Posts by GrapeBunch

Stress-testing brainy software.

Credentialism meets POTUS. Incidentally, that's why you need to be born in the USA. Otherwise, anybody could do the job.

The title is too long.

I wonder if eventually we'll have an Al Capone moment, where an edifice is brought down not by proof of direct naughtiness, but for something like evading VAT. Just blue-skying.

The most significant moment in today's article, to me, was the fact that Deloitte required Autonomy to produce a document saying that a particular transaction was arm's-length. So HPE's case is built upon suspicions that the auditors had all along? I haven't been dipping into the supply, but rest assured that popcorn will be deployed again before this trial concludes. Pirate popcorn, with butt-ARR. But rest assured, IANAL.

Gold in Them Thar

Here in Little Rock, home of the arcane, we will assimilate the JEDI with our patented CLAMPETTI technology.

The Bournemouth is Viscous.

So big company H can sue the remnants of big company A for kidding the world about their latest wares, but nobody's suggesting that punter D should be able to do likewise. I've restocked the popcorn, but confess I haven't HAD any yet because the entertainment factor has begun to lag. In California terms ....

I used (DOS) QUBECALC just last week.

Maybe he should claim that his coding contains Planned Obsolescence, thus turning a potential felony into a classic business practice. I am not trying to excuse him, nor am I trying to excuse purveyors of Planned Obsolescence in the field of computer software.

It would be funny if the trick could be defeated by turning back the system clock.

On the scale of US computer-justice, 5 years is fairly modest. So the $270m invested is worth how much on the market today? Was any of that investment returned to the tricked investors before today?

A bridge under which to harvest scum, with a special fishing rod.

Usually I find sentences in US computer-related cases to be rather harsh, but not this time.

For quite a while I've thought that Canada's scuttling of its AVRO Arrow super-sonic jet was due not so much to Prime Minister Diefenbaker's qualms about carrying nuclear weapons, as it was due to the best efforts of the US Military-Industrial-Political complex, whether overt (but covered by Canada to avoid embarrassment) or covert, or even psychological. I still have no evidence, but the events of the last couple of decades have done nothing to make me revise the theory. As long as it's the USA's game, they profit by it.

Another reflection on the HPE board is "Just Dropped In", coincidentally with Kenny Rogers again singing the lead vocals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4TJYfMnhUk

Say it ain't so.

At least all the Canadian franchises are out of the NHL playoffs "by natural means". If any were still there, they might soon be gone by edict. Meanwhile in baseball, nah, no threat.

Elephantius in camera

No DrWhoSexual or Quiphiloquian has suggested Jodie Whitaker's accent as the sexiest. I wonder why that is.

Nobody has suggested that Canadian is the sexiest British Accent. After all, Mike Myers learned everything he knew about accents in suburban Toronto and from his Scottish father. At first I thought "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" was so ridiculous that it wasn't even funny. But eventually, all reason dissolved. As it so often does.

Joking aside, when I first visited England, I feared (ever so slightly of course) that my neutral Canadian accent would provide an opportunity for those who were so inclined to look down on me. I didn't find that at all. Maybe my powers of observation were underdeveloped sufficiently that I could not recognize a British put-down (but, boy, speaking French in Paris it didn't take a microsecond to recognize one). But I think the real reason is that a neutral Canadian accent most closely resembles, in those green and pleasant isles, the accent of an English person (not an Irish person) from Dublin. Again, from the perspective of somebody in England, fairly neutral.

I find Welsh accents beguiling, for example Eve Myles = Gwen Cooper on Torchwood, silly plots, gappy teeth and all. Please don't tell Mrs. Bunch.

My father had an accent. But all the people I met in his company were too polite to inquire about it. I never thought about it until I was 40 and my sister made a point of mentioning it. Accents may change over a lifetime, as I discovered when listening to recordings my parents made on wax cylinders during WW II, before I was born. My dad sounded much more English matinee-idol than I had ever heard, but the bigger shock was that my mom had a strong Ottawa River Valley accent that she shed in later life. They both spoke faster than they did later, a bit like if you've ever seen the "Thin Man" movie from 1934.

This treat is not moo-rish

So glad to be from Canada, where we are China's cow for at least the next 61 years.

Now the NSA knows the serial number of your artificial hip. Steady on, old chap, if you're lucky, you'll die before they can use it.

Simplestan

Maybe they're over budget because of an unexpected Brexit. Just subtract the 3 beeellion from the daily savings guaranteed by Brexit, and you're still miles ahead.

Colour me reclusive

I could get along OK without a telephone. Problem solved. But other members of the family, not so much. E-mail, great, computer video-calling maybe not as great as it used to be, but OK. But banks, even the cable company, seem to be implementing 2FA - two-factor authentication and the first thing they want is a phone number. So how does that mesh with methods sending all calls from unknown numbers to an answering machine, etc? A naive mind wants to know.

Dr. Gábor Maté suggests that ayahuasca may be good for more than the article prints on the packet, for example, to treat addiction:

https://www.straight.com/life/918656/dr-gabor-mate-recounts-experiences-ayahuasca-forthcoming-documentary-path-shaman

That would make it at once a drug, and an anti-drug.