Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Nope

"local press particularly hard hit and virtually out of business in some parts of the UK. I don't believe that Google is the primary cause of this"

Quite.

Taking "press" literally the problem is delivery networks. Our local newspaper shop can't get kids to deliver to us any more and I'm not trailing all that way every day just to get a paper.

Online they totally disregarded GDPR with needing to provide 100+ opt-outs every time you went online, one of the many reasons why I have one browser set up in amnesiac mode.

Since then things have got worse as, with so many in the group their domain is $OLD_TITLElive.co.uk and, amid the mess that's now its UI, persists in wanting to throw at me local stories from all over the place except here.

Re: Not me, but someone else

But satisfying.

Re: Not me, but someone else

"they took one look at this ruffian clutching a supermarket carrier bag"

One of the best - and truest - lines in LOTSW was along those lines. The scruffs were wandering through a car showroom. One salesman to another: "Shall I throw them out?" "Nay lad, round here they can look like that and be millionaires."

Re: Inappropriate garb

"almost an acknowledgment that your interview was just a pony show to get you in the door"

It is. Just like the CV is written to get past the gatekeepers in HR.

Re: Appropriate attire?

"Being both young and foolish I agreed, especially as it came with a 15% pay rise."

Nothing foolish about accepting a 15%rise. I trust you kept it after abandoning the suit.

Re: Appearance et al...

I suppose that's one occasion when "Do you know who I am?" really was appropriate.

Re: Dress Code

OTOH about 20 years ago I had gig where my client wanted me to do some work on site at their customer's HO and insisted that I wear a suit on site. So I ended up working in a rapidly dishevelling suit in a heat wave (spending as much time as possible in the machine room to take advantage of the aircon). The customer manager I dealt with was in shorts and sandals in the office. He was the one with appropriate attire.

Common sense may be sense but it's quite uncommon.

Re: Not possible?

I'm fairly certain I just heard someone saying "challenge accepted".

I wouldn't be surprised if similar thinking was behind the reply-alls that followed it.

Re: Hardly surprising

unless China has already acquired set out to make the necessary equipment

FTFY but does it feel any more reassuring than the original

"and anyone else who was passing"

Providing they passed under social distancing rules.

Re: As far as I can tell, Northern Ireland is part of the UK....

The principle involved is called "Not Invented Here". The purpose is reducing the visibility of egg on face. It's got a long tradition in government circles but particularly desired by the current one at present.

Re: More useful

"I would like to keep my distance from them."

You should be doing that anyway because you should be keeping your distance from people in general. The whole purpose of the app is to tell when you've failed.

Re: Like to have an expert check the privacy statement & app

I agree it now has proper privacy terms. However it's not surprising that people will treat it with a degree of distrust.

Firstly the original world-beating plan was going to harvest personal details and keep them (strictly for limited purposes of course) for a few decades.

Secondly successive governments have shown themselves to be data fetishists and the current government's reliance on more of the same only makes things worse.

Thirdly the whole shebang has been put under the charge of a serial failer when it comes to protecting customers' PII.

There should be a lesson for governments here. There will come a time when you really need peoples' trust about handling personal data. Trust is a fragile thing. Once you lose it it's not very readily rebuilt. Best not to lose it in the first place.

Re: How will they know it's a false alarm?

No it is not better. for reasons given in the post to which you replied.

Look at it on a personal level. If, having emerged a day or so ago from your 3rd groundless period of self-isolation - unpaid if you can't work from home - what are you going to do when you're told yet again you're a contact?

If you lack the imagination to see how it plays out in that way ,let's try reductio ad absurbam. If false positives are good let's just declare the entire population as contacts and have everyone self isolate. A bit rough on those depending on carers to live but once everyone's emerged again and cleared away the bodies we're free from the virus. Was it a good idea?

The requirement of any sort of test is its ability to discriminate with a minimum of false positives and false negatives. The problem with this sort of test is that it hasn't really got a good discriminating power. The appropriate response isn't to bias it towards false positives toavoid false negatives and leave it at that. False positives are just too expensive at both the individual personal level and at the collective economic model; we can't afford them.

What should be done with a test like that is to refine it as much as possible but then treat it as an indicator that a more definitive test is needed. The number of tests currently being processed is well below capacity. Instead of telling the positive contacts to self isolate use that spare capacity and test them. I suppose in another month or two the idea might dawn on Cummings or somebody.

Re: YAM = ??

"the South Sea Bubble (ca 1720). It was an early financial scam,"

Money's been around a long time and I'm sure scams followed PDQ. You couldn't really call the 1720searly.

Re: Software verification

"Developers never got near the production builds."

So how could they tell whether what they developed was what was built for production?

Re: Investment?

"a huge implied "Beta" tag on its front door"

That's an insult to Beta.

Mr Barnum can explain it to you.

Re: I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Or was it money in, garbage out?

Of course that's been going on a long time as well.

Re: Wish us luck. We'll need it.

"It's now 244 years since the people of the United States freed themselves from the rule of George the Third. "

And yet they didn't separate the head of govt. and head of state roles.

"all the folks who didn't toe the line have been forcibly removed."

And in some cases sent to the HoL to make sure they don't get re-elected to challenge the clique later.

"if you are not careful, colour lasers can be very expensive to run"

My experience with a Brother is that it has a separate black cartridge and that by default when printing black text it only uses the black cartridge so this is no more expensive to run than a monochrome laser give or take the price per page of the respective models.

Since I got it I've printed quite a bit of colour work. I run off handouts for my wife's patchwork class with a colour photo of the current week's project on the front page.