "stealing" the corporation tax due to the other EU member states - had Apple been HQed nationally in each of them - and so owing corporation taxes there. But of course the whole point of the EU Single Market is to to be able to operate seemlessly across multiple countries, and thus only have to pay your taxes in one place.

As happens the real problem here is the US and their stupid deferred payments on corporation tax earned abroad. Basically under the US system you don't pay any tax on foreign profits, until you bring that money back onshore to the US. At which point you can then deduct whatever corporation tax you've paid them (if they're a country with a dual taxation agreement). Result, all these huge corporations have been stashing vast cash piles offshore, in the desperate hope that they could get a windfall special one-off corporation tax deal - and then bring all this money back at a nice low rate. It's the combination of US corporation and divident taxes combined being too high (both are set at roughly 35%) + a stupid deferrment rule that was just begging to be abused - and the one-off special rate they got given during the dot.com bust to repatriate money that led them to hope for another. This is one problem that Trump has actually talked sensibly about fixing - apparently even he is capable of doing something not completely stupid once-in-a-while...

tiggity,

But that's not subject to regulatory intervention, because Apple aren't a monopoly. If you don't like the terms Apple offer their service under, then take another service.

The reason you only have two choices is because of Google's search monopoly abuse created a monoculture (well OK duoculture if that's a word) in the mobile phone OS market. And that's why we need governments to regulate monopolies - to stop one big player from destroying the market in something important.

No. Because Apple aren't a monopoly. And even if they were, having a monopoly is perfectly legal.

What you're not allowed to do is to leverage (abuse) your dominance in one market (search/advertising in the case of Google) into winning other markets.

Google went into Android specifically to maintain its monopoly in search, that's why it was free. To be fair they also did it to get mobile data-loggers to improve maps, location services, local search - and slurp everyone's data. But for some reason regulators did nothing, and so Android has destroyed all OS competition in mobile, except for Apple - because nobody else could charge for a mobile OS.

But now Google have pissed off the EU by failing to cooperate in their last anti-trust case (price comparison search) and so are in trouble over Android and search / Play store. Also they've pissed off US regulators with fake news (though not as badly as Facebook) - so might find the US government gets a little less sympathetic, and their massive lobbying efforts growing less efffective. Google have taken the piss - they've exploited that search/advertising monopoly for all it's worth, and I think they're going to reap the regulatory whirlwind for their arrogance and greed over the next ten years.

Re: Ignore and continue as usual

It depends on the Commission.

Remember that the Commission can say that Google's response is inadequate and fine them again. So if this is seen to be taking the piss - then it will get nixed as well.

Now normally I'd expect a major company to do its legals properly, and make sure that what it proposes meets with the relevant legislation. But this is Google we're talking about. The only reason the Commission fined them on specialist search and price comparison was that Google had proposed about 5 rememedies - all of which took the piss and didn't meet the legal requirements. And so a friendly Commission couldn't close the case - and then Juncker's Commission took over (which was much more German-influenced) and gave them a billion dollar kicking. So Google have history of being stupid.

Kernel,

It's a common misconception that embassies are sovereign territory. They're not. They're just property owned by foreign governments that's protected by international treaties and conventions.

For example, we expelled all those Russian spies after the Skripal murder. But we undoubtedly

knew who they were already - and tolerated them. Because we have a bunch of spies in our embassy in Moscow. It's convenient to maintain the fiction that they're all diplomats.

What Ecuador did was to abuse that hospitality by granting Assange asylum, mostly in an attempt to look anti-American for voters at home. Which probably pissed the FCO off far more than the spying that all embassies normally do. In short, they took the piss. I think that's why we've given them so little help I finding a way to back down but save face.