Can it please replace...
Can it please replace the useless bar staff at All Bar One in Gunwharf Quays. A more inept customer un-oriented set of staff I have never come across.
2451 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Sep 2007
This seems to be going two ways now... yes I'm sure that accounting irregularities could be found in any large / enterprise level business, which is the tack the prosecution is seemingly now taking. But surely for a deal of this magnitude, the responsibility still stops with the purchaser and the auditors to uncover all of this stuff prior to point of sale?
Anyone know whom the auditors were? I have my suspicions.
"You can call all of that as you want, I call it discrimination"
Ok Mr. Angy-chip-on-Shoulder from Purley... as you wish; I'll call it "non-discrimination" then. The reason that "non-immigrants" do not need to constantly prove who they are is because most of us have an NHS medical history record that stretches back to birth, and that is taken as de-facto personal data.
This angry rant is incorrect : "None of this is required from non immigrants". When anyone registers at a new clinic or surgery in the UK (i.e. if you move house into a new area, you do actually need to show some form of ID when you register or attend clinic for the first time.
Perhaps you just have an angry and suspicious face? I'd suggest you try smiling more.
"Are there really so many people so stupid not to question the business model behind this before sharing their data?"
Ummm, yes - I agree there maybe some (ok, a lot of) stupid people, and a lot of people who just don't care as long as they can get their fix of whatever Facebook is shilling to them. But I also don't think it's fair to blanket everyone as "stupid" when you consider that I've not used Facebook since 2010 or so, and have never used Twitter, Instagram or any other of these services but still reckon FB has a lot of data about me that it has harvested through other means. There is not a lot anyone can do about that I don't think - other than refuse to use the internet full stop.
I also think it's fair to say that most people who read and comment on publications such as El Reg are a lot more savvy about this sort of stuff, and I'd also like to think that most of us also cogniscent about our privacy and how to take control of it.
I've spoken to intelligent friends and colleagues who find it odd and a bit weird that I don't use FB or any of these apps due to personal privacy concerns. It makes me feel that I'm the one with something to hide (which I don't). Again... so I conclude that the majority of people just don't care.
That's what I thought. The picture is of the knackered old train that runs from Ryde pier head down to Shanklin and vice versa on the Isle of Wight. Remember the local adage : if it's 2018 on the mainland, it's 1918 on the Island.
Anyway, they shouldn't give decent mobile connectivity to the people of Southampton. They don't appreciate nice things.
Depressing as it is, I do feel that when all of the dust settles on this current drama, I have the sinking feeling that nothing will change in their behaviour. On both sides of the argument there are too many snouts in the trough, and no real political will to make it happen. Whilst GDPR is a good thing, this will be outmanoeuvred by the tech companies somehow and once again we will all be playing catchup to re-take control of our online presence.
So the only way to protect yourself online is to either (A) not play the game, which is both hard and easy to do at the same time as we all want to use the internet right? or (B) minimise as far as possible your online engagement with any of these major companies or related apps, or use as many privacy enhancing tools as you can.
There is one consolation in all of this, and that is that ALL empires fall - eventually. It may take decades or centuries - but they do fall.
It's a crying shame it all came back up so quickly. There I was having a nice unexpected Friday morning catching up on El Reg news stories from across the week... and then at about 12:30 it all comes back online. Outrageous.
Totally inconsiderate to the needs of the *cough* hard working *cough* IT chap this Microsoft lot are.
"I wonder who has the resources and skill to achieve the desired improvement in patient outcomes."
Well, in the UK it is firmly and squarely the NHS. Which is mostly funded by the public and why most sane minded people rankle at the thought of its services being farmed off to third party service providers, including service providers in the US who have repeatedly shown that if there is a business depth to be plumbed, then they are happy to dispose of any ethics and go there as long as they can make a fast buck.
That said, there are always satellite services bought in by large organisations to assist them in making progress, and in the case of Google and the medical data; and I'm sure everyone had the best of intentions - but once again it seems to have gone awry with personal privacy being the last thing on anyone's mind as long as the deal gets done and the cash wrought.
Not surprising really when you consider it's all new infrastructure in Armenia so they don't have the hassle of trying to bolt it on and and integrate it into years of legacy comms infrastructure, as well as keeping all of the network providers happy. The same is true in the Azores; a tiny cluster of islands in middle of the Atlantic, and still faster 4g on the remoter ones than here in the South of tropical Hampshire.
Sorry, just had to do a double take at a few of those tweets... having to sit an 'A' level on an empty stomach due to an internet outage? How the f**k does that work then?
If you have reached the age of 17 or 18 and you are unable to feed yourself by ANY means due to an internet outage, then you really do have more problems than an internet outage.
Indeed.
I was running a stakeholder and Programme board call only this morning and had to remind the whole business and product ownership team that just because we are running an Agile programme, it doesn't mean that you can simply change your mind every 5 minutes about what you want and when you want it.
That's not strictly true. There is a very lucrative industry in shredding old tyres, containerising them and then selling / laying them in vast amounts to cover the courses used train racehorses and such like. I used to rent a house on a training farm in West Sussex and the suppliers were always in laying tons of the stuff in all weathers.
Not saying all tyres go this way but it takes a fuckton of them to be shredded to a smallish size to cover a 2 mile course to a depth of 3 inches.
My laptop seems to be running a version of Windows 10 where I seem unable to prevent these updates from installing. Last time it happened it completely fucked my WiFi adapter and/or drivers and I've not been able to find a fix to that issue as of yet.
My next O/S will not be Windows. I may have to bite the bullet and get back to a secure Linux derivative. I'll have a look on Distrowatch but if anyone can recommend one that is designed with security and to help prevent this sort data tracking and leakage then I'd appreciate the advice.
Thanks.
But I'm not sure that that is the point that is being argued here. Nobody (as far as I can tell) either prosecuting or defending this case is suggesting that the underlying archive or editorial material be deleted. Simply that Google, as an uber-powerful, but nonetheless parasitic aggregator of news that "proper" journalists produce - do not link to them.
If I wanted to investigate NT2's past - I could still do it by searching those underlying archives or the editorial mass for the information. I think the point is that most people won't, hence, he and his past crimes have a chance of being "forgotten" to the wider populace. Google on the other hand wants to have a permanent link and leech off of everything from every media publication; so with that reach, the chances are that anyone searching for "John Smith" will bring back something related to him and his past crimes, thereby preventing his spent convictions from ever being forgotten.
I think that's how I read the case, and I hope I have explained it so it makes sense?
Cheers.
"Perhaps we should be less concerned with which firms the government is spending taxpayer money on, and instead ask what it is spending our money on – and what we are getting in return."
Absolutely this. We are supposedly the 5th largest economy in the world but have a government that pleads poverty at every turn. We either have the most utterly useless accountants and management, or it's not all joined up in terms of thinking. So just where is all of that money going? It's certainly not going on making anything better...
It'll be interesting as I don't believe Google in any way should be labelled as a "journalistic enterprise" in the same way that the good ship El Reg or the Sunday Times is; so I do kind of think that anyone should have the to right for any aggregated links to be removed from their search engine. As long as the original published source material stays intact so I can go search for any particular reportage should I have the burning desire to do so.
The danger is that this precedent is extended to the actual publishers of those articles having to remove them from their editorial history (not that this case is actually trying to achieve that).
Trying to erasing history from the record is dangerous thing.
Any chance we now stop calling Shrekli by his sobriquet of "Pharma bro" please? In know he gave it to himself to pump his own ego, but basically the guy is a sad twat who is now entirely caught in a web of his own making. I just get the feeling that continuing to use this term when referencing him is pandering to his own over inflated sense of worth whereas I think most of us would be happy if he just disappeared up his own rear end until the end of time.
If we can't dispense with it, can we at least apply another more fitting? I'd like to start the bidding with "jailed fuckstick".
Let us not forget that this is America. The land of the *cough* free *cough* and where there are an awful lot of people with no morals or ethics, or indeed... any clue about much at all. They'll do anything for a quick buck and not have the sense to question why they are doing it*.
* - I'm not tarring every American with this brush though. I know quite a few of them and they are mostly a fine bunch of people who just want to get on with life. On the other hand...
This is incorrect : "As long as you have no internet and no TV aerial you can still own the TV without a licence."
The stipulation in the TVL act is that you cannot watch programmes at the point they are broadcast by any means - without a valid license; and since September 2016 this also applies to content streamed through BBC iPlayer ONLY. This applies to any content viewed through cable or satellite also. So, this means that actually watching the 7pm news at 7pm (i.e. at the point of broadcast) without a license is illegal. Watching the 7pm news via catchup at 2am in the morning is not. Watching stage #2 of the Tour de France streamed live via the Eurosport player app is illegal, watching it 6 hours later through the same app via their catchup service is not.
I know this because I have argued 4 times now with TVL drones that have tried to force entry to my house, with each time them being sent away with their sorry tails between their podgy underpaid legs.
There is no stipulation in the TVL act that states that you have to have a valid license if you (A) have an ariel, or (B) have internet connectivity as well as a TV. I choose to have no TVL and am quite within my rights to stream catchup TV such as Eurosport player or More4, or play on my PS4 while connected to the internet, or watch streamed movies via Netflix or pre-recorded DVDs, all without a valid TV license.
If I release 100 Tigers into my local country park then I would naturally expect a significant uptick in the amount of people being injured or killed by Tigers. That's why we don't allow Tigers to be released into the wild in the UK.
Same logic applies to guns. The answer to the question of guns is not more guns. It's less guns combined with making it MUCH MUCH harder to get one.
So why is there similarly no legal entitlement to Gas or Electricity then, as I see these as being much more useful to people whom live remotely than Broadband. If I decided to move to deepest darkest Cornwall and want a gas connection to my property then it's universally accepted that I as the customer would need to pay for it. Also, I have no love for BT, but they have been given an absolute fuckton of cash already by the Public to solve this problem, yet they still want to hike bills?
Satellite broadband is now very reliable and available up to around 30Mbps - why can't that be used more prevalently; other than the obvious problems when the weather is anything but sunny or marginally cloudy?