Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Go get 'em, Lawyers!

I was thinking more in terms of go get 'em Streisand.

"A company wants to publish information embarrassing to the government de jour"

The issue is malware. I think you're stretching the definition of malware a little more than warranted to include publishing information embarrassing to the government.

The alternative being posited was for the authorities to step in invasively to fix servers. Do you prefer that?

Re: Hands up, intentional mixup

I've always thought a good response to bean counters wanting to put a figure on the value of some system would be "Shall we switch it off and find out?"

Re: Background

It works in user territory as well. Several systems, all running similar backgrounds but against different databases. They were set up with different background images.

Re: Good luck

"remember to re-write your profile for each job"

Makes no difference. they'll send it to some other job, rewrite it or both.

Re: "a freelancer feels the urge to seek solace in full-time employment"

I turned down a client wanting me to go permie as development manager. I don't think they realised how close I was to their mandatory retirement age and in any case one reason for being freelance is to continue in tech roles instead of following a career path into management.

Having said that it was the development manager they hired who finally persuaded me that retirement would be better than working with his complete lack of understanding of development or management. Thank goodness!

Re: Old farts

I was in my 50s when I moved into freelance for a decade or so.

The absence of evidence might be a practical problem.

Re: Brexit.

"I'd argue it's back to the 1950s"

Specifically pre-Suez.

Re: Seriously?

"The paramilitaries in NI will use any situation to justify violence and boost their criminal activities."

For a long time they've been denied that opportunity but BoJo has handed them that one.

To some extent PSNI seem to have been handed the dirty end of the stick. it's a variation on the owing the bank money situation: you break COVID restrictions; you have a problem, 2000 people break COVID restrictions, the police have a problem. However, you're right in that the politicians who went to the funeral have to shoulder some of the blame.

Re: Seriously?

"You may have realised that the British government has put potential future trade with the US which is thousands of miles away above real actual trade and social stability with one of its own countries in its own union."

And failed because Biden is pro-peace process so isn't likely to be impressed by the mess that's developing.

Re: Seriously?

"Remainers slammed the UK over not joining the EU procurement and how we will be left behind and back of the queue."

Here's one who didn't for reasons already stated.

Re: Seriously?

"This is evidenced and supported by the fact that we did this whilst still under the EU rules as part of the transition period."

There's absolutely no use pointing this out to the rabid leavers. As far as they're concerned Brexit Was Done in 2020.

Re: Stop touting the vaccination programme as a Brexit benefit. It's not.

You should only believe it if you see it written on the side of a bus.

Re: Seriously?

The actual comparison should be between the risk from the vaccine and the overall risk of not being vaccinated, not just blood clots as a result of not being vaccinated.

The biggest clots here are those who won't get vaccinated.

Re: Seriously?

The UK biomedical community start putting together a scheme to get the Oxford vaccine manufactured before government in either the UK or the EU got their act together. For better or worse HMG insisted on AZ when they got involved which is turning out to be a mixed blessing for them (AZ).

It's not possible to determine whether things would have been better or worse here than in the EU if had been left to HMG alone but it would have been worse than has happened, at least as regards vaccination.

Re: Seriously?

"No it didnt. Germany started negotiating against the EU for vaccine. Other members going off and buying from Russia and China which is the very competition you say was avoided."

And yet we wanted to take back control so we wouldn't be bound by the EU in exactly the way Germany and the others aren't.

Yes there's a problem with inept politicians but the EU doesn't have a monopoly on that as numerous other countries have demonstrated, including our own with Track & Trace. We got lucky with vaccination largely because of the actions of the UK biomedical community.

Westminster, not Whitehall.

"Fiber To The Pigeon"

Don't you mean Feather To The Premises?

Re: Seriously?

If you look carefully you'll see the EU nations flapping about doing their own thing to a large extent and, were we still in the EU, we'd also have had that option.

Where we got lucky was that the local biomedical community got together and presented the govt. with a fait accompli comprising the basics of a vaccination programme. Where we got unlucky was old mates being put in charge of Track and Trace and I doubt any lingering influence of the EU can be blamed for that.

Re: Seriously?

"but the yes votes were not necessarily for the Brexit the UK ended up with."

In many cases they'd be for lies read from the side of a bus.

I find this odd looking at it from a UK perspective although admittedly my experience is with criminal courts. The jury is the tribunal of fact. An appeal will consider if the original trial jury was misdirected about the evidence in front of it, including errors about the admissibility of evidence, but won't make further findings of fact unless new evidence has been unearthed since the trial. Evidence of FRAND known to the defence at the time of the original trial wouldn't, on that basis, be considered new. I suppose this arrangement allows the lawyers to milk the system but it seems to be a system ripe for reform.

OTOH if not raising FRAND in the original trial was to Apple's advantage why didn't PanOptis' raise it?

And when you've done all that you get back to your desk and find that your sub-concious has solved the problem which had been holding you up for hours.

Something that I haven't had or needed in any kitchen in more than 70 years and, indeed, has not existed for millennia of human home-making is quite definitely not essential.

Re: Googlified

And does that require an actual date of birth as opposed to over x years old? ANd why not cite it as part of the request?

It's an interesting situation. US federal law may require them to ask some minimal question. I'm damned if I can see any US law applying to me, here, which compels me to answer.

Re: a *very* high turnover, but

Like he said, least privileged.