Posts by Malcolm Weir

@Dave 126,

I'd suggest that, rather than try to track the individual customer, that the fast-food places be obligated to prove (by whatever means they like) that X% of their sales transactions have the packaging disposed of properly. Obviously, 100% would be an impossibly high target, but even a relatively low figure (say, 30%) would, I feel, force businesses to be proactive about rubbish collection so they could point at all the stuff they've collected as part of their target! Plus it would encourage the businesses to offer reusable serving materials, because those would be sales-without-packaging, so a "free" point on the scale.

And then you could slowly ramp the target up, and possibly use local council licensing to maintain a range of targets depending on location, so that black spots for litter would have higher standards until they're cleaned up.

A side benefit is that it would likely result in the fast food chains employing people to pick up trash, so they could meet their rubbish-collection targets as well as their profit targets.

Enforcement could be via local taxes: exceeding the target demonstrates social responsibility, so naturally that business is more valuable to the community and deserves to pay lower taxes, while missed targets label the company as a drain on society, deserving of higher taxes.

Re: Roadside drug tests

And fortunately they are.

The last four smartphones I bought (i.e. the last two for each of me and my wife) were chosen specifically because of the quality of the camera. And while I care about mine, she _really_ cares about hers.

It's really the only qualitative measure to care about these days, given that pretty much everybody's radios work well enough (this used not to be true, even if you held it right).

Those four phones were, as it happens, LG phones (V10/G5/V20/G6). Doesn't hurt that the things have microSD card slots and the V10/V20 have old-school removable batteries (less necessary now with fast charging, but still useful after a long flight to be able to switch batteries and carry on...), but the decision was based on the camera quality.

If he is successfully prosecuted (and I hope he is, but am very much aware that we're hearing the story that the prosecution wants told, which may or may not be objectively accurate), then he'll go to jail, receive no counselling, be registered as a sex offender, and when he finally gets released, he'll have little or no ability to earn enough money to pay for counselling for himself or anyone else.

He's asshole (if what's reported is even vaguely true, of course), but the Florida justice system has no interest in improving the lives of anyone (victim or perpetrator).

Re: Hey software, get the fuck out of the way!

Actually, the issue here is that the pilots were not properly trained on the MCAS -- Boeing added that system to the 737MAX but didn't make a big deal about it (or indeed any deal about it) -- so much so that other 737MAX pilot groups are furious! That's "furious" as in writing letters to the FAA about it... The three big unions representing 737 operators in the US (Southwest, American and United) have all responded with anger towards Boeing.

The issue is that *if* you know about MCAS, you can defeat it's "help". If you don't, you have no idea why your airplane is constantly trying to put it's nose down.

All indications are that Lion Air's pilots (and those of Southwest, American and United) did not know, and have not been trained on or practiced with MCAS, let alone MCAS failure modes.

Re: I don't know if this is relevant...

@AC, you guarantee it, do you? For offense?

The "some kind of thing" was "revoke Abignale's US passport", which meant that he couldn't travel to Italy (to face trial there), only to his country of citizenship (the USA). Italy could have applied to the USA to extradite him back to Italy to stand trial, but they obviously thought that 12 years in a US prison pretty much covered it (and likely that the Italian equivalent of a statute of limitations would have expired while he was in the American prison, so those charges would expire). And it's entirely possible that, once he agreed to help the FBI, they asked the Italians to hang fire on any charges that might still have been outstanding...

So how, exactly, would that work with an Australian/Ecuadorian citizen? You assert that the "same thing" would happen, but I don't see how (a) the USA could revoke an Australian passport _or_ an Ecuadorian one, and (b) even if they could, "the same thing" would result in deportation to Australia and/or Ecuador.

Optional

@SVV, while it would be amusing, the very wealthy don't usually use their own names even when they use normal distribution channels, nor do they tend to use their street addresses.

So if you can correlate "Mr/Ms. Discrete Employee, Innocuous Services Inc, Near Woodside, CA" with Mr. Ellison, you probably don't need to worry about replacing your database....

Re: Crappy SD != internal flash

@Jarfil,

Cost of $256GB Sandisk UHS-I featuring:

"A1-rated for better app performance1

Premium transfer speeds of up to 100MB/s

Class 10 for full HD video recording and Playback"

... is $59.99 using my significantly superior buying power resulting from being someone who can type "amazon.com" into a browser address bar...

Yes, internal eMMC flash will still likely be faster, but the vast majority of actual humans don't care about the difference...

Sorry, I missed your question!

Short answer is yes, it does, because the data path is through the TDRSS, which bounces signals across satellites until they can drop to White Sands or Guam in some circumstances. The slightly longer answer notes that there is also a high-bandwidth channel, but as it also goes through TDRS -> WSMR/Guam the same applies, but just that that channel is not available full-time.

Re: Lets Get Real

Well, the Red Dwarf actor Craig Charles may disagree about the "any consequences", having been locked up in Wandsworth Prison for three months before trial.

I agree that the default position should be to accept the less-socially-powerful individual's story (if the story is plausible, and note that gender isn't relevant, but power is).

But there are many reasons to allege an assault, ranging from "buyers remorse" through the complex situation where consent was given by someone too drunk/drugged to be properly able to give consent and in the cold light of day sincerely believe that they hadn't.

And also, of course, the concept of a malicious allegation is not unheard of. Of the two allegations against Kavanaugh, one was a lot more persuasive than the other. It would not be inconceivable that someone might inflate a real incident into a false allegation for purely political motives. For example, someone might allege that a candidate for office grabbed women's genitalia in order to discredit the candidate... Hmm...!

Re: So he's that incensed about the bastardization of his beloved language ?

Oh, that's funny! At school we had to deal with THREE different pronunciations!

We had what might be described as "traditional anglicized" (basically, the Latin used in the law and so on), we had a new-fangled academic pronunciation (from ivory tower boffins trying to be faithful to what Romans might have said, as if anyone cares because they're all dead now, but still...) and we had a local variant that we used once a week that was more closely aligned with medieval church Latin as mucked about by generations of reluctant scholars (in which, for example, the word "nostris" was pronounced "noss-trees").

Latin doesn't change? Hah!

Re: Sooo, they fined him less than he spent to do it legally

Federal sentences of less than 12 months result in the prisoner serving 100% of the time (although any pre-trial detention time counts towards the total. This is per the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

For sentences of more than 12 months, "85%" of the sentence must be served, but after that the prisoner can be paroled if their behavior was good. The average is length of stay is, apparently, 88% of the sentence.This is largely because the federal Bureau of Prisons ignores the plain text of the statute -- 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) -- and uses random percentages instead of the 54-days-per-year in the text. This callous disregard by the BOP was challenged, and upheld, by the Supreme Court, so instead of 54-days-per-year, the actual credit for good behavior is 47 days. (OK, so the rationale is not wholly insane, but the dissent in the case - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/09-5201.pdf -- is a lot more rationale for people who can both read *and* count!)

So a judge sentencing someone to "a year and a day" may actually be doing the defendant a favor, as a 366 day sentence works out at 319 days in prison, while a 365 day sentence requires 365 days in chokey!

Super Micro Computer Ltd *is* a US owned and controlled company.

Yes, Mr & Mrs Charles Liang are ethnically Taiwanese (and therefore predisposed to not trust mainland China), but the company is a classic Silicon Valley startup made good.

I'm reminded of an acquaintance who asserted that Google was peddling Russian influence based on Mr. Brin's ethnicity... not entirely sure how that squared with Mr Page's lack of Russian connections, but then my tinfoil hat never quite fitted me!

Re: Question:

Generally, either software RAID or higher-level duplication over distributed file systems and the like (the Google model).

Re: Why will DEFRA be needed?

Heh!

This encapsulates one of the biggest lies about Brexit: the "red tape" argument. The basis for the lie is that DEFRA (and its predecessors) have always been the ones that "managed" the programs, so that while general policy and funding stream definition (and funding) originated in Brussels, it went to DEFRA for implementation. And DEFRA drafted the forms and the instructions and put together the not-very-helpful help lines and so on.

There is, of course, the argument that it will all be so much simpler with it all under one roof. I'm sure no readers here have any anecdotes that might contradict that...

Re: Penny pinching boss

An IBM 3800 Model 6 laser printer (circa 1987) would set you back £120,000 or so. As I recall, it came with it's own printer (but it's printer didn't come with an even smaller printer).

The model 6 was the cheap one. The model 3 cost some serious cash.

Re: "best to keep sex workers as illegal on street"

Ah, @LDS is a "moralist" -- I wonder if the monicker is related to the "church" of the gullible?

Anyway, the bizarre thing about LDS's ignorance is that it shoots itself in the foot: gambling in Las Vegas is perfectly legal, heavily regulated and *not* run by "organized crime".

Bluntly, it seems like LDS (like the LDS) is based on a pure 1950's "Reefer Madness" view of social problems, and probably should be consigned to the dustbin of ignorant history, and let those who actually have sensible data deal with social issues...

Since July 26, 1990.

What, precisely, entitles a "private firm" to enter the public marketplace?

There is no automatic entitlement, rather there are a series of obligations that must be met: business license -- a formal record of who the owners are --, a tax ID, and, oh look, a requirement that the business must be available to disabled people.

Feel free to dislike it if you are that much of a a*le (that's a regex "*"), but society as a whole has decided your preferences aren't going to prevail.

Re: Maid "service"??

Certain things ARE NOT legal in Clark County, which is where Las Vegas is (or in any county with a population >700,000, which means precisely "Clark County", as that's the only one with that many people).

Re: Pseudo statisticians

Late, but...

What a load of codswallop, @Aodhhan!

Population of the US (per census.gov) is 328M or so. The population of the most populous state (California) is 39M, followed by Texas at 28M.

Population of the EU (per europa.eu) is 508M or so. The population of France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Spain are all larger than that of California, and Poland has more people than Texas.

Yes, the USA is larger (at 9.8M km2) compared to the EU (4M km2). But the USA includes some fairly huge areas of not-very-habitable land (deserts, tundra, mountains) so the "usable" figures are much closer together than you might conclude. But in any case, the EU has 50% more people in (say) half the area...

Wanna try again? Perhaps after you've done 20 minutes of research and cross-checking?

(P.s. you're right about that "isn't going to make you look smart" bit.... ).