Posts by Alien8n

Re: @codejunky

@codejunkie

You continue to argue under a false belief that we have a strong position. We lose that position the moment we leave, but forget that for now. Most of your arguments are simply rehashing soundbites by Boris and Farage and hold as much water as a sieve.

"Which removed anyone calling for remain. The EU quickly stated that we either remained or leave and no in-between so that removed anyone calling for anything other than leave."

While many are demanding to Remain I've stated before, my position was ambivalent except with regards to the blatant lies told by the Leave campaign. Leave campaigned on the premise that we would have a deal. There was no campaign to leave with No Deal until after the Referendum.

"Actually we can be fairly sure the EU would negotiate a better deal if we stuck to being willing to leave regardless of a deal. Something May refused to do and so her concessions and failure to stand by leave (she was a remainer so somewhat understandable but still wrong)."

Are you the sort of person that demands a restaurant gives you a free dessert? The position of "give us a deal or we walk" has always been the position given. The difference is everyone else knows that No Deal is an absolute clusterfuck and quite rightly want to avoid that. The mistake was not getting consensus from Parliament over what we should be negotiating for, instead taking the Hard Line Brexiteers' demands as red lines resulting in something that no one would accept. Without compromise it was always doomed to fail.

"Actually he is negotiating as we did at the start. The EU wanted to negotiate step by step and wanted their money and their demands etc which May caved to. Yet at the beginning the facts were presented to the EU- we dont have to pay you a penny, nor do we have to have permission to leave. Those facts change the negotiation completely."

Actually the "Divorce Bill" is made up of commitments to various EU and European institutions that we contribute to. Some of these commitments involve treaties. So it is wrong to say we don't owe them anything.

"For the short time that the WA has existed and nobody until now willing to challenge it."

Any change needs to still get through Parliament. Which is now impossible to do. Even if they do manage to create a New Deal we will leave without a deal because there is no time to debate any changes before the end of October.

"I have always considered the backstop an interesting idea. But move the border between the EU and Ireland. Its perfectly sensible, just as sensible as putting the border the other way. Isnt it?"

Have you seriously just suggested that Ireland leave the EU? Putting the border between the EU and Ireland means having a trade deal with Ireland and only Ireland, something that can only happen if Ireland is not in the EU.

"From what? Higher standards can be seen as a good thing until you cant eat. But its high standards so it must be good? Nope. Using standards to isolate your industries from competition is protectionism, and the EU is protectionist. Leaving the EU is about rejoining the rest of the world, that is the context to look at this. Remember their glorious standards of butter mountains and milk lakes."

Have you actually looked at US food standards? They are so low that the chances of getting food poisoning from lettuce is around 20%. Why do they wash their chicken with chlorine? Because their standard are so bad it's to kill all the faecal bacteria that covers the chicken. EU standards on the other hand follow a very simple rule, don't get shit on your food in the first place. US food standards allow for faeces, rat hair, and maggot remains in processed food.

"Nope. There are deals ready to be signed as soon as we leave."

Technically correct, there are 13 trade deals ready to be signed into effect. Not one of them is with our biggest trading partner however. The majority are with smaller economies that will benefit from trading with us, rather than the other way round. Arguably the best deal though is with South Korea, which at least means we'll still have cheap flat screen TVs.

"Longer than it takes us to bend over and accept the scraps from the EU"

"Scraps"? What you mean is the same trading terms as currently, but without having to pay towards membership surely? You are aware that even Norway pays the EU in order to trade? So from this I guess what you really mean is you never want a trade deal with the EU, to continue only on WTO terms, meaning the UK is always trading at a disadvantage with it's largest trading partner.

"Either they say there needs to be a hard border in ireland or they dont. I dont know anyone of either side saying they dont. Right now there is a border with different taxation and rules and smuggling and nobody really sees it as a problem because there are severe limits on what can be done about it. So no its not a problem and yet the EU demand its a problem."

I'll repeat again. The problem is the Good Friday Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement states no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, something that can't work if there is No Deal as that would mean no hard border between the UK and the EU (in case you missed it earlier, Ireland is a member of the EU). If you break the Good Friday Agreement you risk setting Northern Ireland's peace process back over 20 years. There are still paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, on both sides of the sectarian divide, some of which would love to see a return to The Troubles.

"Thats ok the EU is supposed to be good at trade and negotiation? So we can agree to both allow no border and its much the same as now. Ahhh but the EU isnt so good or they wanna cry or something because they are magically making a problem. And its their problem. They can implement a hard border if they want to but its the EU insisting on one."

I'll silence the voice at the back of my head that wants to scream. If there is No Deal we default to a hard border with the rest of the EU. There is a reason for this, and it's nothing to do with the EU making it a problem, it's to do with standards and tariffs. It's to ensure cheap electronics that don't meet EU safety standards don't enter the EU through the UK. It's to ensure we don't undercut EU prices, by flooding the market with cheap imports. It's also to do with the movement of people. How do you control immigration without a deal if you leave one border open and shut all the others? You want to control the number of Eastern Europeans? You need an agreement that allows movement or you shut all EU facing borders. Otherwise all that happens is that instead of entering via Dover, they enter through Ireland. And yes, the EU is very good at negotiation, that's why they have deals that benefit EU members. Deals that up until October we have benefited from.

Re: @Alien8n

The only part of the deal considered worse than remaining or leaving is the Backstop. Which was put in at our insistence to ensure the Good Friday Agreement stayed intact. You know what that is surely? Although I'm sure you'll have some placitude about how no one wants a return to The Troubles regardless of what happens to the border

Anyone who thinks Northern Ireland is now some peaceful backwater of the UK where terrorism has been defeated and everyone lives in peace and harmony just needs to take a walk through Belfast. It's better than it was, but it's a fragile peace that is broken by both sides on a regular basis. Until the last child of the Troubles has passed on then that peace remains fragile. Neither side gives a toss about Brexit. They only care about the border with Ireland.

In today's "post-speak" world everyone voted for No Deal as it was mentioned (however briefly in the small print on a website somewhere, probably stapled to a leopard in the basement toilets).

And now to ensure Nigel Farage gets his No Deal, they're going to do the completely unprecedented and close Parliament. If Boris is still PM come Christmas it wouldn't surprise me to see Farage getting a knighthood for services to Boris's bank account.

I hate having to repeat this but... the vote was not overwhelming, and no one voted for No Deal. Everyone was promised a deal. In Leave's own words "a deal will be the easiest thing ever" "they need us more than we need them" etc.

The fact is 2/3 decided to vote, 1/3 didn't, either through apathy, distrust, inability (how many millions were denied a vote because they had lived outside the UK for too long, despite still being British citizens?). I almost didn't vote, as what was promised as part of Leave was a deal, maybe like Norway, maybe like Switzerland, but A Deal none the less. And the ones who voted to Leave did so with the same knowledge that there would be A Deal. The problem though is what was wanted was actually 17 million different deals. Because it was a black box labelled "Brexit" with 17 million different interpretations of what that meant. And because you can't get consensus on 17 million different interpretations of what it means we have to put up with what the minority wants, a process hijacked by a political elite to appease fascists and idiots to bring about a populist ideal with no frigging clue about how they're going to fix the mess it will create.

And the solution from our new Prime Minister? Accept whatever the USA demands to get a deal. Except even the USA will refuse a deal if whatever happens on October 31st leaves the Good Friday Agreement in tatters. God save us from Tories who still believe they're fighting a war against Northern Ireland.

That's giving me nightmares of working with the IT Boss from hell*. He developed an Access database for extracting the data from the production server, which then exported Excel spreadsheet reports for finance. The database took over 8 hours to complete, and eventually had to be split into several databases joined together as it hit the 2Gb file size limit. He was doing an ODBC into the server, and pulling EVERYTHING. Then selecting just the tables he needed into queries. Then selecting those queries and filtering.

I rewrote the whole thing dumping all the tables he didn't need and only bringing in the data that was required, so all the filtering was done on the initial ODBC connection. The result ran in just under an hour and took up a lot less space. Also meant if there were any issues with the overnight run it was possible to rerun in the morning, debug any issues, and still get the report out before lunch.

* Mentioned elsewhere, same guy who claimed to be so super intelligent he graduated with 6 degrees after doing them all at the same time over 18 months, was an Olympic archer, friends with Branson, professional level concert pianist, owned a Cray II computer, ran his own multi-million dollar business selling data to the oil industry on the side, and yet would not accept that VAT meant "added tax" (he was calculating VAT as 17.5% of the final sales price).

Re: Can't say white / black

I see the phantom downvoter has arrived. I wonder what I've said to upset them this time? Maybe he just doesn't like Native Americans? (I notice the other downvote above)

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

I should have known I'd end up in IT when I first became an engineer. I needed some help with a script on the manufacturing system, so went off to have a chat with the IT person in charge of the system. Only to find out that I was actually the most knowledgeable person in the company regarding the data structure of the system (by this time I'd been writing reports on the system for about a year).

Turns out the company didn't have a single DBA type person, the IT department's role was purely to make sure the hardware stayed functional. Probably explains why I got tasked with the company's intranet just before taking redundancy.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

Mildenhall's US staff were banned from overtaking on the local roads. Something to do with the fact they'd overtake, then when moving back to the left of the road they'd not move back far enough and end up colliding with the next oncoming car.

Re: Can't say white / black

Trying to keep ahead of the latest politically correct terminology where race is concerned is an absolute nightmare. In my experience though the only ones actually bothered by whichever term you use tend to be the same ones who claim you can't say Christmas anymore. The fact is the terms black and white are meaningless, we're all just shades of brown, just some are different shades due to genetic makeup, and some due to exposure to sunlight. Except vampires, exposure to sunlight tends to make their skin go a grey colour as it turns to ash...

Where Native Americans are concerned I prefer to refer to a friend of mine using his preferred term, Hopi :)

Re: I wish my users protected data like this efficient PA

Our anti-virus console will tell you the last user to login to a PC, far more useful to know.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

They can, but you need to know a bit of inside information. It's this sort of stuff that Kevin Mitnick was actually in trouble for. If you know the system, and the IP address of the VOIP gateway a lot of systems will let you connect as if you're within the network providing you have a compatible phone. This is why you should never have your remote user phone interface published anywhere, nothing should forward to it and it should be different to your main external IP address.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

My wife's uncle told me a few tales from USAF Mildenhall where he used to work in purchasing.

Apparently almost everything had to be bought and supplied through the USAF's central depot. This means everything including pencils were shipped over via transport plane from the US to the UK. Things readily available and at a much cheaper cost here in the UK. He was asked to get a barrel of oil for use by the USAF's display team (the stuff that creates the coloured smoke behind the plane). As it was classed as an explosively volatile mixture it had to be transported by itself, with no other cargo. Via a cargo plane from the USA. In a rare moment of sanity hundreds of thousands of dollars were saved by pointing out that the oil in question was exactly the same as used by the RAF's Red Arrows team and could be bought through them from a depot that already had it in stock here in Blighty.

The other tale may be a bit of an urban myth. Then again it might not be, you decide. They had a newbie in the department so someone gave them a part code and told them to order it. Types the code into the purchasing system "Denied, you're not authorised for this transaction." Grab his supervisor who puts his login details in, "Denied". Grab the ranking officer in the department. "Denied". Eventually they get the highest ranking officer they could find. "Denied". At this point someone finally thinks to check what the part number was. It was an AWAC, which apparently needs a 4* General's clearance to order.

Re: "nobody moved to stop a thief"

So many people thinking like the British that we are. Read the article again, this happened in San Francisco. Would you attempt to stop a thief knowing the probability of them being armed is getting close to 100%? If this happened in London there's still a good chance of getting stabbed while stopping a thief, but anywhere in the USA and you risk being shot which has a far larger chance of being fatal.

Remember, humans tend to be a risk averse species. The higher the chance of being killed by acting, the less people will react.

Re: The next thought is .....

Always backup before and after any upgrades. Unless you genuinely don't have anything on there that you can't afford to lose.

IOS updates are notorious for breaking things. I use my phone to take voice memos, primarily interviews. Last major IOS update decided to delete all of my voice memos, 3 years worth of interviews gone in just a few minutes. Luckily I backup all my memos to a PC, but never assume anything is secure on your device.

Re: One rule for you...

We used to have PIN locks on the doors here until one night when the boss came back for something and 2 ne'er do wells walked straight in afterwards. They then walked straight into the main showroom where they proceeded to steal absolutely nothing until one of the girls who was working late came in via the other door to see them in there.

Anyway, instructions went round to change the codes on all the doors because clearly they must have known the code or worked it out, until I pointed out that you could open all the doors just by sliding a thin screwdriver down the back of the locks from the outside to pop them open. Now we have a proper proximity system on all doors, that also lock the main doors in case someone comes back at night and leaves it unlocked behind them.

Re: Many moons ago ...

Shortly after the Working Time Directive came into force I moved from engineering into IT. As the factory ran 24/7 they decided to implemented on-call procedures, that basically meant a slight payrise for every day you had the on-call phone with you. As the WTD also stipulated minimum hours rest before working again it also meant that anyone being called during the night were allowed to arrive back at work late the next day, a minimum of 11 hours in fact. This was in effect regardless of how long the call was, or whether it required a physical presence at the factory. As I was in charge of the rota and lived closest I managed to be on-call 2 out of every 4 weeks, with the other 2 weeks split between another 2 techies. For some reason though the majority of calls always came in at 2:15 in the morning, and were usually fixed in 5 minutes over the phone. Which meant not having to be back at work until 1:30pm and still finishing work at 5:30pm, for the same pay as if we'd been in at 9am, plus an hours extra overtime pay (on top of the on-call rate, any time was rounded up to the nearest hour and charged at the overtime rate for the day, 1.5x for the week and 2x for the weekend) for the call.

Once they realised the terms that had been agreed HR weren't happy, but there was nothing they could do as no one in the IT department were going to agree to those terms being renegotiated.

I took one A level after finishing off the remaining beers from the night before. Guess which one I got the highest grade for? There is something to be said for enough beer to give you the confidence to get on with the task, but not so much that you can't see the exam paper straight

lol, not quite the same as when it was commandeered as a navy support vessel. The sights on that ship during the Falklands gave the medics nightmares for years.

Re: Ah, French, that's easy

My latest music festival jaunt included an interview in Mongolian.

My colleague however managed to confuse Korea with Nepal, but this didn't matter as the Nepalese singer of the band I was given to interview actually spoke better English than my colleague.

He then had the pleasure of mangling Japanese.

The New Zealand band that sings in Maori were fun though.

I was the higher paid of the 2 analysts, so as you said my requested rate was 2x what I was paid while I was there. It certainly wasn't any sort of disaster or mess that I was returning to fix, they just needed a couple of reports changing, something the other guy really should have known how to do.

A quick Google and I see the company in question changed hands and rebranded shortly afterwards.

Single admin here (single as in the only IT person employed by the company).

It's part of my job to ensure the outsourced IT company does what we require of them. And then have the pleasure of fixing all the issues they create when they cock it all up. Next month will be very pleasurable when we change IT outsourcer.

Don't you just love being asked to contract for the company that made you redundant.

Luckily for my previous employers I'm not a vindictive bastard, I just charged them double the salary I was getting when working there full time. And made sure to point out that if they needed me to come in and do my previous job because no one else could do it then just maybe the job wasn't actually redundant and they were technically breaking the law by getting rid of me and not the other analyst that I had to keep helping out because he didn't know how to do his job.

I didn't however point out the obvious flaw in their recruitment, why the hell would you invite back the guy you just got rid of? That's just asking for trouble.

Re: Error Messages

Surely then it would be Count(*) as Ahahahahaha

Re: Error Messages

@MiguelC you clearly need to get more bugs into it.

Re: Error Messages

A lot of my SQL code contains lines such as "Count(*) as Dracula" and "Sum(X) as OfAllFears"

Brothers In Arms

In the 80s it was the CD you left on the coffee table, alongside a copy of National Geographic or some other magazine designed to show you were "upper middle class".

First CD ever bought: A Little Ain't Enough by David Lee Roth

This is my experience too.

House 1, lived in for 6 years, lost item X in year 1.

Move to House 2, find item X on day one of unpacking (surely if it's packed it should have been found when packing up House 1?) and immediately lose item Y which then still remains lost 18 years later.

The only thing that makes the above worse is knowing exactly where item Y was placed, yet it seemingly has been absorbed into the very foundations of the building.