Posts by Commswonk 1777 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2015
With more and more cars connected to the mobile network via GSMA, all they need is the imei of the mobile, and shut the car down.
For that they need to positively and unambiguously identify the car; see my point above about false plates to spot the flaw in your argument!
Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe wants the capital's cops to be able to remotely disable people's cars,
What Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe needs is to think more carefully before speaking.
If the police want to be able to stop a "random" car (the meaning of random will become clearer shortly!) then the best solution might be an RPG. The technology for stopping an individual car electronically while leaving all the others unaffected is, I would suggest, impossible unless that individual car can somehow be "addressed", and for that it has to be uniquely identified.
No problem there; it has registration plates. However, it's a fair bet that more than a few of the cars that police want to stop are being driven on false plates, so any attempt to target a car speeding in London might result in a car elsewhere in the country suddenly grinding to a halt, completely unbeknownst to the pursuing police in London and to the complete bewilderment of its totally innocent driver. It could easily happen that the "wrong" car being stopped could result in a serious accident; after all the police have no idea where it is and what it is doing, because they aren't really following it.
Perhaps the esteemed Commissioner thinks that Star Trek tractor beams are real. In any event with things as they stand his idea is best described as "silly".
...that the UK electorate was supposed to vote on the basis of "what was good for business", not on each individual's own interpretation of what was best for them and the wider UK community.
The fact that in this case it is an American business that is "complaining" merely makes the whole thing worse.
If Brexit means that the UK goes to the back of the queue to have TTIP imposed on it then so much the better, because by all accounts TTIP would result in the UK having to pay more or less permanent homage to US corporate interests. If my reading of the wider news is correct even the EU seems to have spotted that one...
When I worked for a GEC company the standard methodology for MoD contracts was: (etc)
In the interests of completeness it is worth pointing out that if you don't do it that way the outcome is likely to be that you (the company) finishes up bankrupt itself, because "you" find yourself paying to rectify the gross mistakes in the original (government) specification.
While the idea of "ripping off the taxpayer" is unattractive it can only really happen if the original specification is so wide of what is really required.
Title says it all,
Yes it definitely does. I am heartily sick of having to get out of my chair (often when eating) to find nobody at the other end or somebody with whom I have neither the desire or need to communicate. (And I don't mean EE; my PAYG mobile is, er, Vodafone.)
I frequently get into trouble from Mrs Commswonk* for telling spam callers what I think of them in no uncertain terms.
*Actually I get into trouble from Mrs Commswonk for all sorts of things but they are outside the scope of this thread.
Most of the things in the article point to the heavier helmet being the problem. That is not an Ejector seat problem.
That is also my reading of it; the rest seems to detract from the proper identification of the problem. That said I can see how body mass could be a determining factor.
At the risk of stating the obvious an ejection seat works by firing an explosive charge under the seat, after first shattering the canopy (again explosives are used) because unless the canopy is blown the result is a dead pilot. There are other things that happen, such as the pilot's legs being drawn back against the seat, much like car seat belt pretensioners. The seat is firing upwards, and the primary point of contact between seat and pilot is his (or her) derriere. That sudden acceleration is transmitted up the pilot's spine, and if the helmet is heavier that "standard" that heaviness becomes increased inertial mass. That increased mass can only be accelerated by the force transmitted up the spine and neck bones, thus adding to the extreme compression stress to which the entire spine (ncluding the neck) is subjected.
If the pilot and all his (her) component parts survive that, the compression stresses are repeated when the parachute deploys; this time the heavier helmet is forced downwards on to the neck bones and thence to the spine. (I cannot recall - if I ever knew - the point at which the pilot and the seat become separated.)
It is well known that pilots who have had to eject often land about 2" shorter than when they took off because of the compression of all the disks in the spinal column, and IIRC they have a specified number of weeks during which they have to return to within a certain precentage of their previous height; fail to return to "normal" and flying duties are cancelled.
I suspect that the pilot's weight comes into the equation simply because a heavier pilot will have a heavier bone structure that is better able to cope with the severe compression to which the spine and neck will be subjected; lighter pilots will have a lighter spine that is less well able to cope.
Ejection (I had to be careful there!) must come pretty close to the limit of what the human body can tolerate and survive and any additional factors such as increased helmet weight could easily pose a problem. If one answer is to specify a minimum body weight for pilots then that would seem to be perfectly sensible.
So Martin Baker are being threatened because of a problem that isn't their fault seems to be a perfectly fair point to make.
Mmm... if your comment had been written purely analytically rather than with more than a slight edge of "rant" it might have attracted a upvote rather than a downvote.
In this case I suspect that the Magistrate could not reasonably have rejected the application for extradition. With the precedent of Gary McKinnon the intention may be that this will land on the Home Secretary's desk so that the "blame" is at governmental level, which is probably where it actually belongs.
At the same time we really cannot have a situation whereby anyone accused of practically anything can suddenly plead "Asperger's Syndrome" as a sort of all - purpose get out of jail card, not least because if this approach was to be allowed there is no knowing where it would end. Having worked alongside someone with Aspergers in a previous life, my own (very) limited observation would be that those with it lack that little voice that whispers in the ear "what you are about to do is really not a good idea", but on a broader level I have no idea if that is widespread or not.
IIRC Aspergers is not classified as a mental illness, and I cannot accept any argument that gives those with it the opportunity to sidestep responsibility for their actions. If Love had been caught drinking and driving would "Aspergers" have been a permissible defence? Arson / theft / GBH / etc ditto?
One logical endpoint of trying "Aspergers" as a defence might be that those with it become subject to a blanket ban on owning or using computers, driving, and so on. Not the happiest of outcomes for the rest of the affected community...
As far as I'm aware the treaty between UK and US is 'bilateral'.
Ah but I don't think that is true. ISTR that the "treaty" such as it is was ratified by the UK Parliament but was not ratified by the US Congress. Quite how someone managed to agree to a treaty that could be so one - sided (because of the failure of one of the parties to ratify it) escapes me; it ought to have been built into the treaty that it only became effective once both (or all, as the case may be) parties had ratified it.
If my recollection is true then the UK parliament should make it clear to the US that we are going to cancel the treaty unless they (the US) ratifies it PDQ. Anything else is simply spineless.
Hang on; I can see a problem here...
She's not that bad looking
Indeed she is not, which is why I'd rather not find myself at an adjacent wash basin just after a virulent attack of "balti botty" * had just proved to be the high spot of my day.
Perhaps the MoD will get around the risk of the possibilities of mutual embarrassment by setting up Distance Learning Packages about "Toilet Etiquette".
Academic, I am glad to say, because I am retired.
* Other excretary sound effects are available.
That's the good thing about VHF: From 12-14 miles away, I can easily operate GB3BF (the Bedford VHF repeater) with a small 5W hand-held. It is a one-to-many type approach, however, watching various police shows, that appears to be the case with TETRA.
Not a good comparison. TETRA offers much more than a single wide area channel. And can you work your VHF repeater from every outdoor locality within your quoted 12 - 14 mile radius?
Sorry, but your comment appears to be the case with TETRA does rather show a lack of appreciation of what TETRA does and can do and why, and thus why any replacement system will have to be better than TETRA if it is to be of any use.
Clue: a single TETRA base site with just one carrier can support 3 simultaneous Talkgroups.Or 2 Talkgroups and a single PTP (point to point) call. And so on, including that fact that most sites have more than one carrier...
You need low latency push to tall so that "Don't Shoot" doesn't become "Shoot."
Even with TETRA / Airwave there is no guarantee that the user will be "enabled" when he or she presses the transmit button.
TETRA has a "Grant Tone" which tells the user that they can go ahead and speak; I would be horrified if the EE offering does not provide the same functionality, even allowing for the fact that I hate the word.
The proposed system looks as though it is being specified by politicians and civil servants, not users and engineers who actually understand what they are talking about.
What could possibly go right?
IIRC it's a lot more complicated than that. Fireground communications really have to work. TETRA / Airwave equipment is limited to 1 Watt for "portables" and 3 Watts for vehicle sets, and that simply may not be sufficient for decent building penetration. In TMO (trunk mode) indoor coverage is not guaranteed with Airwave. Why would anyone want to pay a great deal of money for a TETRA radio that might well not work adequately when required in DMO (direct mode) only?
I also have a vague feeling that fire service radios may have to be certified for use in flammable atmospheres, i.e. be Intrinsically Safe, and when I retired (oh shit; it was nearly 10 years ago!) I'm not sure that any Airwave equipment had been designed and manufactured to that standard.
There have been a couple of posts mentioning the non - nuclear based propulsion system of these carriers.
I have a vague recollection of hearing somewhere that the problem is the risk that normally friendly countries take exception to nuclear - powered ships turning up in their waters, never mind their ports. The outcome would be that even if there was an urgent need to tie up somewhere (for whatever reason) then any request would be summarily denied. Goodbye goodwill visits (a common tradition of the RN) to practically anywhere.
The risk extends to the potential compromise of a serious operational deployment because other countries don't want a nuclear system of any sort anywhere near them.
Yes well, obviously... in a sense. But it would make no sense for a company to incur huge capital expenditure (which its customers have to pay for sooner or later) just because something new and shiny comes along, unless there is a really pressing reason to do so.
I queried the use of the word "legacy" in he first place because it gives no clear idea of exactly what he was referring to.
I hope you aren't suggesting that I should agree to scrapping perfectly good double glazing (which some salesmen really seem to expect me to do) or tear out a perfectly satisfactory kitchen to replace it with another at enormous cost. Capital equipment is not disposable like some sort of fashion item... like an I7 for example.
I still cannot determine with any certainty what is meant by "legacy". I suspect that the presentation might have been a buzzword bingo session that didn't survive the translation into a news article.
From the top of this comments page: the business is weighed down by legacy in a way that newer network providers are unencumbered from … leaves me wondering if someone thinks BT ought to drop allegedly outdated concepts such as the provision of a telephone service.
I don't doubt that fixed line services are exhibiting a drop in call numbers and line provision, but that could simply be because email has supplanted the fax machine. Obviously mobile telephony and Skype will have made inroads into fixed line services, but the demise of voice calls? A reduction is not a demise.
The whole thing just seems opaque.
It was called "piecework" when it was done in the 19th century textile industry and it saw people working at home in places like rural Ireland and earning an absolute pittance while some flashy brand was benefiting from their hard labour, spinning linen or making clothes.
In the 21st century delete "rural Ireland" and insert Bangla Desh. The principles and practice of employee exploitation don't change much, to mankind's continuing shame.
You know that in the end the economy will be slightly worse off, about 50 to 100 billion 2016 pounds per year is not a reasoned argument; it is an assertion that I would suggest falls into the EUROFUD category. I may be in a minority of one but I do not know anything of the kind.
"In the end"; exactly when does that mean? "the economy" is far too general a concept to have much resonance with the electorate.
It may not have been intentional but your post sounded a bit hectoring, which is very possibly what drove voters to put their crosses against "leave" in the first place.
We had a 14:13 majority on a question of whether we should leave the EU, where there was an awful lot of distortions of the truth.
This is not a safe enough margin to be a mandate for the UK to leave the EU.
I do understand that logic, but the threshold for a "majority" cannot be set after the event. However, even if something other than a simple majority had been set, say (for the sake of argument) 55:45 to vote for "leave" for the result to count then a different set of problems could arise. Firstly, any ratio other than a simple 50:50 would more or less by definition be arbitrary, and in its way no more valid than 50:50. Secondly, had the result been 54.9:45.1, thus maintaining the status quo as EU members, we would have had a situation where we remained as members although there had been a very clear (simple) majority against it. Thirdly had the result been 55.1:44.9 then the remainers would have argued that the (arbitrary) threshold should have been 56:44.
I'm not sure which of the above three would be the worst; I suspect the second, with a (substantial?) majority of those who voted being forced to remain within the EU against their clearly expressed opinion.
It would all have been so much easier for everyone (the EU in particular) if our "partners" had been more receptive to the concerns of the UK electorate, but of course for that to have happened our own politicians would have had to been aware opf those concerns themselves. I hope they have learned from the experience; to rework a well known saying You can ignore all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
First of all, Europol is not an EU setup.
Are you certain about that? Again from Wikipedia:
The European Police Office (commonly abbreviated Europol) is the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU) that handles criminal intelligence and combating serious international organised crime by means of cooperation between the relevant authorities of the member states, including those tasked with customs, immigration services, border and financial police etc.
And then later on:
Germany, with its federal organisation of police forces, had long been in favour of a supranational police organisation at EC level. It tabled a surprise proposal to establish a European Police Office to the European Council meeting in Luxembourg in June 1991. By that December, the Intergovernmental Conference was coming to an end and the member states had pledged themselves to establishing Europol through Article K.1(9) of the Maastricht Treaty.
I know that trusting Wiipedia implicitly can be a bit daft but I suspect that if any of the above was wrong someone would have put it right by now.
Dan 55 posted: From Whackypedia: The Director of Europol is able to enter into agreements for Europol with both countries and internal organizations. Europol cooperates on an operational basis with: Albania, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Republic of Macedonia, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, the United States and Interpol
It might have been worth including the next section, which reads:
Despite being funded by the EU, Europol has been found to have gaps between the funds allocated and its operational results achieved.
Its weakness lies in its very formalized structure, which causes loss of flexibility and its poor management of their multiple centres that control its operating activities.
Due to its information collection and analysis core, it is unable to actually search for information, i.e. no system to find persons or things, no resources for wiretapping etc. and is consequently deprived of the most important function in terms of operational efficiency.
There lacks sufficient representation of customs and border protection at Europol as well as a clear division of tasks between Europol and other EU institutions such as CEPOL or Frontex.
Though Europol focuses a large amount on anti-terrorism, it’s reputation is rather poor in this area. It lacks potential in its anti-terrorism department to take effective action against terrorism, especially because it is not included in the Club de Berne (the largest anti-terrorism forum in the EU) and because there are many EU member states, (UK for one example) who are the source of Europol’s information, which do not completely trust Europol.
-----------------------------------------
Hardly a ringing endorsement...
How about "EUROFUD"? I can live with and will happily consider reasoned arguments about why Brexit might be a terrible mistake, but anything that looks a bit like blackmail falls well outside that fairly broad description.
It's all a bit like nice place you've got here, mate; it would be a shame if anyone came and smashed it up...
All the foot - stamping from various bodies sounds like a two year old's temper tantrum.
Dan 55 summed it up nicely with his So where's the cutting off, apart from his nose to spite his face? Intelligence sharing (whether you happen to like it or not) does not require the comfort blanket of the EU around it. Anyway, we've still got "Five Eyes" membership.
I wonder if the fabled little boy who suddenly announced The Emporer has no clothes had to contend with this sort of thing.
The downvote button is just below, BTW. Remainers seem unable to tolerate any non - acceptance of their orthodoxy... I don't doubt the EUROFUD will continue, unfortunately.
And we should remove all the road signs as well, as was done during Second World War.
It was sometime in the mid 1990s when I did a job near Cold Overton in Leicestershire. On completion I had to drive a largish vehicle (i.r.o. 10 Tonne) back to Birmingham. It was not long before I came to the conclusion that the local road signs had not been so much "removed" during WW2 but turned to point in misleading directions and not put back again afterwards.
Annoying enough in a car, bloody difficult in an HGV.
At the time it didn't seem very funny...
Leaving does not mean that we then ditch all EU regulations. Some we will (re)adopt as part of UK law. So, it is quite possible that this roaming regulation will be adopted by the UK government.
This might be a bit pedantic but to the best of my knowledge readoption would not be necessary; the regulations exist on the statute book now so all the UK would need to do post Brexit is... nothing. Simply leave them in place.
As a "leaver" I would hope that the UK drops as few of the extant EU regulations as possible; this would show good faith with our ex - partners. I suspect a bonfire of EU regulations (OK they might have to be renamed) would work against long term UK interests.
However...with an eye on post Parliament directorships and consultancies I expect that MPs will not be keen on those that hit profits of big business, so they might be dropped.
Sadly I fear you might be right. As has been mentioned on a specific Brexit - related thread the interests of the UK electorate (i.e. the wider population) tend not to be high on the list of priorities..
@dan1980: First, when you say "the EU" - which specific people do you mean?
An entirely fair question, and I suppose I was aware of the ambiguity when I wrote what I did. So here goes... Primarily I meant the EU Commission, and its President. I am of the view that the post is prone to succumbing to folie de grandeur, and previous occupants (not necessarily all) have all suffered from it as well. The EU Parliament? No; I don't think it has the clout it ought to have; it is largely supine and can, IIRC, be more or less ignored by the Commission. The EU "peoples"? No, not them either. The various Heads of State? Well partially to blame at least.
Although it may be a function of how things are reported by the media I get the distinct feeling that Frau Merkel believes she has an overarching veto all all things EU and that certainly doesn't help either. Her throwing the EU open to refugees and economic migrants without any prior discussion with other Heads of State (all supposedly her equals) would support this view. With a UK referendum then on the horizon it was (IMHO) a strategic blunder of epic proportions. (That should trigger a downvote or two!)
In a democracy people can have dissenting opinions.
Of course they can, and there's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is expecting the dissenting minority to be able to block the will of the majority, which is exactly what was being suggested.
Spend a few minutes thinking about where that might lead, in areas far, far wider than the referendum result.
I don't think you can sign it for the UK really, almost half of us do not want Brexit.
You do realise the implications of that assertion, don't you? * It means that a majority for anything can be ignored simply on the basis that the minority don't want it. It might make the outcome of the forthcoming vote for the Labour Party leadership more entertaining, though.
Chinese proverb: Be careful what you wish for just in case you get it.
* Actually I suspect you don't...
those politicians leading the Brexit charge really had no plans on how anything would actually work in a post-EU UK nor how to make the transition
No, they probably didn't, and given their "status" as a group of individuals rather than as a "cabinet" it's hard to see how they could have done.
However, it is equally possible to argue that Cameron and the rest of the Remain camp never seem to have given any thought whatsoever to "what happens if... ." Cameron was PM, and he resigned with almost indecent speed; perhaps he really did not have any option. Equally the EU appears to have ignored the possibility of "leave" winning, but that comes as rather less of a surprise; the EU doesn't really "do" democracy and either can't or won't understand it. (After all it can ignore the EU parliament if it so wishes.)
Things might have been very different had Cameron stated bluntly to the EU functionaries "there is a very real risk of the electorate voting to leave"; had he done so (and his demeanour on his return to the UK points towards his not having done anything of the kind) the message might just have struck home.
In many respects the EU must accept a measure of responsibility for how things turned out. It is so wedded to the concept of "free movement" that it simply cannot accept that as a policy it is 60 years old and that in some circumstances it can have adverse effects. It chose to ingore it all, but then it has previous for ignoring what electorates think and vote; a sort of dogged consistency.
So I might suggest that the "Remainers" (who I suspect are a majority on this forum) might look a bit closer to their own side for part of why this went the way it did.
Simple engrained complacency, compounded by an inability to acknowledge the possibility of counter arguments.
To vote against that as an expression of justified dissent against zero hours contracts brings to mind sayings about nose & face.
If it were that simple I would have to agree with you, but reducing it to a single issue (zero hours contracts) misses all the other points, only some of which were mentioned in my post.
Both sides in the run up to the referendum made a complete balls of their cases. The Brexiteers made a hash of the financial arguments (amongst others) while the remainers got stuck on how wonderful the EU and all its works are while completely overlooking things that were of perfectly legitimate concern to the electorate. I strongly suspect that Cameron made a complete mess of his attempted "renegotiation" while the EU itself was and remains incapable of recognising the shortcomings of its own that contributed to the result.
I would very much like to see "government of the people, by the people, for the people", not government of the people, by foreign interests, for foreign interests. Sadly it may be too late.
Oh dear. I have some sympathy for cornz 1's original posting under this title, but at the same time I am not surprised that it has attracted so many downvotes, doubtless with many more to come.
However, I would invite fellow commentards to consider the following:
A lot of the "Remain" camp's argument prior to the actual vote was based on "the EU is good for (British) business" which by extension would also apply to non - UK businesses with major investments in the country, e.g. Japanese car manufacturers , banks and so on. Post the referendum the Remoaners have been trotting out the same mantra, almost ad nauseam.
Now while accepting that the mantra might be largely true, at the same same concentrating on the ambitions of business (and apparently business alone) ignores that fact that something that is good for business is not necessarily good for the wider electorate - millions of individuals who for whatever reason have come to believe that their interests have been sidelined in favour of "business".
Clearly something that was actively bad for business would probably be bad for the wider population, but just taking the "business" viewpoint does rather disregard what the millions who vote might be thinking. Zero hours contracts? Good for business (they wouldn't use them otherwise) but hardly good for the people stuck on them. Unlimited immigration? Good for businesses that want lower cost (i.e. cheap) labour but not so good for those who cannot afford to buy a home, or struggle to pay rent because of upward pressure on housing costs attributable to demand far outstripping supply; increased demand on health services, schooling and so on.
In the run up to the referendum Barack Obama upset quite a large proportion of the electorate with his intervention; I suspect that other countries doing the same now will have a similar effect.
If you genuinely believe that the British public should simply shut up, fuck off , and just put up with whatever business will allow them to have, go ahead and slap downvotes on me as well. That is what has happened over the last few years and it is not surprising that given the opportunity to express an opinion the electorate grasped the opportunity with both hands.
Theresa May talked of a "Britain that works for everybody" and I hope she meant what she said. A Britain that simply works for business is not, IMHO, acceptable.
If it is true the batteries were manufactured by a third party and Samsung's supplier was screwed down to the last cent, who did the screwing? Er, Samsung.
Try as I might I cannot fathom why this suggestion received a downvote, although to be fair it is possible that a third party battery manufacturer decided to cut a few corners in an attempt to squeeze a little more profit.
Thinking about it didn't some phone manufacturer try to patent cut corners?
If they manage a decent low tariff trading agreement with the EU expect all those multinationals with an Irish parentage to decamp to the UK.
I'm not sure that that would go down all that well. If the UK post - Brexit enabled some companies to have significant advantages by being UK based the EU might see that as being detrimental to its interests, and I suspect that they would be right. If what Ireland is doing now is wrong under EU law then while a non - EU UK doing it might be perfectly all right (because we would no longer be an EU country) the EU would probably see it as cocking one snook too many.
If the UK wants a decent deal with the EU after it leaves, trying to offer (say) Apple an easy way to avoid paying tax on money earned in the EU would, I suspect, be counter - productive to wider UK interests. It would more or less force the EU to implement countermeasures in an attempt to achieve a greater degree of "balance".
I suppose I had better admit to being a Brexit supporter (that should ensure a few downvotes) but I would roundly condemn any attempt to have policies that could be seen as "trying to screw the EU". The EU would simply respond in kind, and the UK would deserve it.
What happens when you give the police guns? The criminals get bigger guns.
And the evidence for this is..?
Also innocent people get caught in the cross fire.
And the evidence for this is..? I am not saying that innocent people don't ever get shot, but I cannot recall any instance where they have been caught in "crossfire". Perhaps you can remind me.
I can only imagine that letting the police "disrupt" criminals will have massive amounts of collateral damage. I suspect your imagination might be running away out of control.
For reasons I do actually understand many people (not least on this distinguished forum!) are extremely wary of the "forces of law and order" having increased powers on the fighting cybercrime front, however one might wish to define it. Knee - jerk reactions are all too easy; I would be very interested to hear how commentards would deal with crime carried out, or facilitated, by the use of "IT". Unless I have misread things the general view seems to be "you can't have any more IT - based powers".
So how do you suggest that such crime and its perpetrators are dealt with?
Well if it hasn't at the moment it soon will have; I suspect that everybody (except the large corporates) is getting heartily sick of the "now you see it; now you don't" methods of accounting that multinationals use to minimise their contributions to the wider societies in which they operate. The current approach is little short of pillage; grab what you can and disappear as fast as you can, or least make the money disappear so that you are still around to grab any more that happens to come along.
As the EU Commission has pointed out, this is not a simple matter of tax due on Irish sales as much as allowing other profits to pass through the accounts unchecked. I never thought I would ever raise a cheer for the EU but on this occasion I have made an exception.
Tim Cook might just find out that the old adage of "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is not universally true.
I hope...
I imagine with business rates, VAT and employee contributions they probably still pay a hefty price.
Yeah, right... Companies do not pay VAT; the final customer pays it; the company merely acts as a collector. Business rates? The same as the business next door with identical premises. Employee contributions? The same as the company next door with the same number of employees on comparable salaries.
In fact every bill a company pays - salaries, utililties, VAT, corporation tax is actually paid by its customers, in this case the bewitched fools who only have to see something with a little i as its initial letter to palpitate until they have bought one.
Apple is pissing up everyones' backs; they are raising two fingers to all the other companies that either can't or won't play the same trick, and we are all the losers because of it.
It's high time that Apple and all the others playing the same game were brought to heel, an act that might just include Vodaphone now I come to think about it.
</rant>
"It seems that the EU has asserted it's power to set Ireland's tax code."
As others have said, it hasn't. However, if Ireland and / or Apple fights this (and I suspect win or lose would make little difference) it would amount to an open invitation for the EU Commission to introduce EU wide legislation that would enable the EU to set Tax Codes (whether corporate or personal) in member countries. And, furthermore, the tax thus levied would be paid straight to Brussels, not the member countries. I suspect that quite a few member countries would support that in the hope that Brussels might be more inclined to bail them out than other individual countries are.
Once upon a time we had banks that were deemed "too big to fail". We seem to approaching a point where there are companies that are "too big to tax", and I sincerely hope not that just doesn't happen, but that it is actively prevented.
A self driving car can also get millions of hours of driving experience every hour delivered in regular updates by pooling the 'knowledge' of all other self driving vehicles and their situations.
Is that really such a good idea? The result could easily be that a car faced with a given situation today may behave significantly differently to the way it behaved yesterday; the result will be driver confusion on a major scale. If the driver is always going to be legally responsible for anything that happens then the car must not be able to alter its operating parameters without the driver knowing about them and understanding them and knowing how to "interface" with them.
Then We haven't invested the time and money that Google, DARPA, BMW, Toyota, Daimler, Ford and a few others have but we don't think it will work... Well they might just be right. It would seem that NASA have done work on "human factors" and I would be very interested to know if the vehicle manufacturers have as well. I might even go as far as to say that NASA may have invested far more on that front than any of the car manufacturers; it would be all too easy to reduce driving to a series of 0/1 decisions and forget human factors completely.
Neither the Labour Party nor Virgin Trains immediately responded to our enquiries.
Could you possibly add to your enquiries "Did Mr Corbyn actually try to book a seat?" Given that he does not seem to be complaining that he tried that but none was available it seems fair to assume that he didn't. In which case "why not"?
If he had tried but been denied on the grounds of non - availability then he might just have had a point, but as it stands this looks like a politician whinging in the (forlorn) hope of gaining capital from it.
The only way renationalisation would help is that the trains would become so bloody awful that the proletariat would desert them in droves leaving all the more space for the Dear Leader.
Dear Mr Corbyn; trains get full. It happens every day. It inconveniences people every day. Shit happens, and all that. Deal with it.
Heaven forfend that he ever gets the keys to No 10...
From the article: As commenters pointed out in Sunday's story on this mess, Microsoft's motto was once “Where do you want to go today?” If your answer was Melbourne, you probably ended up using Linux. ®
If your answer was Melbourne, you should then have been asked "which one". There are 3 of them in England, although one of them has no "e".
Other Melbournes may be available.
</nitpick>
Um... a bit of a non sequitur that, but even so it does not explain or excuse the poor performance you are getting.
You might well be on "Exchange Only" local ends, which means that there are no cabinets in which to provide FTTC in the first place. It could also be that there is insufficient (data) capacity in the exchange itself leading to serious congestion there, in which case just rolling out FTTC / FTTP would achieve nothing.
Worth noting, perhaps, that just forcing a divorce between BT & Openreach would not in and of itself sort out exchange - level shortcomings, because as far as I can see they would remain firmly within BT's remit.
In addition... setting aside for now the planned replacement of TETRA with 4G I cannot see any useful purpose being servied by fitting this thing with TETRA equipment. To what possible end? Even flying at 35,000 feet would be pushing it for communicating with small portable terminals with 1 Watt maximum power and helical aerials; even vehicle installations are limited to 1 Watt as well. And TETRA systems tend communicate "sideways" not up and down and that would reduce the effectiveness as well. At 70,000 feet the range would be simply too great.
At the same time a TETRA transmitter on a drone could cause trouble by accessing cell sites over a huge area; IIRC helicopter installations (obviously flying at more modest heights) caused difficulties that required a rethink over how airborn access to TETRA had to be organised.
Sounds more like a marketing ploy than a serious proposal.
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