Posts by Doctor Syntax

Do you write a special law naming Amazon (and guess what Amazon would do about that before it even got to Royal Assent) or do you write a law that taxes every company on income even if their expenses exceed that and they're currently running at a loss?

If it was a tax dodge why didn't you adopt it? Too high minded or you took a look at the risks of going freelance and decided it wasn't for you?

Re: he will discuss the “challenges” of taxing giant tech corporations in a digital economy

"The challenge is simply to grow a backbone"

Nothing to do with taxes is simple.

"it also killed small haulage businesses"

And so is now becoming part of an economic problem that even HMG has got round to noticing.

Re: Some rotten foundations and missing bits

For dates, add in the likes of "Friday in the octave of Easter 1312".

But "instant access to cells in spreadsheet files as if it was a database?" - isn't use of spreadsheets as databases part of the problem?

Re: How about weeding the wrong and obsolete technical 'documentation'

At best "weeding" isn't going to bring a RoI in sufficient time. In reality we all know what happens if you chuck out old documentation. Murphy arrives bearing a slightly broken piece of kit you thought had been chucked out but is (a) indispensable and (b) irreplaceable.

Re: Most of the problems have been solved

"the differences between 1/2 and 3/4 are significant"

That sort of thing is the problem. if Xv3 is so different to Xv2 it really shouldn't be Xv3 at all. It should be Yv1. There may still be a market for X to be supplied for some time to come but without the demand that Y be back compatible with it.

Re: Does it work though?

"You'd have to go to BSD to get something less bloated, more understandable, and something you're more in control of."

Size, maybe but in terms of understandable and in control of, Devuan seems to fit the bill.

Re: Address oddities

"Nearby Town"

I think that should be "Post Town". Nearby is not guaranteed.

It's US address formats that annoy me. They seem to always have a line for "City" but, of course, they treat as a world-wide standard address format even where it's geographical nonsense. This even pervades genealogical S/W where it can be historical as well as geographical nonsense.

Re: Photo of a wall re delivery to the wrong address

"Couriers don't seem to realise that whilst their legal customer is the sender the real customer is normally the recipient."

I've had this argument with one courier in the past. The address they'd been given was incorrect. They wouldn't change it on the basis that only the owner of the goods could do that. Just who did they think the owner was?

Dammit. Shoe museum!

Re: Try living in a building...

The house in which I grew up had a name and a number. The name was far more useful. There were only two houses on the lane. Ours was number 16.

Re: Try living in a building...

I have some of that experience. Like most along the lane we only have a name. There are only about half a dozen numbers and several of those are variations:1, 1a etc. There's another lane with almost the same name a few miles.

Re: Ah yes…

"and on one memorable time it was an 80 seater coach"

Ah, yes. Coach navigation. Coach from God's Own County to Victoria coach station. There were two drivers on board who swapped over at a half-way stop. The one who took over for the second leg got into slight navigational difficulties trying to follow the company's official route into the north London stop Golders Green bus station. I overheard a snippet of conversation "Shall I go right way or t'way I know?".

I noticed we came to a crossroads close to the bus station at right angles to the usual approach.

Nevertheless an improvement on the driver who, immediately after leaving Victoria, spread some forms over the wheel and started catching up on his paper-work while threading his way through central London.

Re: "a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

And especially if the PFY can make acceptable tea.

Re: "Make re-identification of de-identified data illegal"

And the Act also allows for personal penalties. How many of those have you heard of. Things need to be moved on: personal, not just corporate, jeopardy needs to become the norm.

Re: No....Not Really a "Straightforward Soution"....

None of the examples in the article falls into that category. However the concentration of data that the likes of Equifax accumulate could also be regarded in the same way. When a business holding that much data guards it so badly there should be personal penalties for senior management. It might take a few prominent cases of CEOs or board members jailed but not too many. Management needs to be put into thinking along the lines of "This stuff could be dangerous to me ".

Re: The article said it best.

"in this case I'm talking about data collected from participants with informed consent and ethical approval."

Which is a different matter if it's still being use within the scope of the original consent, even if there are multiple research partners.

"without any apparent sense of irony"

Not a problem. One of the requirements for working in BT is the ability to suspend disbelief (or alternatively, to suppress disgust - I failed at both).

Dammit. I never thought of that line. I'd just say "Could you hold the line a minute." If I'd thought to encourage them like that I could have probably kept them on another 40 minutes. Mind you they did ring back to say they'd lost the connection ...

A lot of would be exporters into the EU are now discovering the hard way how red tape works. Previously they weren't really exporting, just selling into a part of their home market that happened to have a bit of water in the way. Now they're really trying to export and it's more complicated than they thought, especially when it's some sort of agricultural product.