Posts by LucreLout

Re: @ Halcin

if we want to trade with the EU then we have to comply with their rules for trade.

That isn't how free trade agreements work, sorry. It is what the EU would like us to do, but that is only as important as what we would like them to do. No more, and no less.

There is also no amount of trade on Earth with other countries that can replace being shut out of Single Market

Utter nonsense. Utter nonsense for which I shall ask for a citation, knowing already that you don't have one.

Here's mine:

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/eu-position-in-world-trade/index_en.htm

Their own graph shows you clearly why you've erred in making up such a rediculous premise, and their graph includes our part of that trade, which is substantial. Remove us from it and literally any two of the nations on there have the same trade weight globally as the rEU.

Re: But it will be worth it

The utter delusion just goes on and on. Completely blind, are we?

Do you live your whole life in this sort of unwarranted paranoid terror? I genuinely pity you.

Re: But it will be worth it

Eu will NOT allow a non-Eu country to run the core Eu financial services. This is not negotiable, not subject to change and not subject to any rabbits out of a hat.

But we will continue to provide the capital and run the services either way. Passporting ending is going to massively increase the cost of borrowing for rEU states, states which can ill afford to further sink into deficit.

The City isn't leaving London. It just isn't. A few desks may move and some Euro trading will move, but all the FX needed in order to borrow from China/USA/Elsewhere in EUR will still be routed through London, because it will have to be.

If the EU aren't our partners anymore then they are our competition. And we will compete. That has rarely ended well for Europe.

Re: But it will be worth it

It has been clear from the very first day that you cannot have the same advantage outside the EU as inside. That's hardly hard to understand and it's all there is to understand.

The main problem that causes for rEU is that they'll already have lost 1/3rd of their net contributions to the budget and will have committed something like 15-20% of what remains to pay the net WTO trade tariffs their trade surplus with us generates.

The more Europe tries to harm us, the deeper they'll have to dig into their own pockets (only Germany runs a large enough surplus) or the harder they'll have to cut back on the free money heading east. Neither will be very popular with countries already grappling with their own freedom movements.

While they grapple with that, they need to reach the Trump target of 2% of defence spending, which in Denmark is the cost equivalent of abolishing free university education and free childcare. It's not going to be an easy sell, but if we announce that we won't defend anyone not meeting their NATO agreement, they either go begging to Trump or they run the risk that Putin annexes more states.

That is not to say the UK won't also take an economic hit, but we'll be able to recover far quicker than rEU due to signing new FTAs with the ROTW. We simply need to make clear to the rEU that they're at the front of the queue for an FTA this year, thereafter, the back.

No reasonable FTA, and we drop corporate tax rates to pull in the global corporations from elsewhere in the rEU, which will further dent their domestic budgets while bolstering our own. Either the UK and rEU take a little pain and have a civilised fair agreement, or we hurt the hell out of eachother instead - remainers seem to think only the rEU can inflict pain, and that is simply not the case.

Re: But it will be worth it

Otherwise it's border controls in Ireland followed by a resumption of IRA bombing campaigns.

No it isn't. The border in Ireland we'd leave open and let the rEU force Ireland to build one, which they would have to do.

The IRA are finished at this point. America can't and won't fund them - seriously, nobody there now thinks it was a good idea to pay the IRA to bomb their best (and at this point damn near only) friends. There would be no softly softly approach from the security services now, and anyone playing shennanigans would find themselves on the receiving end of a drone strike or a ticket to Cuba.

At this point I'm about as worried about the IRA as I am about Musks Tesla getting lost and landing on my roof.

A hard border may be difficult for Ireland, but they always have the Irexit option to consider. Irexit is really the only option left on the table that would avoid a hard land border. Its politically impossible for the UK to agree to a united Republic of Ireland, so if we're out of the rEU and they're in it, well, hard border it shall be. It may not be popular, but there are no better solutions on the table.

That, and the rEU could, you know, stop being so childish and sign up to a meaningful FTA that reduced the inconvenience at said border.

In terms of US goverment funding it is not even a rounding error.

Quite. Just mandate that all government & state employees will have tap water available rather than bottled water in meetings etc would probably save more money each year than they're talking about here.... while they're dooing thay, they have a car, on Mars.

One of the things they have to balance is what they expect to learn if the launch, transit, and landing succeed for whatever they do next; against the continued learning opportunities for having a whole bunch of scientific instruments successfully deployed on Mars already.

I can't imagine we've learned all we can about Mars witht he currently deployed configuration. We've only covered a few miles. Who knows what we'll discover over the next ridge.

Re: And the proverbial "thinking man"?

And the proverbial "thinking man"?

Probably wouldn't want either a self driving car or KFC.

I think I'd want both.

Re: Have I missed something?

When the car has no option but to crash does it place the lives of the car occupants above those on the street.

Ultimately, yes. Even if that is not the default behaviour, people will produce modifications that will allow such decisions to be predetermined.

That's no different to a human driving though, is it? It requires truly selfless reasoning and balls that'd shame Superman to crash into a tree instead of a person in the road, if doing so is likely to kill you. Maybe I could bring myself to do it if its a child in the road and my child is not in the car, but if my child is in the car, then whoever or whatever is in the road is shit outta luck. Sorry. You'll not find any parent make any other decision either, despite the howls of protest that will doubtless follow.

I don't see why society expects AI to behave better than they would themselves - even if it did, they'd start changing it because they wouldn't like the outcomes - does your smart home dob you into the police because it can detect weed being smoked? Perhaps your smart home could tell your GP the truth about how much you eat, drink (alcohol), smoke, and your fitbit can explain just how little exercise you really do? Any limitations on such behaviours won't be technical.

Re: Have I missed something?

Why would autonomous cars (when they arrive in 2080) need to read road signs?

Well, two obvious reasons.

Firstly because they convey mandatory information to which the vehicle must adhere immediately, not once someone gets around to updating the map. Getting a dozen speeding tickets because what was a 30mph limit on Friday is now a 20mph limit on Monday and your map hasn't been updated yet, is going to be annoying, and expensive.

Secondly because non-automated road users (other cars, trucks, vans, pedestrians, cyclists etc) will be using the signs to inform their decisions - understanding what those road users are likely / supposed to do next will be a key part in not running them over.

The problem seems readily solvable - use a better image set for road signs, and make sure the car understands that not everything at the side of a road is a mandatory road sign - some are just adverts for the village fete, or hangover food.

Some signs cover a wide, changeable, and semi-unpredictable area. "Wild ponies or horses" being a good example, or riding schools. Many horses apparently confuse plastic bags stuck in hedges to be a vortex to another universe, and are likely to misbehave. It'd be best for all if the AI doesn't assume the horses will be in the fields, or moving slowly at the side of the road.

Temporary road closures for say road races (running etc) won't always be known about in advance in CA. or wherever the update is done, and if you're relying on humans to ensure the maps are correct at the time of use, then you're going to get human error. Anyone having lived in Newcastle-under-Lyme will be very familiar with truckers getting lost looking for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, at least in the days before GPS. People make mistakes, so cars relying on maps updated or created by humans are going to need to drive to the conditions in play on the road at the time of arrival, not what they should be according to the map.

Re: Political correctness

And then, it does absolutely nothing to explain why black people are so rare in engineering.

Quite obviously because they choose to be.

There is not one single avenue to education, in Europe at least, that discriminates against black people becoming engineers. There's nothing against oriental folk ..... or hispanic, etc. And there's nothing in favour of white people there either. Loans for education or free education, are available to all irrespective of skin colour.

If some predominantly white continents, such as Europe & North America, prioritise higher education more than predominantly black continents, such Africa, you may get a racial disparity in educated professions. I doubt that is the key reason here, which is why I suggest it is because they choose other professions, because I meet a lot of black people that have chosen the medical profession rather than engineering, IT, legal, or accountancy.

Why are there fewer women in IT? Because fewer of them choose to continue their education in the subject than do men. Nothing, certainly not 'positive' discrimination, will do anything to redress a perceived or actual problematic imbalance until the education component is first addressed. Hiring someone because of their gender or race over a better educated candidate with more experience is the height of stupidity. If you're not capable of hiring the best person before you because of your own racism or mysoginy then you shouldn't be hiring people at all. So far this year none of the candidates I've recommended hiring have been white men, but that's not because I'm trying to tick diveristy criteria, it's just because the best candidates that applied this round weren't white guys. Go figure.

You want to level the numbers, then make IT compulsory up to at least GCSE level. Real IT, not a word processing course - programming, devops, networks etc.

Time for OpenOffice, LibreOffice and any other Office variant to come in and take M$Office's place then?

Good luck with that.

I use OpenOffice at home for nearly everything. It works for me and has done for years. Where it won't work, is when some poor schmuck has to support 10,000+ middle managers and secretaries (of all genders) cluelessly trying to use the same short cuts, macros etc that they'd built up over a career of using MS Office. The costs involved in moving are greater than the costs of the perpetual licences, especially when bought in bulk.

Does OpenOffice do everything I need from an office suite? Yes, yes it does. But its not your IT-savvy users that you need to keep moving at the same pace, its the other crowd.

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over - @TRT

There's some little wedges that you can buy that stops the seat in front reclining. The occupier just thinks the mechanism's broken or non-existent.

I'd assumed they were some massive horrible thing bolted to the arm rests. Google says not. They're small enough to go in a pocket and they don't fasten to the arm rests. Great, that's my knees saved from the transatlantic tyranny of small men!

Re: How bad does it have to get?

How bad does it have to get before people simply decide not to fly?

We don't all fly by choice.

I mostly fly to visit the inlaws - Ryanair are least inconvenient flight destination airports with the lowest total travel time.

Almost all other flights are for work, which mandates that I go, and on the lowest logical fare - usually VA, which makes Ryanair's legroom seem positively spacious.

I dislike flying, but with some simple tweaks it could me made only as loathsome as the train. Come retirement, I intend to avoid the use of either as much as humanly possible.

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

why do seats recline?

This ^^^^

Every flight I've had to take in the last 12 months I've had some small man recline the seat for the entire flight. The problem, for me, is I barely fit in the leg room available before the seat goes back; it's actually painful as well as uncomfortable once the seat is reclined. I'd understand if the person in front was tall, but when they're short enough they couldn't meet the height restrictions at Disneyland, its even more annoying.

Surely its time to regulate airline seats so that they slide forward, thus reducing the legroom of the person wanting to recline the seat?

Re: CPS - never in the public interest.

The CPS are an incompetent shower of utter stupididty. At least they were under Kier Starmer, the last time I was forced to have dealings with them, and I don't suppose they've improved in the interim. It's time they were scrapped - cleared out top to bottom, and replaced with something fit for purpose.

And, no, I've never even been the accused, let alone the guilty.

Re: Set a precedent?

Maybe this will also set a precedent where an alleged offence is deemed to have taken place where the alleged offender is physically located, not where the remote system is located.

I was wondering the same thing, but in a much wider context.

Can someone with any legal knowledge explain to me how this verdict works?

If I understand it correctly (and I may not) the premise is that because he was sat at his computer in the UK operating (ok, hacking) a computer in the USA, he is considered to have comitted the crime here and not in the USA. That is the exact reversal of how major banks etc get around the EU data protection laws, where they have people sat in India operating a computer within the EU (usually some sort of virt). The idea being the data has then not left the EU.

They seem like mutually exclusive interpretations of essentially the same situation, and I'm not sure how both can persist? Does this not mean that my data is now being processed in India because that is where the operator sits?

Re: And it doesn't sound like the actual residents of the town were responsible

This makes me very resentful. If there is no justice in how the system works it loses its credibility.

In the UK there is no justice in speed enforcement.

At the outset of this post let me say I have never been charged with or convicted of any offence, including motoring offences. I've not even had a speed awareness course. That, however, does not imply I obeyed the law....... I've also got 20 years no claims bonus despite never protecting it.

There's lots of arguments about the dangers of speed, which are usually simplistic and most often miss the point about safe driving and accident avoidance (almost all accidents are caused by lack of obervation, anticipation, and correct & timely reaction). A point routinely missed by the anti-speed lobby is that often perfectly sensible limits are reduced for political reasons, leading to an inevitable uptick in non-compliance, which in turn leads to the deployment of cameras, which leads to the resentment & disdain in which the law is held. In the case of this article, it has literally been used as a tax and not as law enforcement.

I've never been caught speeding, despite speeding for decades - though I rarely speed now. I'd keep my speeding to out of town areas and motorways, but when I was younger, and before it was an instant ban, I'd regularly be doing 100mph on quiet motorways (overnight). Fast reflexes and good observation kept my licence clean. And yet, during that period I watched as older drivers such as parents of my friends, my dad etc amassed points as though they made prizes, and usually for far lower speeds than mine. I presume they were getting caught because they lacked the reflexes or observational skills to avoid cameras. Where's the justice in that?

Re: Override Idiotic Wetware Drivers Option Please

At a very minimum, automatic speed limiters would improve compliance and reduce driver stress

Personally, I don't want higher limits in town; For most urban streets 30 is fine, however, they'd be inevitable with enforced speed limiters. The only reason the roads move as well as they do is that most people ignore most limits most of the time. Before jumping to dispute this, try driving on any national speed limit dual carriageway at any time of day and stick rigidly to the limit. You'll notice you're constantly being overtaken by all manner of road users.

You'd also have to automate "overtake mode" to eliminate the all too frequent situation where a vehicle restricted to a lower speed limit is dragging along 30+ cars in its wake because those at the front lack the skills to overtake safely or the knowledge to pull back and increase stopping distances such that the rolling road block may be passed in sections rather than one hit. I imagine that will scare the hell out of the first few passengers to experience it, especially when conditions change and the car has to retreat back into the stack after beginning an overtake. For this reason I imagine most bikers would resist having a limiter too.

Re: paying dividends when the pension fund is in deficit.

Should be a law (etc)

One of the main reasons there isn't a law in that regard is because it'd snag public sector pensions in with it. The actual cost of provision of those schemes is just over 50% of the emloyees salary, if you price up comparable defined contribution schemes, and in almost all cases, there is no money pot backing it.

If the government suddenly had to find the sort of money it would have to have to fund public sector pensions, they'd have to cut spending by a truly colossal amount that really would knacker most if not all public services.

There's a generational fairness issue in play too - almost everyone under 45, if they have a pension, has a defined contribution pension. These are invested in the shares - those greedy shareholders most people like to pillory are simply their younger colleagues. Stopping dividends would crater share prices, thus knackering everyones pension in short order, including the schemes you were trying to fund which will also be invested in the stock market.

I agree that it is immoral that billionaires run up these scheme deficits and bugger off on thier 3rd yacht leaving people close to retirement right in the shite. But our legislators have never covered themselves in glory, and the risks of legislating against dividends where schemes have a deficit has more potential to scupper the economy than almost anything else. Were such a law to be targetted at boards and owners personal assets however, it might bring their focus to mind on how stable their comapnies are in the longer term.

Re: First create the infrastructure for taxes

I suspect distance-based taxation is going to be the preferred option.

Time and distance.

They'll charge you more to use the same road at rush hour in order to try to spread traffic around. Which won't work, because the time at which you're driving to work isn't usually discretionary, it's imposed by your employer.

Re: First create the infrastructure for taxes

Once that system in place, stop offering credits, start with low level taxation and then crank it up until the taxpayers are squealing. Back it down a little to show everyone the government is all about tax cuts and then increase at every opportunity.

I think you've nailed it.

The hole in their plan is my plan to have a generator power the cars recharging, and power the generator with home brew biodiesel. It might put a little dent in their zero emissions from transport plan, but it'll save a fortune in taxes over the life of the vehicle.

Re: Oh do fuck off.

As much as I dislike arseange I disagree with him getting arrested and shipped off to land of the free.

Ok, why?

Do you disagree because you don't think he fled Sweden to avoid arrest?

Do you disagree because you don't think he broke UK law by jumping bail?

Do you disagree because you don't think he broke the law in the USA?

Or is it just that you disagree because you don't like the USA?

There's no actual evidence the USA will ship him anywhere, even to jail, because they've not even made a request for him at this stage.

That he broke the law in Sweden is debatable. The appropriate place for that debate is not here, it is in their courts.

That he broke the law in the UK is not debateable, the offence of bail jumping is complete.

That he broke the law in the USA is again debateable and again the appropriate place for that debate is in their courts.

I'm struggling to find any greater reason in your post than "I don't like Aermica", which frankly, is hardly the point.