Posts by veti

Re: Design vs Use

Can't you write a bot to do that stuff? Then get back to the important work of commenting on Web forums.

Re: Humans like locusts

"Should" is always such a hard word to define. I'd be interestedto hear why you think this is a moral position, as opposed to just a pragmatic one.

Presumably his last act in office will be to pardon himself for everything he's ever done, so "federal crimes" are neither here nor there.

Yes, he can do that. Most presidents do it, to pay back various favours, and although they don't normally include themselves on the list there's nothing to prevent it.

Re: a perfectly understandable error

How about a button that takes a screenshot? We could call it something like "print screen".

Re: Ask any actuary

A few years after the EU ruling (in 2012), a UK study found that the gap between premiums charged to men and women had actually widened.

The reason was that insurers were now asking a lot more relevant questions, about your occupation, history and habits, your car, its keeping, maintenance and modifications - and the answers to those questions were skewing premiums much more towards men than the old gender question. And this is perfectly kosher because it's not discrimination.

Turns out, the "men have more accidents" factoid is just lazy statistics. It's true, but only in the same way as "drivers have more accidents" - if you correct for all the compounding factors, the difference all but disappears.

Re: The politics of commerce.

If I believed it hard anything to do with that, I'd be happier about the boycott.

But we all know, that is at best a retroactive justification. The real reason being Trump's tantrum, which Biden isn't going to reverse because there's no constituency for it in the US.

Re: "customer protection" and "China"?

My first thought was that this is aimed at curtailing the spread of Amazon, and possibly also Uber. If countries can be persuaded to set rules that sabotage the business models of those companies, that will create space for rivals.

Re: Pointless

You could say the same of the Web.

Twitter is no worse than any other forum. Anything that sticks around long enough, and attracts attention, gets abused sometimes.

That's what scumbags do: they study the environment and find its weaknesses.

Re: Just as I was thinking of getting a 250Mb/month* data plan...

Since we're trading anecdotes, my phone has used a hair-raising 5.7 Mb of cellular data this month on "system apps and services", of which by far the largest part (4 Mb) is "Google play services". And I pay $10 a month for 100 minutes of domestic calling, unlimited texts and 250 Mb of data.

Re: no safeguards were put in place

My rule is that if you can buy a car and a house with it - and they're not made of Lego - then it's real money. Real enough, anyway.

Re: Low IQ or low volition?

My last work computer, I'd leave on (hibernating overnight) for weeks on end. What do you think is a reasonable interval between reboots?

I had a job interview a few weeks ago, that I think was decided when I asked what system they used for bug tracking and they said "Jira".

I couldn't quite stifle the yelp of dismay in time.

Re: Were they able to locate the slime?

Propose that, and watch the privacy hawks go thermal...

Re: Disinformation?

I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion, but there's really nothing wrong with Fox News except its editorial stance.

Fox's opinion spewers, of whom there are way too many, include some of the most awful human beings in media anywhere, and that's against some very strong competition. But its news programs are fine. The hard part is keeping the two separate, but Fox isn't alone in having that problem - every news publisher has been struggling with that, ever since some wanker-who-deserves-a-very-special-place-in-Hell coined the phrase "24 hour news".

Don't take my word for it. Check out fivethirtyeight.com, which rates Fox among the most reliable and unbiased publishers of polls. Or the number of times just in the past 48 hours when Trump has lambasted them for not supporting his bullshit - and no, that's not "new" since the election, that's been going on for years now.

Well, duh.

Letters pages in old media are exactly the same. You can't *stop* the public from writing in, but if you publish the stuff they do write, that helps to keep it civil. And of course you have to decide what to publish and what not to, that's what a responsible publisher does.

And the BBC *is* a responsible publisher, unlike those $EXPLETIVEs at Facebook and Twitter.

As for the Daily Mail - I'd be ashamed to admit that I even knew what their "comments" section looks like.

Hydrogen molecules, containing as they do two atoms bonded together, are *much* larger - and hence easier to store - than helium. They're more like oxygen or nitrogen than helium, in that respect.

Re: Too confusing

Every company will try to get their case heard by the most sympathetic court in the most favourable jurisdiction. Why would they do anything else?

In this case, it sounds as if the plaintiffs were just sloppy in their preparation. That's not a jurisdiction thing, it's a we've-already-spent-$megabucks-on-this-nonsense thing.

As you say, it sounds easy. Yet it almost never happens. Every study, including Trump's own commission on the subject, shows that.

Sure, you can steal your neighbour's vote. Then the neighbour tries to vote and is rejected. What happens then? Does the neighbour go home and forget it?

Probably not. More likely, they make a complaint. The complaint goes to the police. CCTV footage is checked. You are caught. Now you've committed a serious crime, with serious penalties, for the sake of getting *one* extra vote.

It's like robbing a bank and walking off with $11.45. Who exactly thinks that would be worth the risk?

Re: A sign of the times

Yeah, he says that. Why do you believe him?

To take a stand like that would require real, personal courage. That's not something I credit him with, but maybe you have a better opinion of him than I do.

The reason for the posturing is to suppress the vote, by making Dems uncertain and nervous of what might follow. It's all talk, all of a piece.

Re: Team America: World Police

Get real. Even if Biden wins, his first official executive decision isn't going to involve handing an American citizen over to placate the British press.

Heck, I don't even think he should. I know the British press, I used to be a (peripheral) part of it. If they're clamouring for blood, it would be a travesty to give their victim to the British courts.

Re: I've mentioned it before...

If you've got time to get through all that, it's not a "live" database.

If I tried that at my old job, before I was halfway through making the backup, users would be on the line demanding to know why the system wasn't responding. (Because the table was locked by my transaction.)

Use SELECT * FROM table WHERE condition to identify the data you want. Then draft another SELECT for a test sample to include both some of the records you want to delete, and some of those you don't.

Once you're satisfied with both of those:

BEGIN TRAN

SELECT * INTO backup_table FROM table WHERE condition (backup only the records you want to delete)

DELETE t FROM table t JOIN backup_table bt on t.id_column = bt.id_column (converse of previous step - delete only records that have been backed up)

SELECT * FROM table WHERE test_sample_condition

ROLLBACK

Check the results returned by the test sample, and take a look at the backup_table as well. When you're satisfied with those, change the ROLLBACK to COMMIT and run it for real.

Re: Losing

"When the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts. When both the facts and the law are against you, pound the table and shout."

Sounds like PAN is at option three of that classic formulation.

Re: Uhm

Did you think about reading the article at all?

Re: "Bug"

They, of all people, probably have a better idea of our IQs than we do.

If parents knew how to parent better, we wouldn't be here in the first place. There's no point expecting them all, collectively, to raise their game suddenly. If it could happen, seems likely it would have before now.

So that's no part of a solution, that's just handwringing.

I think the solution is in taxes. Invent an "attention tax", to kick in whenever someone spends more than, say, 10 hours per week on the same site. (Up to 40 hours if the site charges some minimum amount for access, to allow for online education etc.) You'd reverse the incentive to keep eyeballs at all costs.

Re: Not following the spirit of the licence?

Anyone who's ever worked for a large company knows how this goes. There'll be a policy in place about checking the legality of the code you "fork", but nothing more than that. And the person who did it will be under strict standing orders not, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever up to and including a zombie apocalypse, to make anything that can be interpreted as a "public statement" on behalf of the company, because that's PR's/marketing's job.

Ergo, to publish a statement on behalf of the company beyond what's strictly required to satisfy a legal requirement? - would be a huge personal risk for them. They'd have to clear the wording with PR, and the legal team, and you just know what sort of priority those people would put on a request like this.

Seriously, would you do it?

Re: Grandstanding

Passive aggression is a completely appropriate response to blatant trolling.

Re: Rich people's money

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."

A fine based on the culprit's ability to pay is matching the crime. MS isn't some struggling startup, they've been doing this for generations. What's their excuse, exactly?

Re: Microsoft is partly at fault...

There is no plausible level of care from Microsoft that would make it safe for every sysadmin to leave auto update on.

https://xkcd.com/1172/

Re: Spot on!

Most of those "advantages" are not really advantages to the business. They're advantages to some part or unit of the business that wants to do its own thing without meddling from central management, but not to the business as a whole.

That's why the service model is so popular with vendors: it lets them sell to lower-level managers, because opex budgets are typically much less tightly controlled than capex ones.

They won't understand it.