Posts by Doctor Syntax

"Somehow society managed to survive, thrive even, for thousands of years before people could order food on their phone to be delivered. I'm sure it would find a way to keep on chugging even if all delivery services went away."

It's the technology that's changed, not the principle.

I grew up in a rural area, in fact, after a good deal of shunting about I live there once again. Back then a local bakery had a salesman who would go round in a car (a relatively uncommon item of technology for private individuals to own even in the '50s) to take grocery orders to be delivered a couple of days later. It was far more practical than my mother going to buy supplies for an extended multi-generation household when we lived half a mile from the bus route. Same principle as my neighbouring house-bound SiL ordering from Tesco, just different technology.

A green-grocer had a weekly sound with a mobile shop back then. Even earlier, so I believe, one of my grandfathers, a tin-smith, would occasionally make deliveries by horse and cart and years before that this valley was a trade route for pack-horse operators conveying goods such as salt from Cheshire.

Delivery services have been the difference between society just chugging away and thriving.

So am I. Initially it was more likely a sop to the trade unions - can't have these ununionised types going about negotiating for themselves and it didn't require the client to making what would necessarily be a self-serving determination. But, while at that time it was said the IR as it then was had tried to get the same thing past previous Conservative governments and failed, subsequent change of government not only didn't result in repeal, it also dragged the clients into doing HMRC's bidding. Plenty of blame all round.

"Take it or leave it" is itself negotiation.

If your are driving for Uber and have no other source of income, then you are doing it wrong and don't understand the "gig" business.

However the more general case needs to be addressed, not just Uber or even the driving market. If you make a rule based on Uber and no other source of income then there are other situations which would would be dragged in.

At the other extreme it used to be said for instance that there were several law firms which just serviced IBM's litigious habits. On the Uber-only test their employees might become IBM's employees.

Somewhere in the middle is the freelancer who lands a 3-month gig for S/W development, then gets an extension when the client themselves get a new contract that needs development and then another. Is the freelancer supposed to take the most unbusinesslike step of turning down a perfectly good contract just to prove to HMRC or its equivalent elsewhere that they're an independent business?

Re: There is a solution

Probably the best hint nowadays - and really no more than a hint - is whether it's become a subscription product.

Re: Trust them with your money?

You need to remember who pays for ASA. It's the advertising industry.

And his version of "try" will be "go ahead regardless".

The idea being that a fully integrated advertising platform would let you etc but under no circumstances would it let you identify those potential customers who are so fed up with advertis that they'll actively avoid any product which has its ads shoved in their face because that would ruin our business of selling adverts to advertisers

Re: Quite human

Similar to (sadly) many people search engines.

So a LLM made by a search engine corporation can be expected to be particularly bad.

Re: Only 700? Perhaps the 'software crisis' is due to not enough bad programmers?

I'm not sure who all these "data scientists" are (Are they what we used to call statisticians? There seem to be an awful lot of them.) or how they think but I'd hope they'd ask questions such as:

"How many significant figures does this represent in the overall US IT job market?"

"How does it compare with the annual number of people leaving and entering the market?"

"How does it compare with the daily turnover in IT jobs?"

"Should I call these people out to More or less?"

Re: More Magical Thinking

Whatever the battery technology the overall infrastructure need is to be able to replace the energy provision currently supplied by liquid hydrocarbon fuels. What's being done to achieve that?

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

Complacency is also counterproductive.

Virus in sewage is taken as an early warnings of possible hospitalisations to come.

"fly the flag"

Did he also risk flying the company's product?

Re: Shameful

It's shameful how Boeing's management is flying the passengers into the ground.

FYFTFY

Re: A gross understatement?

Maybe it suggests that "the area in question" should be the entire aircraft when conducting these inspections.

Re: Balls of steel - 'IT System assumed to be correct'

"That presumption can, however, be rebutted if evidence to the contrary is adduced. In that event it will be for the party seeking to produce the computer record in evidence to satisfy the court that the computer was working properly at the material time.."

Superficially, where the evidence is being provided by the prosecution in a criminal case it makes it look as if the burden of proof is on the prosecution - which is part of the long tradition of Common Law. In practice, of course, it places the real burden on the defence in providing rebuttal. It's that repeal that opened the door to this whole mess. I wonder how many less notorious cases have been brought to court by the same means.

Re: Cryptocurrency????

Maybe. Is that on the cryptocurrency buyer's list of smart things to do?

Re: Sounds like...

"Can it be argued that training is similar to a child reading a copyrighted book - learning what the book teaches but simply not allowed to duplicate it, which is plagiarism?"

No it can't. Pick up any book published in the last few decades and open it at the page with the copyright, Library of Congress data ets. It will be somewhere near the title page, the dedication, if any, and before the table of contents. You will see something along the lines of "No part of this book may reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system" etc. etc.

The terms on which the book was sold to you explicitly forbid various stuff that isn't like a child reading a copyrighted book.

Re: About box Easter Eggs

I was, I think, one of the guinea pigs to get a system reviewed for security under the BT project (the name escapes me) following on from Prince Phillip's Prestel mailbox getting hacked. I was asked to confirm our system had no undocumented features. I suggested he go to BT procurement and get them to get Microsoft to sign such a declaration. I think he did - the question was dropped from the checklist. I later found out his background wasn't IT at all, it was perimeter security.