Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: willing to pay them enough

Probably a bit more subtle than that in some cases. The magic number isn't salaries it's "head count". If a business can tell the stock market they're reducing head count by getting rid of X,000 staff the wise heads in the stock market nod approvingly, stock price goes up and so does the value of manglements' stock options. Of course the work still has to be done so the redundant staff have to be replaced.

In other circumstances things are closer to reality. Work load isn't constant. To some extent a manager can smooth that out by deferring some work at busy periods but not entirely, especially if an important project comes along when everybody's fully committed. There's also the factor that staff availability isn't constant; people go on holiday [mp]aternity leave, get sick, retire, even die. Nobody's going to be able to staff at such a level that even minimum staff availability leaves enough bums on seats to cover peak demand. The flexibility of contract staff evens things out.

There's also a few cases where someone only needs particular expertise for very short periods at widely spaced intervals: I had one client where it was a matter of visiting for a day every few months - and occasionally dialling in to sort them out when they had an urgent mess.

Re: Dangers of moving from outside to inside IR35

"Seems pretty dumb."

We're talking about management of large businesses here so are you surprised?

The contractors are being taken on by people working at the sharp end. The decision is made by people .... let's say not so sharp.

What's likely to happen is that either by April the word will have got back that those contractors are going to have to be kept on or, if internal communications are slower, sometime after April the word will get back that they're going to have to be got back.

As the article says clients are going to have to work out how to ensure the conditions are kept clearly outside IR35, something they should have been doing all along.

Re: No fact checking?

That would be fine if only people with critical thinking skills were allowed to vote.

Re: It's all about the money

"The curation by itself cannot be enough to invalidate 203a-type protections"

Why not? If the platform creates a problem then they should take responsibility for what''s on it. Limit the size of the platform to what they can curate properly. They can't make huge amounts of money from it if that's the case? Tough, there's no law that says they should be able to make that money and have society deal with the costs.

Making a knowledge of civics a requirement for aspirants to office wouldn't be a bad idea either.

"AFAIK, the newspaper is still responsible for what it publish."

In the UK - I don't know about anywhere else - the printer, i.e. the executive in day-to-day charge of actually putting ink on paper has personal responsibility or so I was told by someone who'd actually held that position.

"You can't obviously sue a newspaper if it is reporting what someone else has said, and they have evidences he/she said it."

They need to be able to attribute the quote and if they do it becomes possible to sue the originator. The big difference between print media and the web is the speed with which the lie can br propagated by re-posting. That's something new. If anything it should put a greater responsibility on the likes of Facebook and, frankly, if they should only be operating at the scale at which they can contrive to meet it.

Re: The law of Unintended Consequences applies....

"labeling the case "vexatious", which if done repeatedly means that you can get barred from using the legal system in the UK without permission."

AFAIK it's not the case that's declared vexatious, it's a litigant who brings too many of those sorts of case and then, as you say, a vexatious litigant has to go succeed at some extra steps to be allowed to bring another case.

This week's straw man prize

"Remember Facebook doesn't have to check the content of each post, it just has to prove that it followed the rules in Law3.1.4.159.2654 and it's competitors didn't"

You decide what form the regulation will take and then explain how it won't work as intended.

Re: The law of Unintended Consequences applies....

"The solutions to that are different and platform-dependent, what works for a call or email platform won't work for Facebook for instance."

It depends what you mean by "won't work". If it means Facebook wouldn't work any longer I don't see that as a problem.

Re: Defending the deplorables....

"The sad thing is that defending something you like is no test of your mettle; defending something you abhor is."

No, defending somebody's right to say something you abhor is a test of your mettle. Defending something you abhor just makes you a whore.

Re: User content vs targeted content

The relevant lines are where they started "curating" content,

How about where they start monetising it? And not just content - if Google takes not of where you're located or who you email and sells that they're over the line.

Only true in as far as Facebook has other brands for kids.

Re: It's all about the money

"They're having difficulties suing the actual originator of the objectionable content so they're going after the common carriers."

In that case there needs to be a clear distinction between a common carrier and a publisher.

A common carrier would be someone who provides a service which is charged for. Material delivered to the carrier is delivered to its destination for a fee. There is no means to look at the content. That would include and ISP who simply takes packets from the subscribers and routes them on for transmission to their destination and takes packets from the net addresses to their subscribers and delivers them. It also applies to mail service providers who accept mail and pass it on. It also applies to hosting; in fact with the ISP it's usually the customer who starts by sending some packets out and eventually the ISP gets to deliver the replies and with hosting the packets arrive from the net first and it's the customer's system that send out the replies. All the above is done blind - the carrier only looks at the routing and only in so far as it's necessary to route the message.

As soon as the business starts to look at content or display the content publicly they become a publisher and have responsibility for the content. Arguably this would also apply to free MSPs such a gmail if they look at the content and base other services on that or, indeed on anyone who monetises routing information.

It means that there can be a clean-cut distinction. You provide a point-to-point service blind, either for a fee, as a charity or even as some sort of loss-leader and you're a common carrier. If you look at content - or even routing information to monetise it in some other way - you assume a degree of responsibility.

"Given that auditors are generally assumed to be trustworthy"

From the first report of the case linked in the article: "The attack was allegedly in response to Skelton being accused of dealing legal highs at the company's headquarters in Bradford."

I'd have thought that that might have lead them to question such assumptions.

Re: Anyone surprised ?

"but those sorts of things should be caught by others."

Who are the "others" and why should it be up to them?

Re: Please not the old Southampton chestnut...

"An interesting article which gives a good comment and counter argument."

Only if you enable javascript, otherwise it's just blank. Another useless site.

Re: No problem

A suit against the relevant agency and the individual, jointly and severally would probably do the trick. The agency would undoubtedly blame the individual in order to defend themselves and as soon as the message got out that the employer is simply going to hang its employees out to dry that would be the end of it.

Re: SCO Unix

Some days your biggest mistake is getting out of bed.

Re: SCO Unix

"the vast majority of Mac users"

From what one hears of falling H/W & S/W standards maybe a lot do use Macs in anger.

Re: I love QNAP

"I logged it under hardware failure"

This is the sort of situation where callouts should be charged to the department at fault with a full explanation of the reason given.

Re: Aliased rm

It's something tht used to be advised back......was it really that long ago? Where have the years gone? I want them back.

Re: Couple of times for me as well, though in the past

Due to unforeseen circumstances next week's meeting has been cancelled.

Re: Unsubscribes

Find a senior manager in the original company. Forward them all to him.

Re: Believe it or not, I have a smilar problem

"I wonder what on earth their profiling algorithms make of me"

So it's not all bad.

Re: Snail Mail Too

"In fact, the banks get the same treatment as they insist on messaging me my balance alerts in the middle of the night"

I'd change bank.

Re: And a twist on that...

If you've paid for the package it's your property. "If you don't give my my property that'll be stealing. Do you want me to call the police?"

30 minutes waiting for the manager

Invoice for your time. Minimum one hour or part thereof.

That's what I do. It's a bit of a pain when it's an address a good few people have.

Re: But you used an email address to register with ElReg.

Indeed I did but it isn't the first email address that comes up on my email client - it's an old hotmail address. The address that LinkedIn got was in my own domain so easy to kill completely - I doubt you could ever kill a hotmail address - but inconvenient.

Re: Where's the EU when you need them?

"This should be enforced by a nice and tidy little sum to be paid by said governments, companies, institutions etc as a penalty to the hapless victim if they don't get it right."

I've sorted snail mail to a former tenant at my address by ringing the sender (after numerous returned mail with a note he no longer lived here) and telling them in future I would bill them a £10 handling charge and enforce it through the small claims court if unpaid. That stopped it.

"I would love to use it, but I ain't about to email you from my work address"

Just as well. I did that, not using the registered email address, and later received a LinkedIn invite on the address I used from a, by then, former Register editor. AFAICS this was the only way in which the former editor could have obtained that particular address.

As LinkedIn had now got that address, and we know what grief that can cause, I had no option but to kill it (the address, unfortunately, there being no way to kill LinkedIn) and set up a new one in its place. An email about this to the present editor has never been answered.

So now I will not use the tips and corrections link.

Re: Electricity in the USA

"But most people don't travel very far in vehicles."

I'd say it's more like some people never travel far, some people don't travel far some or even most of the time and some people regularly travel long distances. I've seen my ex SiL move from the second to the first category by selling the MPV and keeping the Leaf and become restricted as a result. The market needs to be able to move up that chain and without being able to build the charging network to support it that's not going to happen.

Re: "plug-in hybrids, full electric or fuel cell cars"

As a business you can only sell what you offer. As a customer you can only buy what vendors are offering.

A few months ago I thought we might have to go down to one car. Currently hers is a small optional 4WD, mine a 2WD family estate. Living where we do I wouldn't want to rely on 2WD only nor do I want a big SUV and I certainly don't want an electric only* so I looked at the market to see what there was in 4WD family estates and in particular plug-in hybrids. It wasn't reassuring. They all fell into the How Much?!!! price bracket. And as for better MPG I looked up the Subaru non-plugin. Its road tax seemed to be twice what I pay on mine so presumably not very good on MPG either. Fortunately the situation has changed and we'll stick with what we've got for the foreseeable future.

All electric might be OK urban runabouts for those with home parking spaces but for the rest plg-in hybrids have to be the stepping stone to establishing sufficient market to build out sufficient public charging capacity and without sufficient public charging capacity pure EVs are going to remain in their niches. So there's a real need to ensure plug-in hybrids aren't restricted to being top of range.

*Range vs charging times vs availability of charging points.