Posts by Number6

Re: Speaking of confusion.....

Ah, the equivalent of releasing four piglets in a Walmart store with the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5 painted on them, then watching as the security team frantically try to locate #4.

Re: Accountants

The tax system files it under "compensation for loss of office", at which point it becomes a tax-free payment up to certain limits (used to be £30k, but may well have increased since then).

Yes, there are advantages to both sides because of this. Neither side has to pay NI contributions on the sum, and if you're a higher-rate taxpayer, that can effectively double the effective take-home money. I got three months' pay in lieu of notice when being made redundant and it was effectively enough to fund me for six months.

Re: Then they're hurt or killed

No, in California it only might kill you.

Re: What are they measuring here?

I think the way both Windows and Linux work, if they auto-configure IPv6 and you try to connect to something that has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, it will choose the IPv6 by default.

This often gives a clue as to a problem with the IPv6 configuration somewhere, if there's a long delay and then it connects. This is because your end starts by attempting IPv6 and eventually times out when it doesn't actually work because something's eating packets and falls back to the IPv4.

Re: Great more automated non-perfomant code

I remember complaining about this with Windows 3. As an exercise, we wrote a program (not an app in those days) using all the Windows classes and it was something over 100k in size by the time it had linked in all the bloat. Then we wrote it without all of that as a DOS program and it was a couple of KB.

Frameworks are nice but be aware of the side effects. This also goes for those who put the frameworks together - don't build in mega dependencies so that using one function brings in War and Peace as a side effect.

Re: SImples

That's sort of what has happened. Have you tried a whois query recently? The generic one gives a lot less information than it used to, and if you go to a registrar's site you get this in the notes:

IMPORTANT: Port43 will provide the ICANN-required minimum data set per

not covered by GDPR policy.

Of course, if you're happy to go to their website then all is revealed if it's not a registration covered by GDPR because they have better control over it. Hopefully they'll add California residents to the same list as those covered by GDPR.

Re: Legitimate business interests

Although it's very much worth bearing in mind that the whole point of pushing it through was specifically to make it easier to change later, unlike a ballot version which, as the article states, would be much harder to change once passed. That should be concerning to everyone. If the politicians were really up for this type of privacy legislation, why didn't they just let it go to a ballot? Let's hope that Mactaggart & co are keeping a close eye on the legislation as written and any future modifications (which may be hidden in other bills as riders etc.) and are ready to act again.

I can see some merit in having it easily changed in case there is an issue where someone got something wrong. If the only way to fix it was another ballot initiative then fixing errors might turn out to be hard. On the whole though, I'd prefer the ballot version because it's harder to subvert as I see that as more likely than incremental improvements through the normal legislative process. I agree, I hope that they keep the ballot stuff in a safe place, ready to haul it out if someone offers the legislators enough money to change the existing version to something weaker.

Re: How difficult is it to disable slurp?

I'm not sure how I've done it but I have a browser config set up so I don't see ads on Forbes and it still lets me in. Not that I go there that often but occasionally I click on something that turns out to be one of their links.

Re: Yo! Yank ... Er ....

The only way you can accurately determine the proper tax jurisdiction is by geolocation using the street address. This assumes the address used is the location of the buyer. Another wrinkle is if one buys something online while away from home, what is the taxing jurisdiction and how is it determined? Depending on how it is done, a VPN service might cause all sorts of fun (honest I was in Finland when placed the order).

The address to which the product is shipped determines the taxes. If you're a hundred feet the wrong side of a tax boundary and you've got a friendly neighbour the other side, see if they'll accept delivery of your packages.

This is where the UK VAT (admittedly with a simpler system) and South Dakota have it right - if you're under a financial limit then you don't have to pay but you can't reclaim anything either. Otherwise a retailer is going to require you to have a shipping address in their state so they can ship to that, and then it's your problem moving it from there to your home state.

Another option would be for the retailer to state at time of sale that the buyer is responsible for paying the sales tax direct to their state and that details of the transaction amount would be forwarded to the state to assist them in recovering it. That way, a small retailer could send a data dump every month or quarter to each state with all the transactions and then the state could ask people for their money. I think the California income tax forms already have a section where you can declare stuff where you should pay tax but haven't.

This is nonsense, according to the Boeing website the 777x has a two seat configuration capacity of 375 whereas Emirates run the A380 with a two class capacity of 615. Nowhere near comparable.

They are comparable if you figure it as passengers per engine. In fact, the 777x comes out better.

Re: Return ticket?

Ask YouTube about the NASA Sample Recovery Robot Challenge. Some of us had fun trying to do phase 2 a couple of years ago. It's surprisingly difficult, although I think technology will make great leaps before they have to do it for real.

Re: Citation needed....

Outsourcing works well when you've got a well-defined package of work that needs doing, you haven't got internal staff available to do it and you won't need those staff once the work is done. Or it's a longer-term thing but only for a day or so a week and it's easier than trying to recruit a part-time employee to fill the gap.

Most of the horror stories are missing one of those requirements, usually the 'well-defined package of work'.

How many people know how long a chain is though? It's a bit like an acre, a unit often used but ask people how big it is and most won't know (my answer is 'one chain by one furlong'). Perhaps the good citizens of New Zealand are more clued up about old imperial units than others.

Re: Chameleons ?

I've heard that there's a chamelephant in the room but I can't see it and people are reluctant to talk about it.

Re: You mess with the GNU ...

Look at it this way. I downloaded the source code. I've made changes, and given them to my mate Bill. I've now made more changes, but I don't want to give those to Bill. Bill is asking for them, wondering why I've now spurned him, but I'm not going to give them to him and I'm keeping my reasons to myself (basically, I think Bill is a plonker, and I don't want to hurt his feelings). Instead I've given these new changes to Alice. Where's the GPL2 breach in that?

If you've given Bill the binaries then he's entitled to the source required to build those binaries. GPL2 does not require you to give him updates to what he's already got. If you gave the updated source and binaries to Alice then she is within her rights to give the binaries to Bill, and if he asks, the source code too. Yes there was a high degree of daftness in putting stuff in writing.

That's what I was thinking too. Apple can point out that it's not a good use of taxpayers' money wasting it on lawyers when the government clearly has a way of achieving what they want without needing Apple to help.

Re: Fake news

Why is it fake news when a lot of people seem to have seen it happen (not me - see below)?

I did an exercise once, I took an existing C# app that read from a USB dongle and updated a screen and ported it to C++ with the assistance of Qt. The original motivation was to be able to get the same functionality on Linux and the original, not exactly greased lightning on a Windows machine, was like cold treacle when run under Mono on Linux. Then I ported the C++ thing back to Windows (as in tweaked the HW-specific bits and recompiled it) and it was easily way more responsive than the original. C# is OK for slow-and-dirty hacks but a real pain otherwise. Yes, Perl is probably preferable.

Besides, internet fridge developers seem to have forgotten that not everything you buy from Tesco goes in the fridge, or even in the kitchen.

Oh, they have. You can have another box for the bathroom, one for each bedroom, one for the cleaning supplies cupboard. All interlinked so they can compile a master shopping list for everything.

@Jamie Jones

It depends on how you're doing it. Older manual methods wouldn't have used xor, more likely it was a book of numbers, to determine which letter to substitute for the one in question.

I'm glad you qualified that with a 'yet'.

I'm wondering how they'll extract the information from those who are naturalised citizens, unless the starting plan is just to give themselves permission to hold the information without any specific plan to actively acquire it. I can't quite see USCIS doing a mailshot to people with a form asking them to fill it in. Or rather, that's what I'd like to see them try because that's the quickest route to court. More likely is that they'll pick off individuals at airports as they enter the country, which is the time when you're most vulnerable and surrounded by enforcement goons with limited access to a lawyer.