Posts by John Brown (no body)

Stop being nameist!!!!

If people want to change how they identify then history must be changed to match,

Came here to say the same thing. The Chinese "cyber" military are probably expecting some of their tools to be discovered in the near future and allowed these ones to be demonstrated at the competition because their new ones are already on stream :-)

I seem to vaguely remember reading about a train that used air pressure difference in a tunnel, similar to Hyperloop but at much lower speeds back in Victorian times. IIRC it sucked air at one end to draw the carriage along, which had big rubber seals that moved along the tunnel walls. I've no idea if that was just a concept or if any form of test line was ever built though. It may be that it was an earl;y idea that that never got built but led to the atmospheric railway.

Re: A curious thing...

Splat?

Re: Got to admit that....

Don't be silly. This is VIRGIN hyperloop!

"NOTE: Poor Melania. I hope the pre-nup is up-to-date."

IIRC, she refused to move into the White House until Donald agreed to changes in the pre-nup.

Actually, the quote could quite reasonably say: "Public statements from Foreign Office or GCHQ officials should mostly be taken with a pinch of salt; they often accuse others of doing what they themselves are guilty of."

And we've had almost 4 years of Trump giving a masterclass in the subject. The problem is in the pass rate of the students.

Re: it could "turn people into monkeys".

Is that you Donald?

Re: Sleazy to the End

I heard a major Trump supporter (Senator? Congressman? Governor? Something elected anyway) is offering Trump $500,000 towards his legal fighting fund. From his is own campaign funds. Is that legal? People game money in good faith for this guys campaign now he's giving it away to trumps lawyers. Surely even the USA has laws on how voluntary donations to political campaign funds can be spent.

Re: Best to stay away from US politics.. you havent a clue what you are talking about

"There is no Daily Telegraph or BBC."

Probably because any balanced and independent news outlet would be universally reviled by left, right and everything in between. The BBC is regularly accused of being left wing by the right and right wing by the left. That just tells me they are probably, at least in the main, getting it about right.

Re: Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, & Grubb

"Pour Donald, he may have to cope with his 'popularity' on Twitter dropping somewhat."

When he's a private citizen, he will no longer of the special dispensation afforded world leaders or other people of importance. The ban hammer might fall if he assumes he can get away with the blatant lies and rabble rousing he currently only gets warnings for now.

Re: Yay! Party time!

"Oh to be able to embed the X-Files theme.."

Like that? (ok, not autoplay embedded as such, but the best we can do here)

Re: One down ...

Rudi seems to be the Kool Aid King. Considering the respect etc he garnered over 9/11, he seems to have lost it now. Watching his press conference outside Four Seasons (the gardening company, not the hotel, my how times have quickly changed!), he seemed to be rocking from attempts at comedy acting to frothing at the mouth.

Re: Yay! Party time!

Not to mention the other 1200 Presidential candidates that were on ballot papers in various States, although few, if any, were on all State ballots.

Re: Yay! Party time!

"Perhaps for next time America needs to sort out a single, clearly defined, set of national voting rules so there's no running to the courts endlessly all over the place (which further delays counting)."

Why would they? Whoever the incumbents are, they know they may need that confusion and legal dispute for themselves next time around. Most politicians seem to be lawyers. The previous two statements may well be linked in some way.

Re: FAKK NEWSS AGAIN AGAIN

...but not before he drank multiple 2 litre bottles of Kool Aid. Again.

Re: Yay! Party time!

"And then try to prevent the frauds we've seen with postal voting here in the UK."

Election fraud is hard to do and rarely happens in anything other than very minor instances.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_file/Fraud-allegations-data-report-2017.pdf

"As shown in chart A2 the most frequently reported types of voting case related to the offence of personation (voting as someone else) either at a polling station (28 cases), using a postal vote (22 cases) or using a proxy vote (13 cases). A further 14 cases related to the offence of undue influence. The remaining voting cases related to attempts to tamper with ballot papers (three cases), breaches of secrecy requirements (eight cases), alleged bribery (eight cases) and treating – providing food or drink to influence a voter to vote in a particular way (eight cases). "

Re: Yay! Party time!

"But I also think there have been some real issues wrt allegations of ballot stuffing, absentee ballots etc."

Whilst I agree there was most certainly some irregularities, that's pretty much unavoidable in an election on such a scale, I sincerely doubt there was any organisation behind them and likewise that there could be enough, ie in at least the thousands per voting state/region/area/whatever, to actually swing it. Most notably, there doesn't seem to be any accusations of ballot rigging in places where Republicans won. It seems ballot rigging only ever happens in places where an incumbent loses, more so if those areas they lose in are "vital" to not losing overall.

Re: Good

Well, he's "Irish"[1] and against Brexit, so might not be so good for the UK, although probably a better option than Trump and his "great deal, the best deals"

[1] His ancestors left Ireland 170 years ago. I'm not sure just how "Irish" he is, but he's proud of his roots. (He doesn't mention the French bit though)

Re: Good

"compared to Trump he's an elder statesman."

...at 77, he's certainly that!

Re: Once again, sidestepping laws

"Uber offered a separation package, 5 months salary plus tickets back home[4],"

Compared with the legal minimum redundancy packages, that's a pretty good deal actually, despite them being pressured to take it. It's probably a vastly superior deal top anything their US staff will get. Uber hasn't been around for 12 years, so none of the staff could have accumulated enough employment longevity to get the maximum 12 weeks/3 months salary redundancy package. I'm not trying to defend Uber in any way, b ut clearly they are prepared to spend real money to legally "by-pass" the redundancy process.

Also, 5 months pay while you go looking for another job. Using the proper redundancy path, it might be a month or two negotiations followed by the legal minimum notice period and the legal minimum redundancy pay, which for some people might be as little of 1 or 2 weeks notice plus 1 or 2 weeks pay.

PS, I upvoted you because I agree with you. I'm just looking at it from the employees point of view (not that I am one!!)

Re: “Police recommend that you do not engage with scammers,”

I had one who eventually twigged I must be running Linux (FreeBSD actually, natch), and passed me onto one of his "specialist colleagues" who then proceeded to guide me to the Linux version of Teamviewer. I was quite impressed. Of course, the download kept "stalling" and eventually it turned out my version Linux wasn't one of the ones listed :-)

I wonder how many people have rooms full of unopened crap that they are hoping will be their retirement fund? They could be lucky and one or two items might well turn out to be collectable and have a future value, but I suspect it' will be the least likely items. The ones people think will have future value are the same things everyone else is collecting with the same hopes which will depress the value until at least after the collectors lifetime when much of the tat will be binned by their children and the few remaining ones might have some real value for the grandchildren who hung on.

Re: Clear as mud

And not forgetting their biggest ever naming cock-up with Surface and Surface RT, two completely incompatible bits of hardware with incompatible OS (that almost looked the same) and incompatible apps.

Re: Confusing

"It was all sensible up to Windows NT 3.51, then Windows 95 came along and all sense of numerical continuity went out of the window."

Now you are getting confused too! WinNT 3.51 bears no relation to Win95 or the ancestors of Win95. NT was a completely different branch. The two branches merged with WinXP. And everyone is forgetting Windows 1 and Windows 2 and their various point releases as well as special 286 and 386 versions.

Re: I agree it seems like very light punishment

"It's possible, I agree, but bullshitting about his past can only work for so long before biting him in the backside. The truth is out there for anyone curious enough to look."

If a conviction is "spent", not only does the person not have to declare it, but if an employer subsequently becomes aware of it, they are not allowed to use it against the person. That's the whole point of of the system of "spent" convictions. It allows you "start fresh", eventually. As has also been mentioned, even a "spent" conviction could still show up in an enhanced criminal records check, but it should only show if the conviction is relevant to the job being applied for and the employer under most circumstances doesn't get to see what the offence was, only if the check results in the applicant being disqualified from a particular job type.

Re: I'd Do It Again For A £1,000!

A suspended sentence means he goes to prison if he breaks any other laws. Doing it again would cost lot more than for the first offence. There will most likely be other conditions attached his "release" too, breaching of which will result in going to prison.

Re: This isn't just a civilian issue

Also the reason that RAF Conningsby is colloquially known by the uniformed residents as BAE Conningsby.

Re: Cars collect some interesting data...

This is why I always use the seatbelt to secure bags and/or shopping when on the front seat. It's doesn't seem to take all that much weight for the system to decide it's a person and start binging at me as I pull away. A decently loaded shopping bag will almost always trigger it.