Posts by I ain't Spartacus

I'm pretty sure there's a combat version of the Alphajet. Or if not yet, there's one in design. It's supposed to be a cheap close air support plane.

Re: There is a venerable tradition here

I remember seeing a guy on telly who'd bought one in the late 80s. He lived in central London. So a Scorpion (painted bright yellow naturally) was apparently the perfect vehicle. One advantage being, the new clamps didn't fit it.

Cue inevitable joke: Where did he park it? Anywhere he bloody well wanted...

The question is, what does Google do? Remember that Google provide search to us mere mortals in order to show us adverts, paid for by companies. Most of that ad spending comes from honking great international companies, who also don't like fake products.

This is an area where because there's no single government, there's unlikely to be any single law. So Goolge will do what it can to make as much money as it can, and accept as little legal oversight as it can get away with. However if it takes the piss too much out of its real customers (the global advertisers who pay it something like $100 billion a year) then it might find the bottom line suffers.

Re: The next logical step for Google

People seem to think that the internet is sort of immune to national law, because it's global. And that's basically true. Unless you can get cooperation from other nations, there's always somewhere to hide a server and operate from.

However when you're as big as Google, that can easily stop being true. Google might be doing something the courts don't like in a third country. And mostly Google will get away with saying, that has nothing to do with you. But if Google have significant assets in a country, then that country's courts can go after Google there, to force them to do stuff elsewhere.

Something that's unlikely to be an effective tactic for say Vietnam or Tuvalu, who aren't that important to Google, but the EU, US and Canada are worth enough money to the bottom line that they can exercise some power over Google outside their borders. I seem to remember from a few years ago that Google's UK turnover was about £6 billion for example, which ought to mean the UK government and courts could make them jump if they wanted to enough.

Re: Old Fashioned

Fizzle,

All military kit is old fashioned. As the chappie said, you order this stuff 10-20 years before you get it. Often from a spec that was mostly written before that. Every time you try to change that spec during the build process, the price goes up and the delivery time gets further away. So you tend to plan regular upgrades instead, and deal with the problem while the unit is in service.

So for example, Lewis Page of this parish spent many a happy article complaining about the Eurofighter Typhoon. But the design work for that started sometime in the 70s - where they were trying to guess what aircraft the Soviet Union would be operating by the 1990s, and then build something to be capable of dealing with them. The design work got serious in the 80s, and it was ordered by the mid-80s, just in time for the Cold War to be about to end. At which point who needed a pure air superiority fighter?

But cancelling it meant burning all the money already spent, and sacking all the people involved, plus possibly knackering the companies. So it was considered cheaper to keep going, then modify it to be more multi-role when they'd finished it. Also the price shot up, asl the various nations buying it chose to have fewer aircraft, thus spreading production and R&D costs over fewer units.

Was this mess anyone's fault? Well not really. They had to order way into the future when they thought the Cold War was a serious problem. The only alternative was to buy from someone else - which obviously has less risk. But that means your stuff won't be state-of-the-art by the time you get it, and that you lose the skill and ability to produce your own, should someone ever refuse to sell to you.

These carriers are such large and complex systems, that there'll probably be some bit of kit changed, updated or in testing every couple of months.

Re: Where's the Line?

No. It's loose change. They made more than that just in tax credits on the losses Motorola had racked up in the 5 years before Google bought them. When they sold most of Motorola on to Lenovo, they of course kept the yummy tax credits...

Re: How have I been harmed, exactly?

Oh Homer,

If you want to know how you've been violated, take a look at Google's privacy policies.

But this case wasn't about that, or about harm to you. This case was about harm to shopping price comparison sites - who were trying to make a buck in the market a few years ago and got unfairly (at least according to the EU) muscled out by Google. The argument being that Google's price comparison was crap at the time (which it was), and yet they got all the clicks when the actually popular and quite useful sites started slipping down the Google rankings.

I'm not sure how fair that is, because I didn't find many price comparison sites to be much cop, and so mostly gave up on them - but I do remember Google's being worse than the couple I was using back around 2005.

Re: Erm

It's very simple. You can legally have a monopoly. If you're the best at doing something and so everyone goes to you, it would be totally unfair to regulate your monopoly out of existence. So you get to keep it. After all the aim of this law is to protect the consumer, and we can assume that they all went to you for a reason.

What you're not allowed to do is to use that monopoly (market dominance) in order to enter other markets. At which point it all becomes rather murky, as to what's being normally competitive and what's unfair competition.

You don't need 100% control of a market to be defined as a monopoly, it can be less than 50%, it's about your market power.

This case is also a bit weird of course, in that Google don't charge for search - and so the customers are the advertisers. Except that the ads are only going to get seen if people use search.

The Microsoft example was a lot clearer. They were considered to have a monopoly with Windows, and were using that to push their browser. Even though Netscape had a nice business charging for a browser. Not that the law intervened in any kind of timescale that would have saved Netscape.

A more traditional monopolistic abuse might be Vanderbuilt, in the late 19th Century. He built a nice railway that was used by a bunch of steel mills. Then he decided to go into the steel industry. And those mill owners were asked to sell their mills to him at a substantial discount. If they didn't, his railway would stop doing business with them, and they'd go bust.

Or say BT, who were charging about 50p a minute for daytime telephone calls in the early 1980s. Because your alternative was not to be able to make calls.

EddieD,

Why get angry, before you've even been offended?

Google can't push this through the courts for years and years. There's only one avenue of appeal, and that's it. They can appeal to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg - which is the EU's highest court and after that there's nowhere else to go. After the Commission fined Microsoft, they'd appealed and lost within 2 years. I'm sure it'll be similar with Google.

This isn't like the Apple / Samsung dispute that took place in a court in California, where there were all sorts of levels to appeal through. In this case the Commission is acting in a quasi-judicial role, and then then there's only one place to go.

Re: so well resourced

Credas,

There's no need for politics here. When was the last time a suspected criminal ran into a London embassy? This is something to be discouraged. So it needs to be seen to fail. Both to other crims, and embassies who might enjoy causing trouble.

Plus, if you very publicly take the piss out of the criminal justice system, it'll almost certainly try to bite you back.

No. At least not officially. And I doubt they'd trust Ecuador or Assange not to blab/gloat about it afterwards.

Officially, and legally, the government can't tell the police what to do. Unofficially ministers can obviously have a quiet word. So long as the risk is worth it, or the likelihood of getting caught is low.

In this case I don't think anyone cares enough to risk their career over it. Plus I strongly suspect the Foreign Office are enjoying Ecuador's discomfort. They accepted his asylum for some cheap publicity, and to make the US look bad. With a side order of embarrassing the UK government.

So I think the FCO want to make them suffer for it. As well as the genuine policy goal of discouraging other embassies in London from sheltering criminals. The fact that Assamge suffers ten years self-imposed imprisonment for a crime many suspect he's both guilty of and would get off in court, is just a bonus...

Re: Mail readers

I did think for myself. He's an arsehole. A narcisistic self-publicist who doesn't give a fuck for anyone other than himself. He may, or may not, genuinely believe in his professed ideals - but that doesn't entitle him to sexually assault people. Now I don't know whether he's guilty of that, the running makes him look guilty, but I suspect he is genuinely paranoid so that could also explain his behaviour.

But most of the bad PR about Julian Assange, is generated by Julian Assange.

Did I say he was a total arsehole?

As for your bollocks about "Corbyn style character assassination", it's bollocks. He's supposed to be a big boy. He ran for leadership of a major political party, and then the country. With that territory comes both unfair political attacks and legitimate scrutiy. He doesn't appear to like either. Also with that comes standing on your own record. His record is pretty shit. Even many of the people on his own side don't think he's up to the job, why should anyone else?

There is no global conspiracy. Evil or otherwise. It's scarier than that. Nobody is in control. Stuff just happens. And conspiracies also happen, but more of them fail spectacularly than succeed. Conspiracy is hard.

Re: And what does Assange say?

Well, all the Ecuadorians have to do is push him out the embassy door. Or just invite the police in to arrest him, they're fully entitled to enter with permission from the ambassador or home government.

Alternatively, if they want something less public, they cut off his internet access, and nice food, and ration him to one Ferrero Rocher per day.

Re: Is it worth it

Sweden haven't dropped the case. They've dropped the arrest warrant. On grounds that it's disproportionate to continue pursuing the case when there's zero chance of an arrest.

However the prosecutor made it clear that the case can be revived, should there be a chance to do so. The statute of limitations on rape charges is 10 years, so I think that leaves Julian 4 more to wait? And as soon as he ends up in UK police custody, Sweden just need to re-issue that EAW and the Swedish then get him. So even if our magistrates let him off with a fine, a slapped wrist and a one-way trip to Australia - that's enough time for Sweden to get the paperwork faxed across, if they want to.

Re: On a serious note

There's no mechanism to do this, unless they pass a special law. The government can't officially tell the police what to do in operational matters and they can't tell the courts what to do at all.

And of course Sweden's investigation has been dropped for lack of progress. Their prosecutors office is apparently forced to act proportionately, and so give up when they can't get anywhere. It appears (though it's obviously hard to know), that Ecuador lied about cooperating with the Swedes, and didn't allow the formal interview at which Assange could actually be charged - only alllowed some sort of limited questioning - hence they gave up.

However as soon as Jules leaves the embassy, Sweden can re-issue the EAW on the one remaining outstanding charge and get him back. So even if he's only held by the Met for one day, before being taken to a magistrates court, fined for bail jumping and deported to Oz - that gives Sweden the time to get him again.

Last time Ecuador tried to get the Foreign Office to talk, they didn't get very far. And that was when the Met were supposedly spending a million pounds a second stopping his daring escape attempts - presumably overtime doughnuts cost extra...

So I suspect this is wishful thinking, give the attitude displayed here by the FCO:

At a meeting last Tuesday between Ms Alban [Ecuador's ambassador] and Hugo Swire, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Latin America, Ms Alban is said to have asked: "What are we going to do about the stone in the shoe?"

Mr Swire's response, according to a source who was in the room, was: "Not my stone, not my shoe."

From what I've read from Charles Crawford (an ex ambassdor of ours), the Foreign Office take a dim view of this sort of thing - he says the job of an embassy is to build as good a relationship as possible with the host country, and be as clear a communications channel as possible - and not deliberately creating embarrassment for them. Which is why British embassies would try to avoid taking in even legitimate cases seeking asylum if they can manage it, let alone this crock of shit cooked up by Assange. So they've no incentive to help, and from what I understand actively want Ecuador to suffer the consequences of having taken this pot-shot at the British system.

Re: Diplomatic pouch?

This trick has been tried before - though it was Nigeria I think and the person in question had been kidnapped. British police seized the diplomatic baggage at the airport and opened it.

I worked for a US multi-national. Our logo useage policy document was 19 pages long. I believe the logo had to be at an exact 23° angle. Heaven knows why.

I needed a copy of a logo to sling on top of an invoice. Marketing still gave me a stiff talking to, and made me read the document, before I was allowed a copy of the file though.

Re: Wait a minute

You can easily get away with locking your manager in a cupboard. So long as you don't get caught. Admittedly this may mean the experience needs to be terminal for the manager in question, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

My sister-in-law once asked me if the kettle and toaster set would match the accent colours in my kitchen/dining room.

All the words are english, it's just what she'd done with them that I objected to. I didn't bother telling her that the kettle and toaster didn't even match each other, let alone the non-existent cushions. I bloody hate cushions! Buy chairs that are comfortable, so you don't need them.

Still, most of us have certain things that we obsess about the details of, and others we couldn't give a stuff about. Some people get really upset about Microsoft Comic Sans, or even have preferences for different flavours of arial fonts.

Re: Mirror landing system

They'll have multiple systems. The US will likely have ILS as a backup, plus for use by other NATO planes.

We can't use the mirror system anyway, as we're not using arrestor gear. F35 will do short takeoff with ramp, and land vertically.

But I doubt GPALS is there for landing. It's to give approach assistance in bad weather, while creating less radio noise. So they may still be using the old landing systems. This is just to lower pilot workload on approach.

Re: I think the comment

As Gary Player said, "the more I practise, the luckier I get."

When you're shooting at that range, the target only has to sneeze for you to miss. Or even just decide to go for a walk 5 seconds after you pulled the trigger.

But it still takes immense skill and practise to get close, or in fact get into the right position to even be able to take the shot without getting yourself noticed, or killed.