Posts by Roland6

Trouble is these days, the printer drivers seem to read the serial number, so you can’t just drop a new printer in and expect it to automatically start printing queued jobs…

Re: Summarised perfectly

> If you understand how courts work you know that judges are required to ask these kinds of questions to make sure the jury understand what is going on.

That caveat makes it even more amusing!

The topic of discussion is the presentation of three receipts, the judge totally fails to seek clarification as to what a “receipt” is, but seeks irrelevant details of what was purchased.

In a real court case if the shop says Wile E. Coyote stole a case of “acme explosive tennis balls” and the receipt states it is for a case of “acme explosive tennis balls”, then it doesn’t actually matter what exactly an “explosive tennis ball” is.

Re: I thing it is OK

>” Synchronous communication is a massive drag on productivity”

Something a consultant feels greatly, the normal hours being needed for meetings, fact finding etc. with the clients staff and other team members. “Hotel time” is when you least likely to be interrupted and so can progress the project ie. Do the value add bit, so the following morning you can have further meetings etc. …

Re: Erm

>” If its avowed intent were to be subverted by some unscrupulous entity in order to avoid paying employer contributions on national insurance or to manipulate income tax boundaries, that would be tax avoidance.”

Nothing wrong with this.

However, focusing on the grey line between illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance, HMRC themselves are guilty of muddying the waters.

Currently, employee pension contributions are only free of PAYE, not NI with both employers and employees NI being due. However, if you take a salary sacrifice and switch to a more tax efficient arrangement, namely an employer only contributory scheme, there is no NI due. HMRC want this type of switch to be perceived as tax evasion, but noncontributory is okay if that was the arrangement on the day an employee joined a company…

Similar attitudes in HMRC have driven their push against contractors, who they likewise want the public to regard their ability to use the legal tax avoidances the Ltd wrapper permits as illegal ie. Tax evasion.

> Hence GDP is too often being pushed up by having more economic activity because more people

A while back I did some rough calculations: 600,000 immigrants a year is roughly 1% increase in GDP, however look at the per capita GDP figure it has hardly moved.

I note global GDP has mirrored population growth, circa 2% pa.

The problem is (small c) conservative British management are obsessed with not investing in people and paying the minimum.

This is effectively the problem facing the British construction industry. There has been little real skill increase since the 1980s, I remember the majors being scared s***less of the idea they could invest in factories to construct prefabs like they do in backward countries such as Germany <sarcasm>, so much cheaper (and profitable) to convince the Tories cheap imported labour was a better solution. Hence why today build regulations are decades behind and we are still building houses with poor carbon footprints and energy efficiency.

Re: s/unable/unwilling/

The initial compensation should be a simple - show evidence you were fingered by the PO and get £2M which may be increased later but won’t be clawed back.

Why £2m? It could buy a pension of up to £100k Pa. But more likely some would be used to clear accumulated debts etc. plus at this level the receipt to will be able to pay for their own care costs, removing the need for further payments via the social care system.

And yes with potentially circa 3000 former postmasters fingered, that is a lot of money., but not an unreasonable amount of money per post master.

Re: Browsing from a server?

So don’t run an RDS server….

Re: Only two years to go

Why wait? Surely they are already complaining about not being able to access their stuff from their phones and tablets …

A potential use for this technique is to “watermark” your site and thus provide a means to prove your site and content has been used without your permission.

Another is just the threat of LLM malware might make developers more careful about their unauthorised use of other people’s content for LLM learning purposes…

Re: Been there, done it

Moving Vodafone OSS and billing systems to azure is going to be interesting….

Perhaps this is just the Vodafone Retail bits…

My neighbours EV has a separate (lead acid) battery which provides the battery heating. Seems a reasonable solution for the UK.

Re: I sympathize with Linus.

> although I did have to keep dozens of ducks and a couple of goats alive and thawed

In past ages the stables were under the house: animals kept warm and animals provided warmth for the humans above them…

Maybe, but screen size et al are poor determinates of what a screen is being used for.

Even knowing the specific model isn’t all that helpful.

Re: Not even bare minimum.

> just moved to requiring an 8GB stick

That was okay for W10

For W11 (Windows 11 2023 Update l Version 23H2 ) that’s now an 8+GB (ie. 16GB) stick.

Re: And fuel cost per passenger would be...?

A little googling gives Concorde ‘B’

“ This was the aircraft the airlines really needed and the aircraft the manufacturers wanted to build.”

https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b

However, I see this was a mid 1970s proposal, whereas my childhood memory was more about the earlier media discussions, when only the “prototypes” were flying , about producing a version for commercial operations and the decision was made to actually do a production run of 14 Concordes.

Re: BBC investigation

I wonder if one of the reasons the Tories detest the BBC is because they give a platform to people such as Nick Wallis. Discredit and underfund the organisation, means they can’t afford to pay for real journalism et al.

Re: Horizon

> What bugs ME about it was why were the errors always in the post office's favour?

Because I expect the PO fraud team were looking out for particular negative discrepancies they would associate with monies being extracted, then jumping to conclusions…

Re: “ the $3 million, which is the statutory maximum for the six felony offenses”

One offender but multiple offences and multiple victims…

Re: Sounds... unlikely

Agree faulty diagnostic and reasoning: The problem was firstly her lack of a reader to hand - remember this was a “life and death” situation.

Secondly, having got the data she would have to had the right application (*) to make sense of the data.

(*)Right application includes a spreadsheet with appropriate layouts, formulas and graphs capable of importing data set. But in todays world it’s a phone app.

>” One of the reasons why people get these devices is so they and their doctor can track their condition”

Clearly this was not the case here, otherwise her cardiologist would have selected a model that had a data export function they could use and the tools to read the data and given her the app for her phone so she could monitor it.

The open-closed source debate is a red herring in this instance; if I were an investor in the SFC, I would be raising questions about the competence of the executives…

Re: Balls of steel - 'IT System assumed to be correct'

This is going to have massive ramifications over AI and self-driving cars…

Re: Quite human

> I generally find what I'm looking for in the first 3-4 of the results with search engines.

Actual traditional search results yes, however, I’ve yet to find any of the AI generated results they are now filling the first screen with to be of any help whatsoever.

Re: why not burn hydrogen instead of diesel in almost same power unit?

“ a diesel ICE cannot run on hydrogen alone. Diesel ICEs operate on a compression-ignition cycle, and thus, feature no spark plugs. Whereas, hydrogen ICEs operate on a spark-ignition, and as such, require spark plugs to ignite fuel. ”

[ https://www.cummins.com/news/2023/06/09/can-engine-run-hydrogen#:~:text=No.,spark%20plugs%20to%20ignite%20fuel. ]

Re: It is only Covid if you take a test

The law of unintentional consequences.. :)