Posts by Aqua Marina 631 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Dec 2011
Er, I thought this was the principle of full disclosure, i.e. the plaintiff legally has to hand over all evidence beforehand so the defence can er, mount a defence. Or is HPE's lawyer surprised that Lynch has actually read it because he didn't believe he would? I conclude from this that HPE's modus operandi is to never read any documents that are handed over to them. Explains a lot really including how they ended up here in the first place :p
Bank websites are the bane of my life. I’ve had an issue with Yorkshire Bank now for over a year. If you perform a search using either the online banking website, or IOS app, the transactions returned are in random date order. The issue has been confirmed many times but a year later still not fixed. Each time I ring them up, I have to go through the whole troubleshooting procedure I did last time, to prove that there is an issue. Then 15 minutes later they finally believe me and log a fault and I get an email confirmation telling me so. A month later same procedure all over again.
Our insurer came down to site to perform an appraisal and told us to do nothing more than put a standard 5 bar lock on the door. From their perspective* the lock met the criteria for insurance cover, but if someone who was determined to get in and made the appropriate effort to do so, the insurance company would have to pay for all the additional damage they would do to get in, so a single lock would suffice.
*Most crime is opportunistic, but if someone is determined to get in, the cost to keep them out goes up exponentially for every few minutes of time you can keep them out.
I have the same issue when trying to offer technical support to IT people that angrily state they are using “default values” on whatever it is they cannot get to work. An explanation that default means in a “state of error”, or more accurately “requiring configuration” usually ends up with a sudden change of attitude on the other end of the phone and progress starts being made.
How did default become equal to normal or working in so many technical minds?
Yes, the process is similar to over here. To challenge the fine means you have to attend court. If you are employed this means you lose a days pay. If you win, then (magistrates) court awards you £50 compensation which may cover your employment losses, or it may not. Most people just pay the spot* fines, because they face slightly larger losses to fight it.
*Spot fines despite the name, are not spot fines. You are given a ticket and have to pay it within 30 days usually or contest it.
Between Space X, Virgin, Darpa’s Self driving cross desert vehicle competition, space stations, self driving cars, real life Thunderbird 3s, mars rovers, mars and moon habitation experiments there’s an awful lot of really interesting stuff going on right now. In the 80s this was the stuff of science fiction.
I came on to say something similar. A company whose revenues are inflated by 193 million does not equate to an 8.8 billion write down, no matter how creative the accounting.
I'll also point out that the civil case HP brought against Hussain and Lynch was thrown out by the US courts. It's now playing out in the UK courts instead.
As I recall key defence evidence was disallowed in the US criminal trial, and / or came to light after the trial was started. An appeal is currently underway regarding that.
In the UK the civil case could benefit Lynch who is seeking up to 160 million in damages, if the case goes his way. I also doubt he'll ever visit the US any time ever again.
I guess Hussain has a month to bribe someone to smuggle him out of the US, for a share of the millions he would otherwise have to pay to the US.
I was going to say pretty much the same thing, but then I realised that despite that, I always did read the articles, and then the comments (when they eventually became enabled) so I'm guessing he was doing his job right.
Good luck wherever you end up and feel free to come back to the comments where we can continue to disagree!
This going to end up where simultaneously, The defendants are found to be the greatest criminal masterminds of all time in the US, whilst over in the UK HP is found to be the IT equivalent of the Keystone Cops.
I'd go out on a limb here and say that at all costs, the US courts will always ensure that blame for anything always resides with foreigners.
That's already happened. The FAA have already released a report that lists on a version by version basis of the software the shortcomings of the software, and the fixes needed. The causes are pretty much now known, it's now a case of trying to shift the blame within Boeing and reduce liability, and come up with new procedures so this doesn't happen again.
I'll point out the circumstance in which MCAS should activate, because there is so much misinformation going on.
1) Airspeed is decreasing and the pilots have not noticed or they ignore the airspeed indicator.
2) Physical stableiser trim is activated (disk spinning backwards) and the plane pitches up, if this ignored then...
3) Pitch limit indicators on the digital gimbal appear. If this is ignored then...
4) An amber line is drawn on the airspeed indicator. If this is ignored then..
5) A "Buffet Alert" message is displayed on the screen (called the FMC CDU). This is to warn that the aircraft may start shaking. If this is ignored then..
6) Air speed indicator starts blinking amber and the plane calls "Airspeed low, airspeed low". If this is ignored then..
7) Air speed indicator turns solid amber (normal is green). If this is ignored..
8) The airspeed indicator displays black and orange stripes (barbers pole). The aircraft should start shaking now. If this is ignored then..
9) Motors in the stick start to shake it violently like a force feedback joystick. If this is ignored then..
10 The plane stalls.
11) The pilot must pitch forward at this point. To ignore would be certain death. Assuming the pilot is now no longer ignoring the plane he would.
12) Deactivate the autopilot if engaged.
13) Push the stick forward. If this fails..
14) Trim forward. (The assumption is this will work, or death). When the plane is pitched forward then..
15) Retract speed brake.
16) Roll wings level.
17) Start to slowly increase thrust.
18) MCAS kicks in to ensure that as recovery thrust is increased, it doesn't force the plane back into a nose-up position if too much thrust is applied.
It is simply untrue that MCAS is always active and adjusting control surfaces like you would get on an unstable fighter plane. The 737 Max is an aerodynamically stable aircraft that does not require fly-by-wire. It has hydro-mechanical physical cables between the stick and control surfaces. If the plane loses power, the pilot can still direct the control surfaces manually, including the trim. The plane is so stable it can glide without thrust approximately 10-15 miles, per mile of altitude lost. Compared to other similar sized aircraft, this glide ratio is considered high (therefore stable).
MCAS is not needed because the plane is aerodynamically unstable, it is needed because the engineers performed a "What if this goes wrong, then what if this, then this, and this and this, then this" analysis. Even when steps 1 to 10 above occur, it still doesn't start to affect the control surfaces until step 17 to help the pilot recover. It's the ABS of stall recovery, and it is this that has gone through certification.
Neither is MCAS there to mislead the pilot so he can pretend he is flying a different plane he holds certification for while MCAS changes his control inputs behind the scenes to match new flight characteristics. MCAS is not certified for constant manipulation of the control surfaces so it flies like a different plane as so many commentards here believe.
The issue is not the aerodynamic stability or instability of the plane. The issue is that faulty sensors triggered the MCAS system into activating because it could "see" that the pitch was too high and airspeed was too low.
The newspapers however see MCAS and have decided that it's existance must be because the airframe is designed faulty or unstable and this fault is being hidden from pilots. It isn't. This is like pointing to ABS and deciding that all cars that have it must be faulty. Yes a faulty ABS can cause a car to lose control during an emergency manouver and crash. In this instance a faulty sensor caused the MCAS to activate and crash the plane.
There are also some reports in the papers that the actions taken by the MCAS were too aggressive and beyond it's limits. If this is the case then like the sensors, there is clearly a fault that needs fixing, and that fault is still not the airframe.
MCAS is a system that will become standard on all aircraft, and already is on other aircraft under different names. It's supposed to be there to assist the pilot in recovery and remain inactive at all other times.
TL/DR - A safety feature mis-activated bringing a plane down. The plane itself is aerodynamically stable otherwise.
Just forwarded this article to my accountant, who has told me it's wrong. Information coming from HMRC to Accountants is to not register until 7 days after the next return is made following the 31st March. Only then will the web-portal be deactivated.
This would line up with the statement in the article that returns made by the 7th August onwards must be digital.
"..What a fascinating and modern age we live in."
Yes I'm quoting Russell Crowe, but it's exactly how I feel right now. I read somewhere else that we have now entered a new industrial revolution being referred to as the "Exponential Age" . Our knowledge and technological achievements up until now have been incremental. Now, knowledge is increasing exponentially and our achievements equally so each year. I remember reading about this in the late 80s, and about HOTOL before that. It was considered science fiction. 30 years later now technology is catching up with the dream.
It's a testament to the vision of the people that came up with these concepts decades ago. I only hope that they are still alive to see the end result of what they could see as a possibility, yet were restricted by our technical ability of the time.
Would you have preferred https://www.google.com/maps/@53.6273895,-2.9876024,3a,75y,209.63h,67.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s0JRd4UeT2_n0tkhfcAU41g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 or https://goo.gl/maps/DbTvADnpK5o
Downvoted because I believe that someone providing criticism shouldn't do so without providing a solution.
Funny thing is, a 30 second google for Hibernia Station Southport brought up this place on google maps, goo.gl/iMfhx7
They are quite open about the site according to this document, which discusses the cable routes up the street, the AC power, the backups onsite, the cooling. http://www.merseymaritime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CLS-Datasheet.pdf
The locations of the 3 cable inlets are not a secret, in fact many fishing maps have the exact locations because the cables become exposed if the sand shifts.
http://kis-orca.eu/map#.XIaIqij7QdU just zoom in on Southport, or Blackpool, or any of the other cables round the country.
They had a data breach 2 years later. They brushed it under the carpet, and today their share price is 4x what it was at the time. The breach happenned before GDPR, otherwise I would have reported it myself, along with a copy of the letter of resignation I handed over at the time.
That’s exactly why for the past few upgrades I’ve simply bought the card at the top of the Passmarks value-for-money list:- https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html
This list should be on everyone’s go to, when they want a new graphics card. If I buy a card on here at the same time one of my mates buys the best card money can buy, we both need to upgrade still at the same time. 2x the cost never = 2x the performance.
Um, I'm sitting here typing this on an Intel i7 4770K machine with 16GB RAM I picked up in 2013 from Ebuyer.com for as I recall £700ish. Cpubenchmark.net tells me it has a CPU score of 10087. I've just looked at Ebuyer's website, and seen I can get a Core i7 8700 machine with 16GB RAM for £650ish. Cpubenchmark tells me that this newer machine has a score of 15132. My machine is only 2/3 the speed of the brand new machine at 5 years old. I also play games on this machine. There is no game on the market that does not play well on this machine. And I'm also running a 4K monitor at full res on it since I put a GeForce 1050ti into it. To say 5 year old machines are obsolete is absolute rubbish. Please go to Cpubenchmark.net and look up the speed of your processor and get a basis for comparison.
Solicitors can represent in cases where you would typically see barristers, but when they do, if they are referred to as “Learned” as in “My learned colleague” when the lawyers are referring to each other, the solicitor has to correct them stating he is “not Learned”.
It can become a bit childish in the courtroom if the barrister wants to make the solicitor repeatedly say he is “not Learned” by referring to him as “Learned”.
So traffickers will now start uploading images that have had a blur filter applied to the area around the advertised girl.
The only problem with telling the world exactly how you're going to catch criminals, is that you're also telling the criminals, who will adjust their behaviour accordingly so as not to get caught.
I'm suspecting* that Plusnet's new billing system is designed to displace the VAT payments owed to HMRC to a future date by making the VAT appear as Cash Accounting to the customer, but Accrual Accounting to HMRC. That way VAT is only due when Plusnet decides to raise an Invoice rather than when the customer receives a bill.
With Cash Accounting, HMRC is owed VAT when you receive payment from a customer.
With Accrual Accounting, HMRC is owed VAT when an invoice is presented to the customer. When customers have credit accounts, you have to pay HMRC the VAT up front on the sale, then wait for the customer to pay according to the terms of your credit agreement, i.e. 30 days, 60 days etc. If the Customer doesn't pay, then you have to make a claim for the VAT back from HMRC.
I suspect that the bills being presented to customers are not recorded internally or accounted for as invoices, but requests for payment. So no VAT is due until Plusnet decide when is a good time to raise an invoice.
I have no idea if my suspicions are correct, but I received an email from Plusnet to tell me that the new bills I could download on the portal were no longer VAT invoices (they were previously). The new bills have "This is not a VAT invoice" plastered all over them. This is the only explanation I can come up with as to why it matters. VAT payments can be deferred.
* All of this is pure speculation and no one should infer that Plusnet are doing anything illegal.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
