Posts by fajensen

Re: Looks like you're making some toast...

Sure - The "95 out of 100 people who were served this add bought 'Product X'"-metric for proven online add-efficiency is a lot easier to make when causality can be reversed!

Re: anyone from those 38 countries who has ever been arrested,

Since in the UK you can be arrested then have that reversed by being "de-arrested"

I bet that procedure follows the standard IT-pattern: The arresting and creation of criminal- and police- records is easy, has test cases and is totally automatic, the de-arresting and deletion of criminal- and police- record is an ad-hoc manual process, totally underfunded and naturally prone to "mistakes" - as in: Your records once created, shall never go away!

As to the problem with the GPS being wrong, and rubbish.

That is so easily fixed by The Market: Contracting the parking mafia, for example Europark, to pick up tossed and abandoned bikes in return for the right to collect a part of the "wrong parking fees".

For added incentive we could do a Dutch Auction on the parking portion of the fees so we get the scummiest most entrepreneurial operators into the deal.

From very ancient times, I still remember the happy message at the end of a shift:

"$SYSTEM: I have upped my priority so now up yours."

Everything slowly grinds to a halt - and the DBA's would be the first to hit the pub!

Re: Crashplan refugees are always welcome at rsync.net ...

Boring .. Boeing ... CrashPlan(e)

Re: They should make it a felony

If you have any involvement in a campaign and you are contacted by any non-citizen regarding providing help, money, etc. for your campaign and don't immediately report it to the FBI. Or if you provide any election information to foreigners.

Saudis and Israelis giving huge gobs of money to presidential candidates and their foundations are not non-citizens then?

And newspapers goes to court for, say, publishing polls and the location of polling stations on the internet, or indeed anywhere where a tourist might read it?

Pah. Rubbish.

It is always "mission critical" right until it isn't - When the neglected plant blows up, falls apart, seizes up, burns up, then the "business decision" is to wait weeks and weeks by holding daily crisis meetings while the replacements trundles trough procurement and everything goes to hell.

Since the beancounters cloaked themselves with power, it is always more important to "control costs" than it is to run the business.

Re: You beat me to it ...

They should have a long table with medieval weapons to go with that idea. Once we skip the initial discussions, it is clear that winning policies are best represented by the guy without a war-hammer embedded in his face. People would even pay to view warlimatary proceedings on live TV.

Re: Great Movie

Reminds me of MF-Global, except the CEO of that outfit, John Corzine, didn't need to fake his death or anything like that. Because Markets (or maybe the difference between being a Made Man* and the more common criminal).

*) Goldman Sachs + Career in Politics.

Re: So the police bear no responsibility ?

The Swiss government makes the Swiss citizens take "their" infantry weapons out in muddy fields and rainy weather for a refresher in military training six weeks every two years, I believe. They even get to take them back each day and clean the bastards to the satisfaction of the drill sergeant (who might also be your boss at work, or that guy from HR, so you can't give him any lip).

My Swiss colleges all assure me that after a few rounds of that, Guns and Gun ownership are not seen as a glorious thing to be treasured!

PS:

20% of the Swiss population are rejected for military service, these don't get any guns and they get 3% extra taxes. Considering how things are in the USA, perhaps it is those 20% of the "unfit for service" population (which is probably found to be a relatively constant value across any population, an assumption I can readily justify just by looking around the office .... ) are also the gun owners that makes the headlines?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Switzerland

Re: re: worst parasites

With Apple's money ... would it not be easier, more satisfying and more in the line with the writings of William Gibson that made dystopian IT-libertarianims seem like a Cool Thing, to pay for some uniquely equipped private outfit like SAIC to do a drone strike on VirnetX HQ?

Re: No deal brexit now!

or finally have the ammo to reform the EU successfully.

That part is true. Brexit means immediately getting rid of the permanent British Veto of "Everything Except Markets ONLY (Dammit!)" and that new-found degree of freedom and flexibility will allow the EU to reform faster and (maybe) successfully.

Also, after a decade of ZIRP there is *a lot* of stranded investments needing taking out the back of the barn and shot. Brexit is the purrfect opportunity to take a bunch of write-off's which are entirely to blame on this totally unpredicted and unique event that will never happen again - so it will also totally not hurt anything to bend the rules and get some bailouts all over it and make it nice again!

You see? 'We' want the UK out too, and soon, for 'our' own reasons.

Re: " If the cloud is just a commodity, they do have some points."

it sounds very risky to put everything on a single supplier.

How many flavours of Risk would Sir like to have in one setting?

Having many suppliers there is a contract, payments, an SLA, non-delivery and bankruptcy risk to handle for each supplier. The bureaucracy needed scales at about the number of contracts cubed.

If those suppliers are also dependent on each other, we immediately have the "circle of monkeys"-problem: Each contractor will blame the next one for their failure until they are all aligned in a circle pointing their fingers in a clockwise direction. The con-tractors LOVE those complex multi-supplier contracts, so many intricate moving parts, there is always *something* blocking their work, needing more money!

Single supplier, OTOH, is a single point of Blame!

Re: "Sounds a bit like the Brexit campaign"

Remainer May is doing her best to sabotage the whole thing too!).

"Remainer"?

Her leave agreement is a "hard" Brexit, a total separation from the EU on all fronts, so to speak. Only, nobody read the thing before voting on it (and nobody boned up on the WTO either)!

Is it beyond the impossible to embrace the fact that Theresa May is simply incompetent, on an hitherto unseen level even for "government"? The evidence would be the serial failure at pretty everything she was ever put in charge of, except the very personal goal of clinging onto the PM-position (where either she is very good or everyone else are even worse clowns)?

We are talking of someone deciding to keep Chris Grayling around (with no handlers, obviously) not because of some devious scheme to have an idiot even worse than oneself in order to look better in comparison, but rather because one is so out-of-the-box of any normality and reasoning that one cannot see that Chris Grayling is incompetent.

"You" taks someone with a proven track record of failure to determine the next 20 years of "your" country's future and then it should not exactly be a surprise when that job also turn out to be shit?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/06/theresa-may-is-negotiating-like-yasser-arafat-brexit-plo-britain/

Re: "It's fake smart."

Yet apparently no one picked it up.

Those Negative-Nellie Experts will soon join the breadline under the label of "Not a team player"!.

Because Markets: Markets want trillions in silly-money on flim-flam technologies that doesn't fulfil the stated purpose (although the technology does "Work" in the sense that it provides the narrative that attracts the silly-money, the latter being that which "Markets" care about).

There is a Jihad on any form of expertise these days. The results are one spectacular failure after another. The solution is the hiring of more incompetence until the drooling retards running the show cannot even recognise failure any longer. This being so, Chris Grayling is perfectly positioned for a long and lucrative consulting career as Partner with McKinsey!

Re: As a yank

We're fed up of the EU forcing the Tories to impose austerity on us!

Not true at all. Everything that is shit in Britain was caused by Parliament! That they are blaming the EU for it, is just because finger-pointing was always the safe-space of the incompetents and cowards.

Every speck of Neoliberalism* (and NPM) in the EU, was spawned in the UK starting with Margaret Thatcher. The UK has quite consistently, across several governments, sabotaged every attempt there ever was of the EU acquiring a "social dimension". "Markets Only (and damn everything else)" was always the official UK position.

From my side of the water It's the bloody Tories trying to force more austerity (and more stupidity) onto the EU, except this time they overreached and fell on their stupid faces right in their own mess and they are still thrashing around!

*) Ordoliberalism, OTOH, there you might have a point.

Re: Time to have another public Brexit vote?

As someone living in Europe and therefore being blamed for Everything that is wrong with Great Britain, despite everything "we" are blamed for was pretty much entirely the creations of successive UK governments, I think that Brexit should be unconditionally carried out, on time, deal or no deal, no matter.

Just get on with it, get it done and get out! Please!

Cancelling Brexit would be like letting that crazy, bipolar, ex partner move back in after s/he wanted a divorce because s/he wanted to "see other people" but instead spent 2 years on SoMe slagging "that bitch husband" and arguing over how s/he also wants the house, the car and the cat; but forgot to file the divorce proceedings and find a place to live in all the excitement, so now, totally unprepared for anything, at the very last moment, s/he insists on moving back in "because none of that stuff really meant anything, Darrrhling".

-- Two moths later, s/he will be right back to his/her old game and no dinner, no blowjobs, no nothing will be given without an argument!