Posts by Dave 15

Re: bad news for Jacobs?

Technically I believe if you have EVER paid US tax you have to keep at least filing the returns... although to be honest they have never actually chased after me for not doing so.

Of course what amused me most as a Brit over there was that I had to pay their tax but had no vote!

Re: Then of course

Yes I did go and trawl for a free player but I still needed to spend my time and effort. I wouldn't mind if they hadn't been bundling for years before suddenly deciding they couldn't be bothered.

Re: Just stupid

If Tesco were the only place you could buy your milk then the fact that they pay for the store doesn't stop it being a monopoly and a problem.

And to suggest the get out from it being a monopoly is the fact you could in theory manage to import some from Australia in some way is not much help.

Re: Just stupid

Eh?

Of course it reduces competition.

a) It makes it very difficult if not impossible to set up a rival store which (for example) might have lower fees for selling apps

b) The stores filter the applications available - you have to pay to put your app on these stores and jump several hurdles reducing the applications available to use.

All in all it is perhaps mildly easier for a lazy punter but is not actually good for competition. It is in many ways what the supermarkets would like... for example if you want milk you could only go to Tesco

Re: It had potential ...

Just? Just?

For heavens sake 2 gigabytes.... my first commercial PC had 512 K and that was a huge step up from the laboratory computers (running on z80) that I had been using to do real time monitoring and measurement of multiple pieces of laboratory equipment and the analysis of the chromatographs.

As for 16 gig of disk... try the PC with 32M ... dos, windows3, office, 2 compilers, assembler, sidekick (remember that?) wordstar (yup that as well as windows)... and source code and compiled output for several projects.

Its amazing how little you can do with how much hardware with todays programming practices. Just found out the radio that I work on for a car has a minimum of 4 arm cores...

quite confused here

Take A, signature is basically a checksum system on the contents of A

Add B, at this point it doesn't matter if A and B are both signed A+B is not, to sign A+B you have to checksum A+B and then use your private key...

And obviously things can modify it, even if after modification the runtime wont run

Re: We're still printing?

No, if a printer detects the wrong ink it messes up and alters colour balances and all sorts.

If you fool the printer well enough it is fine.

The things that annoy me most are:

Stupidly small amounts of ink in the cartridge. Look at the volume of the cartridge and read how much ink you get... the bulk is waste product, it would be very simple to design with a decent amount of ink (and indeed you can usually find cartridges with significantly more ink available in them in the same physical size)

The MOST annoying is that at least some printers refuse to print black and white when red has run out DESPITE having a black cartridge present and full. What the hell is that about other than screwing the consumer?

Really come back my old 9 pin with its multicoloured ribbon that lasted and lasted and lasted...

Re: Wot. A large piece of MOD kit not built by BAE.

Even if the research was used to 'dodge taxes' what it is actually doing is employing more people and preparing a company for winning more orders against (mainly foreign) competition so increaing employment here.

Re: Maggy what have we done...

And I am also that old.

There were strikes but the 'winter of discontent' wasn't actually a normal thing. Indeed the coal miners 1872 strike for pay was apparently the first since 1926 and was down to money, 1979 the next peak of days lost was public sector... nurses, teachers, fire etc.

However yes it was difficult to live with candles for a few weeks but as I have said before it was not the unions going on strike for the sake of it, the managers were refusing the payrise they needed to cope with the rising cost of living. Now maybe the management needed to discuss the problems around lack of investment in plant, lack of increase in productivity, cost of our product compared to Columbia etc as part of the negotiation, and maybe the unions should have listened and taken note but neither side was covered in glory

As I recollect as well (I lived near the huge power station at Didcot that in those days burnt coal... it was demolished and sent to China and replaced with a gas plant because of EU regulations). The power stations themselves had huge reserves of coal for dealing with strikes of a few days or weeks but to try and keep the strikes short unions tended to work together, so if the coal miners were on strike the trains wouldn't deliver and the power workers wouldn't use. In a way a mess but if you want to work together you sometimes need to make a mess.

In a similar vein today, I here that Surrey council are going to hike tax by 15%, if the people of that county ALL got together and said no then it would be stopped, as it is the council are going to hold a referendum AFTER they have imposed the hike and MIGHT pay back if it is rejected (though how they will pay back money they have spent is quite beyond comprehension or belief). The French farmers work together as do their lorry drivers and get a far better deal than we do!

Re: Maggy what have we done...

If you want to be honest there were people in Britain, even in the royal family and the government with British passports who wanted to surrender to Hitler. Looking back we might have done a good deal better taking that route... no massive debt, no getting screwed over by our American 'allies' and then a massive bail out of cash at the end when they had finished practicing bomb runs.... but in honesty they may have held a passport and it might be fashionable to say free speech and all that but they were and should be considered traitors

Re: Maggy what have we done...

It is cliched comment day.. that was started when people blamed unions for every ill in the country

There are always going to be people for whom sticking a rivet in a hole is the best they can manage, we need work for them as well. However the real issue is that today there are machines for much of that, and most of our competitors are using British tax payers money to buy the machines to ensure they can out produce us. They are using British tax payers money because the British government would rather give it away as aid or buy foreign products than support the country that funds it. The unions have pretty much no say in the updating of machinery or skills. It was reported very loudly on the odd occasion that a union did object to a change in practices or machinery that would make people redundant, I have never claimed the unions were right in every case and where they were holding up progress they were often wrong.

The boss taking a payrise while denying one to the workforce may or may not have a huge effect on the finances (although to be honest taking an extra 10 million rather than investing it in a new product, tool, better office facilities, workforce training etc is probably a huge effect on the long term finances) but at the least it is a very poor example of I can have my cake you can swivel which hardly does anything to endear or motivate.

Scarghill made a massive mistake with the coal dispute, he didn't hold a ballot that he would have won and which would have stopped a lot of the legal challenges. However in many respects he was totally right, buying in foreign coal and now Russian gas and oil makes our energy prices susceptible to world wide trends, massive increase and leaves us totally strategically under the control of foreign powers. Had we still had a coal industry we could have considered doing something about Crimea (I dont say we should have done something but we would have been able to). Both the UK and the EU in general are so dependent on Russian gas that we could NOT have said no to the Kremiln, if we actually did something they would just turn off the gas and oil and hey presto nothing for the QE ships, nothing for these tankers to carry, nothing for the tanks to run on, no electric for the command centre... we would have been stuffed and the Russians know it.

People say the horse has bolted but the country created the industries in the past, other countries create them now, we could create them again. Its like we are still running down the rail network, digging it up and claiming its too difficult to fix but the Germans are still building new ones... and no I haven't forgotten about hs2... the myth that I reckon will remain on the drawing board for ever.

Re: What the hell

I know about the one Royal Navy, was making a point that was all.

I didn't even say the government should get involved in building the ship, just in creating the yard. There is a major problem in the UK which revolves around getting funding for doing more than start a corner shop in your front room... you won't get it, it takes more than a week for you to turn a profit and give the money back to the bank.

Re: Maggy what have we done...

As I said before if you have an argument there are two sides. To get people to walk out on strike, lose their income, lose their work, put their jobs and industry at risk the management must be making some pretty poor looking decisions.

This as true then and to the very limited extent of the few unions left it is true now.

And what we see without any form of union is those at the top are taking ALL the benefits to themselves and passing none to the workers that make the money. This is obvious in all industries, even IT. Just look at the rates advertised for engineers (hardware or software), they have plummeted not just in real terms but in raw numbers over the last 20 years. The wages and money accumulated 'at the top' has by contrast soared. The boss on the golf course yelling it has to be done yesterday and he doesn't give a damn if you work all night and weekend on it is taking all the money for your night and weekend and selling your job off to his mate from Bangalore.

Re: Maggy what have we done... @Hans1

What you say is not true.

The history of who planted flags on islands that at the time of planting flags were not inhabited is vague and unsure at best and even then not really relevant. Currently it does cost a small amount to maintain a pathetically small contingent on the islands, not enough to fund a doctors surgery never mind a hospital. Besides if I had my way the funding for the nhs would be cut my 80% with the cuts starting at the highest paid (da management) not at the cleaners (the way the management always cut). The Falklands in case you haven't read the news do seem to be sitting on a puddle of oil, that might well be very useful and more than payback the costs incurred.

Besides which Argentina invaded someone elses land, frankly it doesn't matter if it is mine on the moon or mine in my living room it is mine and not yours to take.

I do't know about the internet cables in the Channel Islands, for all I know they are routed through France... in fact I would guess both internet and electricity actually come via French suppliers, however they are ours and that is frankly that.

The British had an empire because we were better at it than the others. France, Spain, Mongolia and Italy have all had them in the past and America has one now. Frankly this is the way of the world, the clever or the strong, or sometimes the same, get to lead or rule.

As for last Godly representation I am not sure quite where you are going... we may have a head of state who by the rules is also head of the church but that does not make the church head of state, indeed we are generally pretty good at keeping the church out of actual decisions unlike the Americans. (And yes I know we have bishops in the house of Lords, but the house of Lords is subservient to the house of Commons and although we could elect a Bishop into the commons he would not be there by right of religion.

The monarch is also just a figure head, actually no power at all. True she dissolves parliament... but only when told to, true the government is hers, but it tells her what it is going to do, and yes the armed forces (both people in them) swear allegiance to the crown but their actual orders and instructions come from parliament.

Britain is a world power because it might be a small island and increasingly the idiot people we have put in power might be intent on destroying it but we still have the odd nuke or two up our sleeves, just in case.

Re: Maggy what have we done...

It was ours to give.. if for no other reason than we were the guys with the massive guns and lots of soldiers.

Struth, as I say, go back far enough and maybe ask Genghis Khans descendents what they want to do with it... but then they were once the new boy colonists... how far back do you go until you find someone you like. Frankly giving someone who hates Britain a British passport was bloody stupid.

Perhaps somewhere in the left wing brainwashing you received someone might have pointed out some of the things that the British did that was beneficial? Things like sending the Navy out to put an end to the slave trade?

Re: Maggy what have we done... @Hans1

So by your arguments the Isle of White (it isn't connected to us) should be a totally separate country as it is obviously a colony?

And of course the Americans must immediately give up on Hawaii

What is more confusing to me is what will happen to Japan and New Zealand under your plans.

Both consist of a whole bunch of islands not connected... I guess they split into ever smaller countries?

Then you have the converse... if it is connected what then? Does Canada have the right to USA and Mexico? as they are clearly connected (the same way as you claim Eire has the right to Northern Ireland and Spain to Gibraltar? Perhaps even Hitler was right... europe did belong to Germany... after all it is all linked as one great big landmass... and linked to Russia, China and Korea.

What then defines a divide anyway... is there a minimum width? Now we have the Suez canal does this represent a break between the middle east and Africa and we should let Egypt only have one side of it?

I fail to see exactly how any of this discussion helps those on the Falkland islands... maybe east and west Falklands become independent countries (they aren't physically linked) and of course all the other Islands in the area? Certainly from your arguments they obviously can't belong to anyone else (such as Argentina) because they aren't linked to them.

Re: Maggy what have we done...

He could go further and claim that most of Europe still belongs to Rome :)

Though somewhere in the middle Mongolia might stake a claim to parts of China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (probably also Israel and Palestine just to really shake things), half of Russia, Germany and even a good chunk of France and Spain.

Re: Maggy what have we done...

The phrasing has certainly changed.

Gib and the Falklands are part of a reasonable number of (generally smaller) places that are overseas territories. These are places that chose to remain with Britain rather than go it alone (most colonies didn't really choose to be with us). They govern themselves but rely on us for foreign affairs and defence (that last is a laugh now that the entire armed forces couldn't manage to defend the Isle of Dogs in London... in fact the whole armed forces would rattle around in Wembley stadium and not be able to man all the entrances far less defend it.

Actually the Falklands ARE British, historically and by choice

Same for Gibraltar... it has CHOSEN to remain with us

Northern Ireland, for all the noise (most of it supported by the Americans who were happy to see London bombed by the boys back home, just not so happy when someone bombed New York ... the centre of the IRA funding for many years), was in fact a compromise.. a place for those people who wanted to stay with the UK when Eire was created for those who didn't want to stay.

Next you will claiming that Scotland should be independent as well... remember they joined Britain to form Great Britain at the same time planting their king on the throne... hardly the 'invasion' style that many people seem to think.

Re: What the hell

One early question from a quick scan of the tender document... apparently a credit check on the company is required to be good enough before company can bid... ok except the government should be paying the bills on time therefore a government contract should be a great way of making the company stable especially when like all British ship builders it will have been through a couple of decades of lean times.

Next bidder has to keep tender open even after being told it went elsewhere for a substantial period, this would make taking on work in the event of losing difficult if yard has limited capacity. This puts company and jobs at risk

Each bidder would need to get insurance either from a bank or parent company to cover all sorts of potential losses and this is going to be expensive for the generally smaller British companies than a thumping great Korean conglomerate. Making bidding unaffordable

The doc I found is after the tanker award of 4 tankers to Daewoo in Korea.. Tidespring being the first... lots of work, lots of jobs, lots of money and all exported.

Re: What the hell

Frankly yes. Maybe easier for the government to set one up... lets face it would cost a hell of a lot less than the bank bail out and promises manufacturing for the future.

The claim no one bid for the work also requires a scan of the documents - I haven't yet but I have looked at bidding for software related work. One of the things that is pretty obvious when bidding for government work is that they put ALL their effort into clauses and preconditions that make it impossible for anyone but a large multinational to bid.

Re: What the hell

Yes

I asked why as well. OK people took it as a rant but in honesty try visiting Germany, you will NOT find a French, Italian, Spanish or English cop car - why - because they support their own industry which flourishes as a result. Now some might try and say German cars are better (and I have been involved in developing them so I know otherwise), if that point was really valid when you go to France you would expect to also find German police cars (after all don't all EU countries abide by the same value for money rules????) But if you make that trip you will find in France that ALL police cars are French. The reasons are simple and as I stated... buying your own is the best option. Hence for us we should have bought a British build fuel tanker for the British Royal Navy. There are all the issues of money leaving the country, marketing, companies going bust and people sitting watching daytime TV (go and look at the ONS and be staggered by the number of Brits who are not working... not paying tax, not contributing... because the British government would rather stab them in the back and get a Korean ship... all that money, all those jobs.

Re: @MakingBacon

Only one way to check... anyone got a spare car they want to test?

Re: What the hell

BAE ship cost = cost - all the tax we get back - all the extra exports - all the unemployment we save - all the free prescriptions and school meals we don't pay - all the extra policing we pay for the bored unemployed

Korea ship cost = ship cost + all the lost pride + the exports we could have made if we had a shipyard + the cost of spares and repairs which we cant do ourselves + the cost of being invaded because we can no longer defend ourselves

pretty much I would take the BAE cost ... although if we had done it right as far back as Thatcher we would have swans etc etc etc to compete and BAE would not be so expensive

Re: What the hell

Would love to know why the thumbs down.

When I see the Americans having the Koreans build ships for them, or the Germans, or French, or Italian then maybe I could understand foreigners giving me a thumbs down. Maybe the thumbs down come from British people who want to watch daytime tv instead of working? Perhaps they come from Koreans

Whoever they are from good luck to you, if you want to see Britain continue to decline then continue to back exporting all our jobs.

Re: What the hell

I have passed the rant to the PM and the MOD

Re: Maggy what have we done...

Read something other than the Daily Mail

It takes two to have a dispute. Are you happier with the current situation? No unions, bosses taking millions upon millions come success or failure, taking 50,100,150% pay rises while workers are replaced with offshore people and their wages cut again and again. Hell even in IT wages today... just raw number never mind what it actually buys after the ravages of inflation are 30-40% down on 10 years ago.

This is what you get for no union.

The papers portrayed the unions holding the Leyland management and the coal board to ransom, yet in most cases they were only talking about matching pay rises the bosses were taking.

Then offloading all our work to foreigners is why we have millions watching day time tv and no money to sustain a proper navy, airforce or army.

What will we do if the Argies decide they want the oil at the Falklands... nothing, because there is nothing we can do, we do not have the forces required to sort out if the Argies invaded the Isle of Man far less something the size and distance away of the Falklands. The French and Americans wont help - they didn't last time!

What will we do if the Spanish decide on invading Gibralter... send in the Spanish tanks???? Ask them for some spare parts when they break down? Thought not.

Re: The issue is not how rich the rich are...

BUT

If you are going to make the worlds poor richer then you HAVE to make someone in the world poorer. Normally this is done by making the middle class poorer.... after all the rich run the countries (like the UK) and don't want to lose their wealth and the middle class delude themselves into thinking that because they have a mortgage they are somehow not poor... despite the fact their debt outstrips their assets.

To be honest I have never understood why we think it ok to pay mega millions to pop stars, football stars, politicians, people that get their boobs out on a tv show etc etc etc and even the likes of Clarkson and that redd headed nitwit that followed onto top gear.

Why we are unable to pay people like engineers and production workers who do something useful I have never worked out (Germany at least pays the engineers a little better than we do).

Ultimately though the fact is quite simple, the rich each year bag a bigger and bigger part of the worlds wealth, they horde it and everyone else is the poorer for it.

Re: Intentions over words

Oxfam is NOT a company it is a charity

When I give money I do NOT expect it to be spent on posh London offices and expensive CEOs I expect it to be used to better the lives of the starving children they feature on their posters.

A rocket can't

A rocket - even something like a cruise missile can't threaten in the same way as 50 or so aircraft flying over a battle field does.

One of the reasons getting rid of the v bomber fleet was such a bad idea.

A Vulcan showed itself more than capable of getting through the yankee air defence undetected and is such a beast that it would put the fear of God under anyone sitting in a shell hole.

RFA

Yeah, you can have tankers plodding around to refuel these useless pieces of over priced junk but if the carrier has a carrier group (speak in what is left of the royal navy for a couple of marine park rowing boats as the stupid politicians have left it with nothing else) the refueling tanker on which it depends for its limited usefulness is unprotected and will be sunk.

Nuclear was the only option and whatever idiot got in the way of that should be hung as a traitor

But yes, would have been simple and the best thing to have created a new Harrier with an update of the pegasus idea, far better than a yankee hairdryer with wings

Re: Could the Royal Navy win the Falklands war if it happened today?

No aircraft, no carrier, and frankly even if the aircraft we dont have arrived then too few. We cant field the size of battle group we had, we have nothing to land troops from, nothing to protect supply ships or anything. We can't even ask the RAF for support now, no Vulcan and not enough refueling tankers to get any of their current puny range of planes to within shouting distance of the south atlantic never mind the Falklands.

The yanks wouldnt help last time (worked hard to get us to let the argies keep what they invaded), the French (who apparently would let us use their carrier) wanted to keep selling the argies the exocet and it was only when we bought them all that no more were supplied.

Frankly we would stand bugger all chance

Re: Its all cobblers

As to the 'its expensive to build your own'

Actually it is NOT

Each million or so we send to the yanks for one of their planes is a million from our treasury for something we then have to buy spares for, contains only a portion of input from us and the yanks can sell and profit from

If we build a new aircraft factory, kit it with British machine tools and use build some British planes we can then take a good few people off the unemployed list and stop paying benefits etc. (a huge bill per person when you include the housing, council tax rebates etc etc etc). Those people would then pay tax on their earnings... so some of the 'cost' recycles to the treasure anyway. We can then sell those planes to those people who are our friends (the yanks are not, never have been and never will be... history tells us that). Selling to others would mean we take a profit. Further the research and dev we could then afford at the factory would allow us to produce a next gen plane. Its not just the French that sees the benefit of keeping an arms industry.

Re: Its all cobblers

They are designed to take up to 40 planes each. However the government is buying 24 planes between them.

Lusty could handle 22 planes - as could the Ark and Invincible. which meant we used to have 66 planes between 3.

We could for the cost of either of the new boats built another two of the Invincible class and kitted them with a full complement of harriers. Alternatively we could even have gone back in the plans and dusted off the centaur plans and built some more like Hermes - which originally did handle 'fast jets' before they took her catapults and arrestor wires away and put the ski jump on.

Re: > The Falkland's task force didn't lose a carrier,

Atlantic Conveyor was just carrying stores. However the loss does remind people that the current fad for relying on oil powered ship is dangerous. Each oil powered ship (like all our surface ships) require frequent top ups from a tanker. Most of the tankers have no real protection. They are the soft underbelly and sinking them renders the entire task force pointless as it has to head to the nearest land to get some oil ... without which it has no freshwater, no cooling for the frozen food etc.

Frankly the QE class never mind catapults or otherwise should have had a nuclear power plant... after all we know how to build them as we put (home grown and home built ones) in our submarines.

Thatcher was dumb, but not that dumb

(red rag to a lot of Conservatives I suspect)

However I don't recollect Thatcher going down to the Falklands to ride a tank or anything else (could b wrong)

As I recollect also we sent two carriers and hurried up the commission of Lusty 'just in case'. One of the carriers Hermes was started during ww2, had flown normal fast jets before and is currently still with India although they are in process of decommissioning her.

But Thatcher did make a massive contribution... she decided we would fight as against the then favoured sit in the corner and sulk approach. Pity that most of the other 'leaders' since then have reverted to sitting in the corner and sulking... if any had balls we would have sorted the EU, middle east and probably the yanks as well by now