Posts by Sigfried 31 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2011
Oh yes, just what the US needs, another US-hating ignorant shit of a POTUS like Obumbler to go and abase himself before all and sundry. Bound to be popular with those who can see a mark to be exploited, but not so good for the real world.
Trump has, like any US President, the chance to go overboard, but what he is at least attempting is a rebalancing of the trade with China.
Once again long time ago, using an odd OS called Magix (I think, could have been Magic), was a Pick-like PC oriented OS for database development. Had a number of sites with their own server running a production and sales database and each system had a tape backup unit with a well established backup process. You know the sort of thing, 2 x Monday, Tuesday etc, 5 x Fridays, all rotated and stored in a separate part of the site - and even tested so that we were reasonably certain that the backup and restore process worked.
So one site had a serious hardware fault that brought the server down, so we replaced it. Loaded a fresh OS copy, configured everything and then fetched the latest tape and set about restoring the Data. Up popped a message - "Please put in Tape 1". Puzzled we tried again, and then tried the rest of the tape series, all with the same message. So we summoned the operator and asked about this. His response was that a few weeks back the back process had started to pop the tape out and ask for a second tape to be inserted - so he just pushed the same tape back in ! Never thought to tell anyone about this. Disaster loomed, as we'd tried every day and every Friday tape we knew about. Then by sheer luck I saw another atpe sitting over the other side of the office on a shelf and asked what it was - turned out that two days before the user had wondered about the two tape thing and had actually but in a new tape on that day and that was the magical "Tape 1" from two days back. And hallelujah, it was exactly that, put that in and then the two day ago tape 2, and voila, a working system with only 2 days of update data required.
Quite why the operator said nothing at first, and then did try a second tape at that crucial point - and not mention it earlier - we never did find out. We just thanked our lucky stars and did a runner to the pub for something to calm the nerves.
Next day a memo goes out saying that if the system asked for a second tape: first use a new tape (and label it) and second, tell IT Support !
The trouble with DMARC and all such similar tools, is that it is possible (if not necessarily easy) to spoof them as well. And not every sending organization has the correct setup so manual intervention is needed.
One thing though that tends to stop spear phishing in particular is a simple rule, any emails requesting payments or transfers MUST be verified personally with the requestee by a non-email channel. That's our rule, the request must be verified personally by meeting, phone call, or text.
And user education isn't as hard as some think, though of course it may depend on the organization. Like anyone, we are of course vulnerable to a lapse, but our users are generally pretty good at reporting possible issues and at NOT clicking on links or attachments. Plus we aggressively filter at the gateway, and run an up-to-date AV. New versions of malware are always present and don't get detected, but that's what the email filtering is for, all executables of any sort are quarantined. Links are harder as they are tested but if not detected or flagged as malicious they can get through.
I guess though it would help if iPhones could actually receive and play FM radio signals. iPhone 7 & 8 don't have FM capable chips. iPhones 4-6 have an FM receiver as part of their modem chipsets but don't have FM aerials to receive the signals, but the earphone leads can sometimes act as that.
Edit: ninja'd, not the first to point this out.
So, maybe not a bad idea, but a bit of research could have made it clear that asking for something that can't actually be done isn't clever.
Longer term, having some sort of digital emergency channel might not be a bad idea. Something like signing up for a regional based text feed so you can receive texts when an emergency is declared; sketchy, but maybe something could be developed.
That's complete bullshit. Let's list three actual felonies committed by Clinton either directly or under her supervision.
1. Perjury. Lied under oath to a federal judge when stating that she had released all eMails relevant to an FOI request. FBI investigation. although not directly related to this, showed that at least some of the emails that were deleted (after the FOI request) were relevant. Perjury is a major crime, got Bill impeached.
2. Obstruction of Justice: Congress issued a valid subpoena for her eMails on 3 March 2016. 33,000 or so eMails were deliberately deleted on 25 March 2016. That's a slam-dunk obstruction of justice charge, especially as again from the FBI investigation, we know that the actual people doing the deletions were aware of the existence of the subpoena, not that it matters.
3. Various violations of security laws. Although Comey refused to recommend prosecution, there's little doubt that as the relevant statute specifically does NOT require intent, that Clinton is indeed guilty of removing highly classified compartmentalized data from secure systems onto her open eMail server. Such data was also shared with staff who lacked the relevant security clearances. As anyone who has been exposed to classified information can tell you, her actions in this regard would get, as a minimum from anyone else in the USA a permanent removal from ever getting a security clearance plus almost certain jail time.
And those are just the three obvious examples. Now, still so certain that it was invented ? Clinton has been proven to be immune to prosecution because of political patronage, but she is provably guilty of crimes that would send you or I to jail for an extended period. Quite why you all seem to support this sort of criminality at such levels is beyond me, but there you go.
Actually the initial experiments with this were done by Roland Garros, a Frenchman. He assisted with work already underway on a deflector system by Saulnier, one of the principals in the Morane-Saulnier aircraft company. In December 1914 Garros visited them, and in April 1915 Garros achieved the first shoot-down of another aircraft by firing through the propeller arc. They used metal wedges attached to the propellor to deflect bullets.
Garros himself was shot down, or possibly had an engine failure and he landed behind the German lines on 18 April 1915 and was captured. His aircraft was also captured but probably provided little new information as Fokker had been working on an interrupter mechanism for a number of months by then, and introduced it shortly afterwards on the E1 monoplane. Garros actually escaped in early 1918 and made it back to France where he rejoined the army and flew again. He claimed 2 further victories before being shot down and killed in October 1918.
I'm not sure that the British actually flew with deflector wedges. In the end everyone basically developed their own version of an interrupter or synchronisation system.
Intent, intent, WTF, Clinton deliberately deleted tens of thousands of emails from her server so that they could not be recovered. Those included (for example) over 1,000 eMails to/from the then head of the US army and later head of the CIA, Petraeus. How could those, under any consideration whatsoever be considered personal. And highly confidential information WAS found in some of the Clinton eMails, item so secret that they were never supposed to leave the strictly compartmentalized systems that they are stored on.
Clinton absolutely lied and committed perjury about the content of her server as well. She testified before a Federal Judge with regard to an FOI suit that she had released ALL relevant eMails; which as the limited items recovered by the FBI showed to be a false claim. Then to top it off, AFTER the outstanding eMails were sub-poena'd she had the emails deleted and the server scubbed to prevent recovery.
Contrast Pence; used private eMail for SOME official business which is NOT illegal for a Governor, and he has cooperated in retrieving ALL those emails and having them placed on the public record.
You Clintonista's just can't help yourselves can you.
Tax Avoidance is Legal Everywhere ! And I'll bet that not a single user or commentor on this site voluntarily pays more tax than they think they need to. So everyone is tax avoiding, because avoiding tax means paying no more than is legally required.
Governments love to target overseas corporations, makes them look "tough" and there's the lure of "free moneys".
And Google's settlement in the UK was over differences in the calculation of theoretical arm's length costings for services supplied to the UK arm. It was alleged that Google had slightly overcharged and hence reduced the taxable profit in the UK subsidiary. The transfer pricing rules are abstruse and there was a long argument on how the rules applied, but in the end Google agreed on a marginally lower price, effectively refunded the difference and then paid tax on the recalculated profits. Note that no penalties were incurred as it was a technical issue of interpretation over transfer pricing formulae. Over 10 years or so, the tax difference was 1.3M roughly per year, storm meet teacup anyone ?
In cases like the UK one, I'd have little doubt that Google simply tries to apply the rules as best it can. Any savings are minimal (what's 13M to Google, after all, over 10 years !) and the cost of working through the case with the IRD possibly exceeded any potential savings.
I'd suggest a lowish corporate tax plus full imputation of tax paid. That way there's a tax to catch all shareholders, then a tax credit to the same (but specifically the domestic) shareholders when a dividend is paid to the extent that the company has paid tax. So any reduction in the corporate tax payment reduces the credit to the shareholder as taxpayer. Overseas shareholders pay their share of the corporate tax and depending on their own domestic policies, may get a credit for that overseas tax paid.
Remember too that strictly speaking, corporates don't "pay" taxes, those are ultimately only paid by real people; in some combination of the owners, employees, customers, and to a lesser extent, extended stakeholders. So the more tax Google pays, that actually comes form some combination of the employees pockets, the customer's pocket, and the shareholders pockets. It is hard to separate them and only some comes from the shareholders.
Christ, don't be f***** stupid. If you levy a turnover tax or perhaps a value added tax, then that gets added to the price YOU pay. Recognize that with VAT ? Ultimately all taxes are paid by individuals and only individuals benefit. "Amazon" don't need no schools, hospitals, etc, it's owners, employees and customers do, and they're the ones that ultimately pay (and in some cases benefit from) taxes.
Amazon doesn't make serious profits simply because it's business model is to keep on growing and approximately break-even in terms of profits.
This whole corporate taxation "thing" is quite simply a bit of misdirection applied by socialists and others who love to take other people's money to distribute so they can claim to be the generous ones. Real people pay all the tax ultimately, but politicians just love to target indirect taxation like company tax so they can pretend that you (as a customer or employee for example of Amazon) aren't being taxed, whereas of course you are but in many small amounts so you don't notice, or even blame the intermediary rather than the root cause. But get this, however levied, you are ultimately paying.
Steve, fine, it actually shows exactly why the shouldn't have changed the raw data in that way. Scientific fraud all the way down....again. Karl has form with this sort of politically driven extremism.
Example, if you have two sources of data, one of which is of much better quality, why would you adjust that to match the poorer data set except for the purpose of producing a desired result ?
Disagree about the comparison, the Golf/Jetta is the VW equivalent of a 3 series, the Passat is definitely a 5 series sized vehicle, if not quite a competitor. The A6/7 would be the VW/Audi Group 5 series comparison. That said, the later A4 (B8 and on models) are damn near identical in size to a Passat/5 series and only marginally smaller than an A6 anyway.
Passat is a competent people mover, I have an older (07) V6 AWD estate version, and that gets along fairly well having 190 Kw (250 bhp) and possibly the best sounding 6 cylinder engine around. A little bit of a barge at times but not too bad. Worst feature is that 2007 was in VW's bad period for electrical troubles and that can be a problem.
The aircraft has mechanisms that trigger alarms (and releases masks) if the cabin air pressure falls below a certain limit, even a slow leak would trigger these before the oxygen levels went too low. The Crew and passenger systems are separate, and the cabin crew also have hand held portable sets.
The pilots/crew are highly unlikely to ignore the alarms, first action is put on the mask, second is to reduce altitude to a survivable level (but clear of any high ground); basis is FL10 I think (10,000 feet). Hypoxia only makes sense if allied with an accident that somehow disabled the crew oxygen supply. But that is all contraindicated by the analysis that shows that the aircraft was flown a complex and deliberate flight path after any accident could have occurred assuming that the accident disabled the transponder etc.
The theory can't really work any more unless you discard the flight analysis based on radar and the satellite ping data. Even if you do that, you have to assume no crew oxygen and/or disabled alarms and no one in the crew responds to a major emergency signal.
Note that Boeing has confirmed that this particular aircraft was NOT subject to the maintenance order regarding corrosion around a top mounted SATCOM aerial as it did not have that aerial fitted. There is no other known corrosion issue with a T7, not that it couldn't have one, just nothing we know of.
I'm sure that the fuel load is included in the filed flight documents. Note that the load may have been heavier than strictly needed as fuel is considerably more expensive in Beijing than in KL especially for MAS who get a deal from their government. Thus it is worth freighting some extra fuel up to Beijing to reduce the top-up needed for the return flight; it's probably a careful economic calculation each time for how much extra it is worth carrying.
Sad to hear that Jack Vance had finally passed on although at 96 he's certainly had a good innings. I'd just add to the above comments and tributes that both food and music were a big part of Vance's appeal. He was unparalleled in his ability to flesh out an alien environment and make it come to life through descriptions of the food (good and bad) and the music, he was I believe an avid Jazz fan and that showed through.
His characters could be a little samey as the article notes, and the stories, especially the earlier ones, a little thin. He had a penchant for adolescent love stories at times (which could be sweet and poignant like the early part of Araminta Station), but overall the stories were wonderfully alive.
Everyone has their own favourites, but I find that the most re-read stories are first the Durdane trilogy (The Anome, The Brave Free Men, and the Asutra, and I'd recommend anyone who hasn't read those to at least try them, music, food, settings, Vance at his best), the Planet of Adventure series is excellent (and the Wankh name was always a source of clandestine mirth as a youth), the Demon Princes, with the last three (Palace of Love, The Face, Book of Dreams better than the first two IMHO, with The Face being especially good). I also rate the Alastor series highly, Maske:Thaery, and the three "number" stories (2263, 1716, and I think 933) are also very good. Marune (933) is the pick although each has its own appeal.
The novellas The Dragon Masters and the Last castle are notable for winning awards and are some of the best of Vance also. Emphyrio is more intense but to me less satisfying the Blue World is amusingly different. The Gray Prince is another stand out, and Showboat World is also one of my favourites.
The Araminta Station trilogy starts very strongly but meanders a bit in the middle. Lyonesse is always good although the last book has oddly uninteresting bits in the middle relating to Madouc's quest amongst the fairies. Night Lamp is perhaps Vance's last notable book, although I enjoyed Ports of Call. Lurulu sadly has the feel of a book hastily finished to tie up loose ends, but isn't as bad as all that.
One other story worthy of note is The Languages of Pao, an exercise in part to set language as a key cultural determinant and cleverly done in a very Vancian fashion. The Moon Moth is also a top class short story.
There are a lot of others, the early books I feel show Vance developing his craft and he can be very laboured. Oddly enough, for me, perhaps the very best short stories Vance ever wrote and complete stand-outs in the genre are the first three Dying Earth stories, with Turjan of Miir, Pandelume, and T'sais. The other trhree are good, but those to me stand out. They would make a superb film or set of three films if well made (Peter Jackson NO THANK YOU). The connected Rhialto stories are also amusing but don't reach the heights of the early stories. The Cugel stories are amusing, but the contrast of the ever bumbling if lucky Cugel doesn't work for me as well as Vance's typically heroic main caharcters. That said, Cugel has Vance's best comedy sections.
That's it really, there have been several efforts to write into Vance's world, I have the Songs of the Dying Earth series of stories, but sadly none of the authors is a patch on Vance's realisation of the genre.
RIP Jack Vance, and thanks for wonderful stories and amazing places.
Tads, Mann et al 1998 & 1999, , plus especially Mann et al 2008. The 2008 paper claims to show that the "hockey stick" results are real and that they can hold even when no tree ring data is included. This paper and the reporting on it are still extant. In fact if you remove the lake sediment data that was (a) used upside down to its correct orientation and (b) used inappropriately as the authors knew because of human interference with the site in modern times, then the remaining non-dendro data most definitely does NOT give a "hockey stick" shape.
Only by selectively removing either the lake sediments OR (but not both !) the Strip-Bark bristlecone pine tree-ring records (there are better sampled and more modern records from the same area, but they don't get used because they don't have the artificial mechanically induced sharp uptick in the 20th C) can one obtain a "stick". Two uses of fraudulent data in one paper, almost entirely unknown in any field other than climate science. And the author not only "gets away with it" but is in fact promoted as a leader in the field.
Inappropriate selection of data is a major problem in climate science. It is in fact well known but almost completely unaddressed. If you are "allowed" to only select the data available that supports your position and can without adequate justification simply ignore data that would undermine your conclusions without addressing the differences, one could prove almost any hypothesis.
Just imagine if I could treat 1000 patients with a specific drug, then select only the 100 who responded favourably (ignoring the 700 who had no response and the 200 who had a negative response) and report ONLY on those responses, then make the claim that my drug was highly efficacious. That's the sort of data selection "tricks" regularly used and excused in Climate "Science".
Actually, a 125 GeV Higgs is probably inconsistent with the "Standard Model" at high energies, implying that something further is required. It is however compatible with some of the "super-symmetric" theories. To reinforce the SM one probably needs a Higgs at 135 GeV or more.
"Undeniable that Vodafone owed the tax" My ARSE. Vodafone NEVER LEGALLY OWED THE TAX.
How many times does it need to be said, tax assessment =/= legally owed. The law is quite explicit, and note that this is EU law, that business conducted in Germany (as this was) is taxed in Germany.
About the only reasonable conclusion one can come to is that something like 95% of those who comment are greedy cunts who don't give a stuff about the legal position but just want the money regardless. I can only hope that for the next tax year you get incorrectly assessed as owing more tax than you think you should, and they force you all to pay.
Christ, people just don't get it ! Vodafone legally never owed the money in the first place.
Same applies to your personal tax, if you legally don't owe it, don't pay ! (although it may cost you more than you can afford to contest it). Why this love affair for government all of a sudden, is it because everyone likes to see other peoples money being stolen ?
It's just a Private Eye stuff-up/balls-up anyway. Vodafone quite legally (under EU rules as well) doesn't have to pay UK tax on business conducted out of Britain. So there was no "6 billion" owing in the first place, except in the greedy little minds of Private Eye and all the other socialists who, being unable to garner enough money from there own feeble efforts, want to thieve anyone elses so they can continue to live as they think they deserve.
It seems that most of those commenting seem to think along the lines "Vodafone is "rich" therefore we should be able to steal as much money from them as we like"
As for putting aside money in case, remember you're dealing with a government whose basic approach is to rip you off each way including sideways. Would you entirely trust the judiciary that is paid by such a rapacious pack of thieves ?
No way, RHPS is an absolute cult classic, bad taste, only to some. Speaking of course as one who has seen the movie 24 times.
Worst movies:
No Sex Please we're British: Just plain awful
The Gods Must be Crazy: Racist dreck
Waterworld
Max Max beyond Thunderdome (whereas both MM1 and MM2 are cult classic B movies)
Avatar, what a waste of production $
I reckon the title has to go to something that really wants to be a "real" film and preferably pretentiously so, thus Plan 9 and Killer Tomatoes for example, don't really qualify.
Al, shame on you for pushing the lie. That particular document (that mentioned the dissuasion from teaching science) was faked. So far Gleick has not admitted being the faker, but it is possible that he in fact did, the prose bears a strange similarity to his writings.
Your credibility is completely undermined by your apparent insistence on "fake but accurate".
Oh, perhaps for balance we should treat this like the climate alarmists are known to do. Make up shit to smear those who don't agree with their way out extremist views ? Is that what you mean ? Perhaps a bit of wire fraud, identity theft, misrepresentation, plus a few outright lies. Hey, then make sure every alarmist blog around runs with the fake document, and then when the fraud is revealed, praise the fraudster as being "courageous" even while is faux apology attempts to repeat the malicious slanders that he deliberately pushed.
Yes, lets all lose our sense f morality and ethics, because, after all, the cause is right and just.
Just a question though, if the cause is so moral, why are so many of its advocates so dishonest, and their arguments so specious ? I mean, there's a whole consensus isn't there, why fake so much ?
So you're becoming a "denier" then ? I agree, the funding by the Oil Companies to Climate Alarmism is huge, and the alarmists do indeed act exactly like religious extremists, right down to the name calling (denier, denier !) and their absolute belief set that does not allow for dissent.
Jesus, conspiracy kook comment or what.
There have been billions, yes, billions, invested in a whole slew of "alternatives", everything from biofuels (with the consequent huge increase in food prices leading to starvation and death plus environmental degradation associated with, for example, palm oil plantations), wind turbines both on and off shore (massive fails in most cases), solar panels (Soylandra anyone ?), geothermal (sometimes successful), and others. Which of these many billions invested don't you want to count ? Which of the billions utterly wasted and the lives lost as a consequence don't you want to take responsibility for ?
Climate alarmists seem to have an incredibly narrow and utterly authoritarian viewpoint. Don't just believe the rightness of my thought, thou shalt think no other way. And who gets the power hungry "hard on" eh ?
I support a site with a mix of Samsung Galaxies and iPhones, and there's no contest on batteries, none at all. The Samsungs struggle to last the day unless you use them strictly as a phone and limit browsing, email etc. The iPhones, not only far easier to connect and link to the back end email server (and less trouble once linked), and the batteries last all day under almost any usage, two days easy if you're frugal.
So I can see why you had to take spare batteries for your droid, I'd take my iPhone, and I'd be confident that it would last if used carefully.
Oh yeah, those naughty skeptics all getting tonnes of money from the oil producers ! Wow, batshit insane anyone ? There are literally billions of $$$ being provided for "climate research" which are only available to those who will report on new and very scarey (of course) scenarios based on cherry picked data which they refuse to show anyone else "in case they find something wrong with it".
Just think re the "Climategate" case, the emails set out "scientists" clearly conspiring to pervert the peer review system as well as other extremely dodgy behaviour. They also tried to avoid FOI requests by claiming confidentiality agreements, but when they received further FOI's for those agreements they couldn't show any worth noting. Dishonest much ?
You need to actually read an unbiased account of what was happening instead of simply repeating the tired and blatantly untrue canards that the PR spin-meisters employed by the climate establishment (who just happen to be the same people involved with the NOTW scandal, surprise surprise) put out for useful idiots to employ.
Get serious about it though... the T&T data was released publically many years ago, so it's kinda late to be claiming some sort of confidentiality. Also, all of the data was released to a selected academic (someone who they could be sure wouldn't rock the boat) shortly before it was refused to another academic (who they thought would "rtb").
Honesty and consistency are virtues apparently entirely unknown in some quarters. But money to pay for PR spin doctors, there's plenty of that !
I run an IT shop, and the company decided to go with these new fangled smart phone thingies. So we started with a number of iPhones. Users loved them, worked without problems, connected to corporate email, great. Then the bill arrived, and the very next day all the iPhones went back (using the excuse that the reception was shite, which it wasn't), and a load of Android phones were substituted. Three months later, we're still having random problems with connectivity, the batteries are already being replaced, and at best the users *tolerate* them.
BUT, they were just under half the price, and my (and my offsider's) time wasted on making them work means nothing to management (and apparently neither does user satisfaction or reliability), and that's precisely why we use Android and not Apple. Price. Short sighted, sure, but that's management.
Now Android may come to be as good as iOS, and to be as reliable, but it's onto a winner on price for as big as the Apple "fanboi" network is, the "cheaper is better" group is bigger.
There are many options, and with rare exceptions those already made are pretty awful. The one exception to me is Blade Runner.
Jack Vance has a wealth of short stories and novels that could make great atmospheric movies. The Dying Earth, especially the first three stories, could make an excellent movie or set of movies. I don't think there are many directors one could trust to do it right though. The Durdane trilogy would also work well.
R A Lafferty's "Fourth Mansions", Zelazny's "Lord of Light" and maybe some of the Amber series ?. James Tiptree Jr (Racoona Sheldon) has a number of short stories that might work, often a little off the wall; Simak's "The Goblin Reservation"; Davidson's "Rork" maybe; Certainly Brin's Uplift series, but possibly they're too long for good movies. Of those the original Sundiver, Startide Rising, and Uplift War are (IMHO) the best suited. The later ones are less clear and less self contained. I wonder if Gene Wolfe's Torturer series might make a suitable movie series. Niven's early short stories, "Neutron Star" era.
And of course it would be nice if someone could make a decent version of LOTR that stuck a little closer to the original. Some of the individual stories out of the Silmarillion could also work, such as "The Lay of Lethian".
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