Posts by Pen-y-gors

Effective use of time?

Surely a 'divisional General Manager' has better things to do with their time than check travel expenses? Or if they haven't maybe they are, oooh, what's the word?...oh yes 'redundant'.

Badly written law?

Sounds like the marriage laws were badly written - possibly they got some of the Westminster legal drafters involved.

If a law on marriage doesn't start by saying something very like "marriage is a contract between two consenting, adult individual persons..." then it's badly drafted. That then simply excludes a) children (a problem in some states), b) corporations c) things d) animals and e) football teams or other groups of people. If you want to allow polygamy and polyandry then drop the 'two', but that does introduce some interesting complications for who gets a 'widows' pension!

And phase 2...

Till-jockey to customer: "Hey, your loyalty card shows you live at 22857 Verilong Drive. Would you mind dropping a couple of parcels off on your way home?

Portfolio careers?

I remember someone referring to the idea of 'portfolio' careers. In the 'good old days' before the EU and antibiotics, most people stuck to the same job all their lives (well, a seven year apprenticeship tended to discourage re-training). They also then died at a sensible age.

Now it's different - the world and society now changes very fast. Many people will have working lives of 60+ years, and we need to handle that by letting people have several careers during those years. As individuals we need to look to ways to feed ourselves for longer, but when we're 80 do we need to keep buying expensive consumer durables? To be honest, we can all live with rather less in the way of shiney-shiney. Many people already have several jobs (just to make ends meet) but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with older people having two or three easier lower-paid part-time jobs, just so long as they are able to do them and happy and earn enough for a reasonable standard of living. A lot of this comes down to changing peoples' expectations.

3.9 million miles?

That is serious sun-tan territory.

Hey, maybe they could send Trump along and give him a real tan instead of a fake-orange-bottle one?

Who should pay?

So the plan is for the workers to pay for a £530 million accounting scandal in Italy? And a load of other bad decisions.

Now surely the people responsible should pay for management errors and failings? If BT was a co-op then fine, adjust wages and pensions, but it's the shareholders who are responsible for these decisions (via their appointed management) - surely the solution to a pension black hole is a levy on the shareholders?

On a more fundamental point, I accept there is a need for a pensions re-think. A system that is based on making a promise of benefits 40 or 50 years in the future is really asking for trouble, and it's amazing it's lasted so long. State pensions were introduced on the assumption that pensioners would die fairly quickly. Now we're all living much, much longer (thank you medical science and the NHS). A system designed around people contributing for 45 years and receiving benefits for 5, won't work when they contribute for 40 years and receive benefits for 30.

We'll need to work longer - possibly at different jobs (I don't anticipate many 75 year old fire-fighters). We'll need to save more (fewer 65" TVs and foreign holidays now, but food and heating when we're old)

BT not doing it right though!

True Image?

And will these features make it into their 'home' True Image software?

Publisher?

Wow, I mean, just...wow! It sounds wonderful. Hang on a sec and I'll fire up my Office 365 subscription and get to work finishing my latest Publisher doc 'in the Cloud' (wow, doesn't that sound sooooo sexy and cool?)

What? You mean...there isn't a version of Publisher in Office 365?

Oh pooh.

Let's go for the simple, obvious solution

All passengers and crew fly naked, after a 'thorough' search. No luggage, hand or hold: luggage sent in a separate aircraft. No meals or drinks served (trolleys could contain a bomb from ground staff). In-flight magazines limited to 1 sheet of A4

Simples

Ho hum

Another business where the phrase 'single point of failure' was possibly just words - or where one failure cascaded down to overload the backup.

Resilience costs money.

Get it right...!

"In it he[Corbyn] placed part of the blame for terrorist attacks on Britain's foreign policy"

No he didn't. You're repeating Tory propaganda.

What he talked about was causes and reasons. Blame is a moral matter, cause is simply a factual link in a chain of events.

The actions of the UK and other governments over the years have undoubtedly been a cause of some people becoming rather unhappy with Britain, and a very tiny minority deciding that as a result they should kill British children. The British government and some people may feel their actions were justified, but it doesn't stop those actions having a causal link to later events.

Corbyn was very clear about that. "That assessment in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children. Those terrorists will forever be reviled and implacably held to account for their actions." and "The blame is with the terrorists...". He also made clear that UK foreign policy is merely one factor "Those causes certainly cannot be reduced to foreign policy decisions alone. "

He also noted "But the responsibility of government is to minimise that chance, to ensure the police have the resources they need, that our foreign policy reduces rather than increases the threat to this country, and that at home we never surrender the freedoms we have won, and that terrorists are so determined to take away."

Who has been cutting police resources? Why did the security services not have the resources to follow up on the many reports they received about the Manchester nutter? How many freedoms have Theresa May and other Tory governments already taken away from us? How many more will go if she is elected next month?

Corbyn's full speech is an interesting read, when not selectively edited by The Heil, the Sun, the Telegraph and the Tories. I've never been a Labour supporter, but I thought it rather hit the nail on the head.

Full text at

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/05/jeremy-corbyn-speech-terrorism-and-foreign-policy-full-text

</rant> - sorry, but I get really worked up about politicians misrepresenting reality for the sake of votes.

No, just....no

This is wrong on so many levels

The major online grocery retailers work because they have massive bricks-and-mortar shops and warehouses to provide good prices. Unless amazon plan to buy out Kwikimart or something that won't apply.

And it's another tax on Prime users. 'Free' - but useless if you don't want it/aren't eligible. I just wish they'd split Prime into its component parts - I'd happily pay a fair price for free next day delivery, but they don't offer that. Prime means that as well as the delivery I have to pay for lots of useless things I'll never want or use (Clarkson?).

Nothing to see here

It would have to be very serious to get the FBI and CIA involved. after all, Trump International is just another US business, and has no connection with the so-called President Trump, does it? After all he handed everything over to his son.

Not sure it would be legal in the EU?

IANAL, but I seem to remember that under the various Data Protection laws in the EU the Credit Card companies and the banks can swap info for certain limited purposes, such as combatting and investigating fraud, evaluating credit applications etc, but that's about it. I'm pretty sure flogging the raw data is a very big no-no!

I'm probably wrong though...

PCs dead?

Really I find that hard to believe. Phones and tablets are fine for people who want to consume data off the network, and occasionally send a short message or a photo. But for people who actually want to do some work and create something, a netbook is a minimum requirement, and ideally something bigger and meatier. Who would consider writing anything longer than a tweet on a phone keyboard with predictive text? If Tolstoy had had to use a tablet War and Peace would be about 1000 words rather than 1000 pages.

trading under the name iChromatography ?

Oooh, sounds like they have some association with You Know Who - very bad for the reputation! They should stick to AnalTech.

And what about solar?

Interesting article in the Indie today - India has cancelled plans for 14GW of coal, as the wholesale price of solar is now 25% below coal.

Auction price for a 500MW solar deal recently was $38/MW - eat your heart out Hinckley!

Okay, we have a different climate to India, but interesting...

veeeeery interesting....

Obviously worth a giggle or two, but there are some interesting ideas and questions driving the work - they've taken an extreme example, but the idea of accurately emulating style in writing needs more serious research. Good luck to them - although perhaps they need to retrain it on Barbara Cartland before they take it to a conference!

Burning the midnight oil

Glad it's not just undergrads who wait until the last minute to write an essay!

International data transfer?

Interesting point about data going international though, were they trying to connect to GCHQ? Or, less likely, they wanted to check an update server for software or AV updates and wouldn't carry on until they'd found it! Either way, big fail.

There is a principle to consider

Should the police be allowed to knowingly ignore a threat to a householder? Once upon a time the parish constables would wander round, checking all was well, 'shaking hands with door-knobs' as Vimes would say, rather than sitting on their bum in a nice warm car. If such an officer discovered a front door was unlocked, should he ignore it and note the fact in case he wanted to come back later to plant evidence, or should he notify the householder so they can secure their property.

In a democratic society I know what I'd expect them to do

Here be snowflakes...

"Britain shouldn't turn its back on EU drone regs..."

Britain shouldn't turn its back on EU drone regs

FTFY