Posts by MonkeyCee

Re: So, to sum up. . .

"To state that "Parliament does not negotiate with foreign governments" is wilfully misrepresenting normal relations with other countries as adversarial."

I'm sorry, but you've missed the point entirely.

Parliament literally does not negotiate with foreign governments. Foreign parliaments do not negotiate with foreign governments. Parliament is the legislative branch of the UK government (like congress in the USA). Congress does not directly negotiate with other countries, that's an executive function under POTUS, State or Defence depending on how kinetic the negotiation is.

In the UK the government is formed by the party with the support of the majority of Parliament. The government is the executive branch, and does things like negotiate with other governments, make treaties, fight wars. Usually declaring wars is part of the legislative branch, along with writing laws and raising taxes. Which are pretty much the definition of sovereign.

Much of the insanity of Brexit has been the lengths that the government has gone to keep Parliament away from the business end of things, and how willing certain MPs have been to let them have the rope in the hope that the mass hangings will lead to a socialist paradise in Islington.

TL&DR: Parliament doesn't negotiate with foreign governments in the same way you don't bury the survivors of a plane crash.

Issue

"1. Unlike all previous holders of the office, he appears to be using it to enrich himself"

I think the issue is that he's doing to enrich himself while in office.

Pretty sure most of the Presidents were subsequently enriched by their service to their country.

CIA intelligence briefings for life is worth quite a lot by itself.

charges versus convictions

"Can you just throw drugs in somebody's shed and get them put away forever on ten different charges? "

<pedant> No, because you don't get put away for a long time on charges, only on convictions </pedant>

Yes, in the sense that possession of certain substances over a certain weight can get you arrested and charged.

Yes, it can be used to fuck up someones life. Why beat a dude up, when you can plant an ounce and get the cops and the system to do it for you? Why kill someone, when 200g of coke/smack hidden in someones house and a tip off or favour from the cops doesn't get your hands even a little bloody.

Price

"I was inderectly refering to the Quaker invention of honest pricing. If the price on the tag is £1, then it's £1, if you don't want to pay £1, go somewhere else. If the price on the tag is £1 but I'm willing to accept 50p, then that means I've been lying to you."

Because price is not an absolute. Perhaps a minimum, certainly for goods, but this is a discussion of services.

It's like my labour cost. If I'm asked to quote for some work, I'll give an honest rate. So normal rate if I don't have anything on, and a cancellation rate if I'm bumping something else. It's considered unprofessional, even discriminatory, to not quote someone. So I won't say "no, I'm busy" rather "give me two thousand on top of my usual fee and I'll do it".

I consider it fair that I only ask for parts cost from my friends, family, neighbours, mechanic, plumber et al, but that I'll charge Jo Public for the same pleasure. Hell, not even parts for a plumber* who will actually show up on a Sunday.

Even with basic mercantilism (buy for a buck, sell for two) there may be times when you need the cashflow more than profits, so selling twenty items for $30 is more useful to the seller than the "honest" price of $40.

As for lying, does that apply in the other direction? I often buy things to resell, people want quick cash rather than maximum value, so take less money than the items are worth.

I guess I'm slightly dishonest when going someplace that I'll be haggling. No suit, paintballing hoody, beat to shit backpack etc.

Oh, and bear in mind that for many places you're haggling, the thing you're buying is not actually the product the salesman is flinging. For cars and some degree property, the loan is where everyone makes money, not the goods.

How to determine the correct price of something is a fascinating study in microeconomics. The best answer still is "what ever the parties decide"

Re: That's horrible.

C'mon, Burn Notice has seriously the funniest product placement. Spies eat yogurt :D

And drug dealers drink full fat Cokes, while DAs sip Light Cokes :)

Re: A Pox On Gareth Corfield's House.

"The derogatory term 'meatbags' is not a term I expect to see a professional soldier addressed as, especially in The Reg."

Take it you've not hung out with any grunts recently then :D

Meatbag is not really any sort of insult, in my experience. Ignoring the obvious KOTOR/Futurama references, I've come across as the affectionate term for the larger squaddies* who usually got to hump the extra kit. Even meathead isn't too bad, sort of implies a preference for concrete rather than abstract reasoning or general bullish approach to solving things.

Bags of other things certainly imply an insult. Wind, shit, dirt, scum, rat, dicks etc. eg: The scumbags at Crapita conspired with some dirtbags at MoD to outsource recruiting, they all should eat a big bag of dicks because of those shitbags we're short of meatbags to defend our country and it's allies.

Never served myself. Friends and family have. Trying to insult a soldier is a bit like trying to shock a nurse. Can be entertaining, but if your day job is actual life and death, and your mistake is probably going to get someone you know killed, you get a different sense of humour :)

If you're on the back end, at least you get to wear cammies in the office without looking like a Walter Mitty.

*in the same vein as calling a big bloke Little John or Tiny, or the guy who lost a leg Long John Silver etc

Re: Russian Spy?

"We know that she isn't a spy. At worst she's an "unregistered foreign agent" but even that's debatable."

A foreign agent is a spy. That's literally what it means. Spy is a colloquial term. In the same way that calling someone convicted of a crime a crook is accurate, but "being a crook" isn't actually a legal thing.

As for debatable, she was prosecuted, plead guilty to be a foreign agent, and got sentenced to jail. In legal terms, there's no debate.

Re: Copycat

"Is in some ways Microsoft effectively owns Apple. Apple will struggle to get far ahead."

MS invested in Apple in 1997. They had sold their stake by 2003. Last I checked, they do not hold significant amounts of Apple stock. Assuming they had kept their holding rather than selling (~18 million shares @ $8) with the stock split (~36 million shares) the holding would be worth $7 billion plus change today.

It is arguable that MS did save Apple with it's investment, or at least allowed the creation of the Job 2.0 Apple.

"So as Apple innovate, Microsoft are allowed to copy, this is one reason Microsoft make gear."

That is generally considered to be second rate to Apple kit? iPhone vs Windows phone, macbooks versus... dunno, iPad Pro vs Surface etc.

MS does better when not trying to ape Apple, the only new hardware they've done successfully (Xbox) has very little Apple influence.

Re: What ?

"How did Claire know Bobs name , given that Alice only knows Bob from one ride home?"

Given the other evidence, I'd guess that Claire lives in Bob's neighborhood, and knows a little bit about them. Claire saw Bob and Alice go to Bob's house, stole the purse, and knew that blaming it on Bob would sound plausible.

The unproven supposition in my logic is indeed that Claire knows Bob, but it's fairly plausible. I've lived in my house for five years. I know most of the birth dates* of the people who live beside and across from me, and the ages of the ones under 30.

*from parties or feeding their cat while they are holiday, plus my kid is friends with all the other hood rats

Crapita

"something as banal as an Armed Forces recruitment system"

Dumbest thing with that whole recruitment fiasco is that the most basic use case doesn't work.

1. Bob wants to join the army

2. Bob applies to join

3. Bob passes background check

4. Bob is offered the job

5. Bob goes to basic

6. Bob serves her country, ideally as Flashheart's driver

Between steps 2 and 3, crapita takes ~9 months. Turns out Bob got another job in that time. And if Bob applies again, she has go through the same process.

You could get any recruitment agency in, and they could manage that.

Re: "Nobody knows if it will really work for the mass market"

"This would be no more guying games, simply pay your monthlies to your provider or providers of choice, and get all their games."

Not a console owner, but I got the impression PS Plus was pretty much this.

Not so much all the games, you have a library. But you get some number of "rental" ones that you can switch around.

The game saves to the cloud are also a big appeal.

Re: I WAS FIRST MATE

"Nah, vending machines aren't the way forward. The UI is slower than that of a decent barman."

Get better vending machines?

I live in the Netherlands. They are very keen on vending machines, and the hot snacks one are designed to be fairly resilient to the drunks. A number of bars have a beer tap on the table, which will refill your egg cup sized Dutch beer.

Not sure how it would survive in a British boozer. We get a lot more shitfaced than our EU cousins :D

I recall a Dutch classmate talking about his "heavy" night out, drinking at least a dozen beers. Which is about three pints...

Brexit

"Popcorn time when that finally sinks in for Brexiters who blamed the EU for immigrants from the Indian subcontinent."

I've heard from a number of British people of south east asian descent that they very much voted for brexit because of the EU making immigration from India and Pakistan harder. I recall it being a story before the referendum.

It's not news that leave voters have contradictory views. So do remain voters. It was a yes no on a complex issue, expecting any consistency within either camp is bonkers. I voted remain, I think the EU has many many problems, but I think they can be fixed, but from within. I think being in the largest trade bloc in the world is a good thing for the UK's soft power and economic gain.

But if we barely teach english in the schools, let alone french, german or spanish, and make university the be all of qualifications, of course there are going to be pissed off that they can't get a job because some continental prick who paid less than 6k for a degree can work for less than they can after picking up 35k of student loans. Or never made it through university, because god forbid we have trade schools and polytechs.

The UK will always need immigration, or massive wage reform. Minimum wage of 25-30 per hour might do it, free tertiary education, high consumption taxes and UBI or integration of industry and education aiming for 100% employment. Those are all pretty drastic, and would wreck the fortunes of a few too many party donors for that to happen. So got to get that cheap labour in.

Re: It's the right badge.

"As for calling an ad-hoc collection of psy-ops, propaganda and other odds and sods a division is not going to fool anyone."

Couple of points.

It's not a combat division for deployment. That's the first and third, which do all the PBI jobs, plus all the modern bells and whistles.

It's a support division, but considering much of an advanced nations combat power is the force multiplier afforded by accurate intelligence, it's pretty important. It's also a force multiplier we can supply to allies with minimum fuss and casualties.

The main task you missed that they do is surveillance. They do psy-ops in the same way that a large corporate body does HR, mainly it's about keeping the troops happy :D

It seems a convenient place to stick signals and recon brigades that are effectively deployed fighting a war, for the benefit of national security. But physically located in the home country. So for various legal reasons, and with the growth of signals and recon, it makes sense.

Totally agree they aren't a combat division. Not invading anyone with the 6th. Helping someone else do the invading for you? 6th is the ticket.

Re: It's time

"I don't understand what process politicians go through which makes them experts on everything. "

They are good at the process of getting selected, and OK at getting elected.

They expend most of their energy and ability getting and holding power in their own party. This is a pretty difficult thing (lots of smart people all trying to manipulate each other).

Brexit is, in part, a result of the Tories trying to deal with their euroskeptic wing by challenging them, and turns out it was closer than DC thought.

The other issue is that "a crisis is too good to waste". So you only really get to push a legislative agenda in response to a perceived crisis. Thus they are all keen on some crisis, but ideally one that is controllable (man made rather than natural) and not understood well. So they want to perpetuate the crisis until they get the reins of power.

With brexit, it's a very handy crisis, which no-one wants to try and solve until it's first wrecked their opponent.

The notion that none of them have any way of actually dealing with it may have escaped them, since the oppertunity to knife the opposition, or even better, their internal opponants, is too good to miss.

Build a wall.....

Just to extend Any other name a bit, almost all illegal immigration consists of a person entering a country legally with one type of visa (typically tourist or student), then staying in the country while violating some of the terms of the visa.

The idea that you prevent all illegal immigration at the border is extremely naive. It's how do you police the people once they are in your country, and what do you do when they have effectively settled.

Depending on how they are obtained, a student visa may require you to prove things from your home country first, such as going through a partner university, or may require you to show up in the host country on a tourist visa until the sponsor university is satisfied you can pay, and your grades are real. It also means the university doesn't have to do certain checks, just assumes that you can leave your home country and enter the UK without any other external issues, ie previous convictions.

Re: From afar

"Your senior guys hired in the 80s are men, your new junior recruits are 50:50"

In my experience the way that companies are trying to correct the imbalance is to hire as many women juniors as possible. This is results in what I refer to as "seahorse" companies, consisting of only young women and old men.

Like many issues, this means that the current younger generation gets to pay for the crap previous did. Sorry we were sexist pigs, to make up for it we're going to be nice to the latest generation. Hire women of the same age as the men in our company? Oh no no, we kept those ladies oppressed for a reason....

"Because it's not normally as simple as 'if women; pay *0.8'"

Indeed, it's more like "if have kids; pay 0.8". The wage gap between men and women with no kids is almost non existent (over 40 men get about 1% more, under 40 women get about 2.5% more) compared to the gap between anyone with 1-2 kids.

The reason it appears more gendered is because women are expected to look after the kids. Yes, even by the woke feminist guardian readers. It's interesting to watch them struggle with the fact that they're busy judging me/my ex over me staying home with the baby, but also trying to be supportive.

Nothing is sometimes the best option

"Is doing "nothing" still the right thing to do?"

Compare how easy it is to introduce legislation, versus how hard it is to remove it.

Since common law assumes an amount of sense by the courts, we generally don't get rid of old laws, even when they become out dated. Usually it takes someone taking the piss to force a change, and even then parliament is very reluctant about binning old laws.

Legislation also lacks any intent. Of course, it's written with intent, but how you draft a law versus how you think it should work.

Take the recent "upskirting" legislation. The desire to include emotive language in it resulted in it being meaningless. It's now a crime if it's "sexual" and "not for commercial purposes". So paps taking pictures of a celebs knickers is OK, and as long as the perv has an upskirting website, they can carry on taking pictures in public.

Or banning deep fakes. Which is either going to fail, or end up banning all photoshoped images.

"riding an e-scooter on the highway, which is against the law, as is riding one on the pavement. "

Am I missing something here? Illegal on pavement, illegal on road, so where are they legal?

Also wasn't aware it was illegal to ride on the pavement or path. You've got to exercise caution, and not hit people, but you can certainly ride along trow paths etc. And yes, I've had shouty dickheads who think that not only do they know the law, but should enforce it too.

Re: "The age of digital money has arrived"

"And some people win the lottery. The lottery is more reliable."

If you believe that, then I've got some lottery tickets for you :D

While you can lose 100% of your bet when speculating, it's a matter of beating the crowds. So if you're a bit less greedy than the next fellow, you can make a buck or two. In general, there's no way to beat a lottery without either cheating it, or some complicity, such as buying every number. Even then, the majority of your tickets lose 100%.

The comparison you're looking for is perhaps horse racing or poker.

The best advice on how to make money on speculating is from a certain Nathan Rothschild, he of the Waterloo bond bluff: "I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon."

Re: Excellent news, my best wishes for his future BUT...

Ah, welcome to my ethics class :)

One take home questions I'd give students is: "How many patient's lives should a doctor save before they are allowed to murder someone?" with the follow up of "How many patient's lives should a doctor save before they are a pardon for murder?" and contrasting the two.

It's an indirect way of thinking about how we weight intent versus action. It's the same question, but set in different time.

I do like the answers I get. Young people are very anti-murder :D The catch-22 answer was quite good "One more than currently have" or the "A doctor could be allowed to murder someone, and still would not. Because doctor."

Re: Autopilots aren't infallible

"Kinda silly that highway crews have more backup systems than banks, huh?"

IMHO, not really.

Highway crew fail to safeguard themselves, with redundancies = dead or injured highway crew.

Bank CEO fails to safeguard their bank = golden parachute, early retirement, knighthood.

If you reward failure, you get more failure. If you punish failure, then you get redundancies.

Only solution

" Don't you know the plan has always been to keep them contained within the M25 and convinced it's an amazing place to live"

Perhaps we could build a wall?

Re: Too Easy

"He really believes it is a smart tactic, and that "trade wars are easy to win"."

He's following orders, which is also why much of the GoP is also in lock step.

It's a very calculated move. Essentially everything China has put on it's "invest in the future" policy list is having a tariff imposed. This results in less US demand for the Chinese emerging tech goods, hopefully more demand for domestic tech goods.

The counter tariffs will make more misery for Trump's base. This will potentially increase his support, since having someone to blame is pretty much his emotive appeal.

" he thinks he's a genius and knows more about trade than anyone else."

He acts like as soon as he's had something explained to him, he's known about it for years. I'm sure that worked well when he's mansplaining at one of his Epstein soirees, but it's terribly obvious when he's under the spotlight.

I'm just amazed that BoJo and Trump are the leaders of the free world. Not with a bang, but a whimper and all that.

Re: A monster made by the media

Of course jake doesn't like TV.

As we all know, any time a profession you understand is represented on TV, there will be important plot items that are implausible or impossible. This can really throw you out of your suspension of disbelief, ending any desire to see the rest of the show.

Since jake is a renaissance man, it's likely there are very few shows made that don't involve something he's an expert in while being worth his time to watch.

If you're going to watch one show, then perhaps try The Rookie. Middle aged guy gets divorced, moves to LA and joins the LAPD. Based on the book about a guy doing just that.

Nutters

"Or the extreme left ? Or just any one of a number of nutters?"

Considering that the majority of terrorist attacks in the US and UK are by right wingers, they are who I'd be worried about.

Mind you, they don't seem to have much of a problem acquiring the guns, bombs and trucks needed, so a flamethrower would just be bonus points.

Government funded research

" These are the things that will eventually put a manned base on the Moon, not governments, and certainly not politicians."

Even at this stage of advanced capitalism, no. Sorry. It's still governments or alliances of governments that are going to drive these things.

It sucks, but the only way we're currently able to collect and allocate resources on this scale and duration is through government.

The main thing that SpaceX or players like it change is the economics of various stages of the process. Not many companies do rocketery, thus the players get to charge more for less. Many more cases like this, companies being created to make a better or cheaper product. Perfect space for private enterprise.

But building and establishing a settlement off earth? Let me know when the private sector runs something like the ISS. Moonbases and off world mining are another big leap forward. Assuming that the technology exists for robot extracting and refining, then we'll be using that all over Earth first.

Space exploration is a very high level of government spending. You've got to be covering a lot of other stuff first, notably infrastructure and education. Without those, no rockets.

Most of our modern technologies come from government funded research and development. Governments are only motivated to do this when they face an existential threat. Without the second world war, we might not have jet engines on the scale we do now. We could have had jets in the thirties, no technical impediement, and the theory was all there. Hell, the RAF could have been flying jets by 1938, if the same funding had been put in place.

Same thing for rockets. Or computers. Or micro computers. Or nuclear power. Or the internet. Or TOR.

If it's useful for government, it might get done. And all the useful things developed along the way to make that happen, society gains the benefit.

Re: Recovering after loss of power - paper bootstrap.

"My audit finding didn’t go down well but my case for a policy change got the OIM’s support."

I thought that was the exact point of such an audit.

Bad policy is made. In order for this to be changed either management listen to common sense (if they didn't like the report, they aren't keen on being told they are wrong) or you prove this is a bad policy because it is being circumvented.

It's like security. If you make it too inconvenient relative to the protection needed, people will just find a way around it.

Re: Push Notifications?

@Roland6 - Of course. Hard liquor is from five years up, and topical application on gums when teething.

Beer is from any age. We add hops so that the wee buggers don't steal it all :D

Re: Typically they require

There was a fraudster in NZ who defrauded the government (~20 identites used for benefits) of several million over a couple of decades.

He'd invested the money in various things, many of which had produced very high returns. Apple stock etc.

His brief argued that he should only have to pay back the stolen amount plus interest, plus the fines.

Can't recall what the judge ordered, but he did suggest that the government super fund consider hiring the guy as an investment advisor.

Re: They are going to store my money in the cloud‽

Bah, I prefer Lego or Playmobil.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3291456

"They are going to store my money in the cloud"

Safety deposit boxes are going to still be real world.

Oh you mean your bank account? That's not your money, that's a debt the bank owes you. The ledger being on the cloud rather than a piece of vellum is probably safer, but if the bank folds, you're relying on deposit insurance.

Re: One down, God knows how many to go

The Dutch cyber cops are very very VERY good. Many of the busted dark web souks are done by the Dutchies gathering intelligence that they pass to the relevant authorities.

They also recognise cyber cash (and digital goods in general) as having the same legal status as real world goods. If you've not declared it, it's hiding assets. Stealing someone's steam account is the same as if you'd nicked the physical copies.

Gives them a legal route to monitor crypto transactions, among other things.