As far as I'm aware, that quote ("The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them") was always attributed to Lenin, not the Chinese, although even that is apparently open to question:-
One I've heard was Lenin's supposed quote: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." A few problems.
One, Lenin was not a pithy speaker. He didn't come up with great one-liners. The actual quote was "They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."
Two, Lenin never literally said it. He never delivered this line publicly during his lifetime. He wrote it in some notes. These notes were collected after Lenin's death in 1924 and were eventually published in 1961.
Three, while I can't find the original text, I've heard the passage is taken out of context. Lenin's main point in the original manuscript was that some short-sighted communists thought they could work with capitalists and dupe them into serving communist goals. Lenin gave the passage as an example of what these people thought. But Lenin disagreed with trying to make deals with capitalists and was warning communists against trying what the quote suggested.
The whole point of the walled-garden, aka App Store, is to prevent exactly this sort of thing. The fact that this sort of thing is able to exist for more than 5 minutes simply shows that Apple is perfectly willing to take its 30% commission and turn a blind eye to scams.
Hyperbolic much?
Doesn't look particularly hyperbolic to me. Looks like a reasonable- if sceptical- conclusion, given the evidence. Honestly, you can disagree with it, but it doesn't seem overly "hyperbolic" given Apple's power over their curated app store.
What happens to you when you encounter a real problem like when you forgot to buy Doritos at the store?
What's the point you're allegedly making here? That such things are a "Mom's basement dweller" problem?
It's 2017. We're long past the "Internet is for nerds era". We're even long past the point where we have to point out that this is no longer the case... every man and his dog, and "Mom" herself has an Internet-connected smartphone these days. This appears to be a scam targeted at these less tech-literate users.
You're suggesting it's not a problem that one of the largest smartphone manufacturers doesn't appear to be doing enough to stop obvious scams that it should be in their power to police- within their walled-garden app store (as OP suggests, this is allegedly the whole point)?
This is barely even a "first world problem" any more. iPhones may arguably still be first world luxuries, but lower-end Android smartphones and the like are being pushed in developing countries, and such issues are no longer solely the concern of rich nerds with their playthings.
So, yeah. What was your point? Or was it just a bit of disingenuous shaming combined with the barely-veiled "basement nerd" cliche in order to shut down the argument without actually saying what was wrong with it?
No, you really can't. It doesn't work in politics. You waste your own time by doing it.
Patronise me all you like- I'm well aware that calling out people on what they are (even if they are that thing) doesn't work in politics- but I'm not a politician, and not trying to be one. I'm discussing my personal response to anyone in that position.
if you consider the process to be illegitimate, it is illegitimate and that doesn't change.
That only applies if you chose not to vote for that reason, and I'm willing to be that it doesn't apply to the vast majority of the 27% who didn't vote. If it had been more than a tiny percentage, we'd have heard about it.
Leaving aside your false presumption that you can tell people to shut up
That's my personal opinion, and yes I can. Those who chose not to participate are still free to bleat about the consequences of something they were eligible to change but didn't, but I don't have to respect or listen to their far-too-late regret. The "STFU" is essentially shorthand for this.
a reason to protest so far as to refuse to participate
I agree that the referendum was badly designed, but there is no major evidence of a protest "no vote" movement, and thus no prospect that non-votes would have been taken that way.
Given that, I think it's fair to assume that the vast majority of non-votes were *not* for that reason.
The electorate rallies around the Conservative Party [..] but at least *some* chance at getting a non-catastrophic outcome from the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
Really? I wouldn't even credit them with that. May has said repeatedly that "no deal is better than a bad deal" and made quite clear she's prepared to walk with nothing more than WTO terms. This is presented as a negotiating tactic, but in truth it's obvious arrogance from someone who- along with her hard-Brexiteering colleagues and other Little Englanders- thinks that Britain still has the power, influence and position it had in the days of Empire; something that was already mostly in the past when it joined the EU in the early 1970s.
Someone who thinks that they *will* be able to demand what they want, and even if they don't will get away with it anyway thanks to their "special relationship" with the United States and supposed connections with the Commonwealth, i.e. the former empire. As this article says:-
A senior Indian official has been reported as saying, "We cannot separate free movement of people from the free flow of goods and services." Sound familiar? It's much the same as every European bureaucrat pointing out that Britain can't cherrypick its terms for accessing the single market. [..] The post-imperial delusion of "old friendships" is going to shatter in the coming months, revealing a relationship of coercion that no longer holds.
And the salient part:-
Britain is a bully going to a school reunion, only to find his victims now have better jobs and better lives than him.
Regarding your second option:-
Enough of the electorate decides to vote for other parties that we end up with a hung parliament and [etc] Never mind being careful what you wish for; the lesson here is that you need to be *really* careful what you vote for, because however this pans out it's going to be on the UK electorate just as much as it is on the politicians they voted for.
...you might begin to understand why (as a Scot in favour of independence) I'm not even considering entertaining the possibility of playing along with the UK electoral and political system that- from my point of view- is fundamentally broken, does not- and cannot- reflect the difference in political opinion between Scotland and England (and Wales) that has been growing since the Thatcher years but is now at breaking point.
We currently have 56 of 59(!) seats held by the SNP, yet are ultimately governed by the Conservative party that has just 1 seat in Scotland, but won due to voters in England and Wales.
We voted 62 to 38% to remain within the EU, yet are being dragged out because voters in England and Wales wanted to leave, as part of a campaign that started as a sop to the Tory party's Euro-sceptic right wing- primarily in South-East England- and consistently revolved around them, using the future of the UK as nothing more than a political football for their internal squabbles.
To add insult to injury, Scotland's position within the EU post-independence had been a central plank of the scaremongering "Better Together" campaign during the independence referendum. I'm surprised that the likes of Alistair Darling still have the cheek to show their faces when we saw how that turned out.
So- England and Wales heading in a hard right UKIP-like direction (UKIP themselves are only in decline because the Tories have mostly taken up that position for themselves and become- as you say "UKIP lite") while Scotland is completely different.
Do I want to remain tied to an elephant that clearly doesn't want to go the same way I do? No.
Only a good third, 17 of the 46 million, electorate voted for a Brexit, implementing it without a say of the other two-third is plain undemocratic.
Speaking as a "Remain" voter... still no. Unless you're going to legally require people to vote, then that's how it works. It's arguable that (like most referenda) the Brexit vote should have been designed to require a larger majority, but that's beside the point here. The 27% of people who were eligible to vote but chose not to had their chance.
If any of them were in favour of Remain and *ever* want to whine about getting screwed over by Brexit... STFU. It's too late. You had your chance, and you wasted it. You chose to accept what you were given, even if that's only because you were too f*****g lazy to visit a polling station. You're as much to blame as the Leave voters and you deserve the consequences.
It looks like there's a good chance that Theresa May will be gone whatever the outcome of the election.
Yes; it was clear from the start- from May herself- that the reason for calling this election was to increase the Tory majority and thus win a clear mandate to pursue Brexit in the way that she wanted.
Of course, back then it seemed almost certain that she would increase her majority- Labour was seen to be in disarray and expected to lose disastrously, and there was no real UK-wide competition.
So expectations- and the whole reason she called the election- require her to increase her majority. If this doesn't happen- and even if she wins with a reduced majority- it's still going to look very bad for her.
Ha ha!
If she doesn't doesn't deliver an increased Tory majority then expect the knives to come out.
Indeed, even the Unionist-biased Scotland on Sunday (the Scottish Tories having positioned themselves as the party of the Union for those opposed to the independence-favouring SNP) ran with a lead story saying that anything less than the overwhelming victory she effectively promised could well prove fatal to May.
"I'm not blaming the IT workers" isn't true, when you follow it up with blaming the IT workers (contracted).
If you go back and pay attention to what I was *actually* saying- rather than viewing things through the prism of your own personal experience- you'll see that the only thing the contracted workers were "blamed" for was for being employed on the basis of cost rather than skill, and for being treated as a commodity.
In other words, it's quite obvious that it was primarily management- both at the contractor and at BA- that were being blamed here. Well, at least I thought it was obvious.
Any blame I'd put at the feet of whatever amoral rent-a-manager decided he could save a few pennies by ditching their established IT staff then contracting their jobs out to a third party company on the other side of the world.
Let's face it, there *are* likely quite a few talented IT people from India- but as the Indians themselves have said, the good ones are probably working in other countries, or at least not for race-to-the-bottom contractors likely paying peanuts to staff with patchy educational skills. The contractor probably making a *very* nice profit on them- still appearing cheaper than the client's existing staff, while overselling their talent. (And I've no doubt that those employees are peons to whatever mediocre middle management the contractor has- and their circumstances in general- so it's questionable how much they're to blame personally).
I've absolutely no doubt that the (apparent) ability to treat IT staff as a pure commodity is very appealing to such managers. At least until the shit hits the fan and it turns out that (surprise, surprise) it doesn't always work that way.
Even if it was a power supply issue (and I'm pretty sceptical about that), it sounds like the resulting problems would still be a result of their penny-pinching sacking of the experienced staff most likely to know what they were doing (and be in a position to do it). It's sure as hell not their responsibility any more. And given how they were treated, they'd be perfectly entitled to feel schadenfreude at their former employer's travails.
Somewhere, there is probably an IT guy who has been begging for the budget to upgrade some old machines, or move the services onto a cloud provider and was ignored.
On the contrary, that IT guy was probably made redundant in 2016. As the BBC article notes:-
The GMB union says this meltdown could have been avoided if BA had not made hundreds of IT staff redundant and outsourced their jobs to India at the end of last year.[..]
"BA in 2016 made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India... many viewed the company's actions as just plain greedy."
Let's hope BA continues to reap as many "savings" from that outsourcing as they did today.:-)
Way to go to miss the point being made. Unless you genuinely *did* mean that you'd be the obsequiously-deluded type happy to avoid behaviour that people in free countries consider basic rights, but which have been criminalised in this case.
Not that the intention is that you're supposed to be able to follow them anyway, but that the government/regime can catch you in one of a million ways under laws that are impossible to follow.
I've no doubt that even under a non-maliciously written legal system in a free country, the vast majority of people commit multiple technical breaches of the law every day if you wanted to pry far enough.
Government doesn't care a shit if you buy bunny-fur bondage gear or pay strippers.
But it's convenient to have that information and be able to use it to blackmail and/or put pressure on someone if it's convenient for them. For example, threatening to let the wife know, or simply discrediting someone by exposing their furry hobbies to the public at large.
Besides which, you assume that just because something's legal now it won't be made illegal. Not because the government gives a damn about that issue in itself, but because- again- it's convenient to be able to hold these "crimes" over peoples' heads if necessary.
The more that is known about you, the more power government- or anyone else- has over you.
Five or so years ago, Intel rolled out something horrible. Intel’s Management Engine (ME) is a completely separate computing environment running on Intel chipsets that has access to everything. The ME has network access, access to the host operating system, memory, and cryptography engine. The ME can be used remotely even if the PC is powered off. If that sounds scary, it gets even worse: no one knows what the ME is doing, and we can’t even look at the code. When — not ‘if’ — the ME is finally cracked open, every computer running on a recent Intel chip will have a huge security and privacy issue. Intel’s Management Engine is the single most dangerous piece of computer hardware ever created.
Pedantry; it doesn't appear to be on every Intel chip, only those with vPro enabled(?) Still a horrible idea.
English is not the #1 language in the EU, even before Brexit
While we're on that subject, I'll more explicitly draw attention to the fact that- for those who clearly didn't bother to read it before criticising the guy in this thread- the article (and summary) state that
he said “English is losing importance” in Europe
Which is perfectly correct, given that the United Kingdom of Little England and Some Irrelevant Bits has chosen to leave the EU. Agree with that or not, but pay attention to what he actually said.
(Given that this was probably a snub to Theresa May- and I can't blame him given that she ramped up hostility against the EU by accusing them of interfering in the upcoming general election with no real evidence- I might be a bit annoyed if I was an English-speaking Irishman. But it's undeniably true that English *will* be less important within Europe in future).
When I point out what I suspected what you might have been trying to get at, you come back with the comment above.
Yep. If you want to play silly buggers like that, I am indeed entitled to "suspect" what you might have been getting at, but wouldn't- or rather couldn't- come out and say. That's what one does when lacking the necessary information.
There's no chance in hell that Turkey will be able to join the EU and the chance is decreasing rapidly.
Exactly. Turkey has been pushing to join the EU for decades now, and it has (of its own- or rather of Erdogan's- own volition) been moving further away from meeting the requirements to join.
Even a few years ago, before things got this bad, it was generally seen as clear that Erdogan was not interested in joining the EU- let alone meeting the conditions for membership- but only in exploiting it for political capital... particularly when they were rejected so he could blame them for anti-Muslim bias, say they had no intention of letting them in in the first place, and use it as an excuse to bolster his own autocratic regime.
It'll also be noted how Erdogan exploited the Syrian refugee crisis in an attempt to extort concessions from the EU by threatening non-cooperation and effectively swamping the EU with refugees coming via Turkey. With freedom of speech- let alone expression- being cracked down on to the current extent, with the state shamelessly exploiting its power to push its own message while persecuting and suppressing any opposition, Turkey has- like Russia- become a mockery of a democracy.
Erdogan got his way- regardless of whether the Turks themselves are decent people, this is not a country- in anything like its current state- it would be acceptable or remotely workable to have within the EU. But then, there was never a cat's chance in hell of this happening anyway (and now it's more like a snowman's chance).
If I'd thought there was *anything* like a realistic prospect of Erdogan's Turkey being allowed to join the EU, there's no way I'd have voted "Remain". (Spoiler; I voted "Remain".)
Of course, that didn't stop self-serving scum like Boris Johnson- the guy who shifted his allegiance to improve his own prospects of becoming Prime Minister- using this as a scaremongering tactic to promote the Leave case, and in an utterly shameless display of hypocrisy, once they'd won, saying they were going to help Turkey join the EU. What a piece of shit.
So you can't possibly imagine how a company can provide economic benefits (and others) beyond simply paying taxes either?
You seem to think the onus is on us to guess- and make- your point for you.
Yes, I suspected that's what you might have been getting at. I had also suspected you might do the usual low-taxation fans' trick of parlaying this into an excuse to argue against taxation in general, using the line that- rather than X having to pay their fair share of taxes, it would- of course- be far more reasonable for their competitors to pay less.
I've no interest in living in a country like the US, which- relative to the amount of wealth that exists there- still has (e.g.) relatively poor infrastructure and healthcare (#)- because everyone's racing to the bottom to avoid taxation to pay for the facilities they use.
(#) Horrendously overpriced and broken before, only partially fixed with a compromise system (Obamacare) that was closer to what the Republicans had originally proposed before *they* moved further to the right and smeared it as socialism, now in the process of being broken again. Couldn't give a toss, I don't give there, not my problem.
Looks like she thought it through better than you did with your original pat comment.
Also looks like your response of would-be smug condescension was an attempt to obscure the fact that (contrary to the implication) you had nothing to come back with.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ever had one of those TRS-80 pocket computers, you were running a Sharp device and didn't even know it due to the cross branding.
Depends- some were apparently made by Sharp, others by Casio.
One I've heard was Lenin's supposed quote: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." A few problems.
One, Lenin was not a pithy speaker. He didn't come up with great one-liners. The actual quote was "They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."
Two, Lenin never literally said it. He never delivered this line publicly during his lifetime. He wrote it in some notes. These notes were collected after Lenin's death in 1924 and were eventually published in 1961.
Three, while I can't find the original text, I've heard the passage is taken out of context. Lenin's main point in the original manuscript was that some short-sighted communists thought they could work with capitalists and dupe them into serving communist goals. Lenin gave the passage as an example of what these people thought. But Lenin disagreed with trying to make deals with capitalists and was warning communists against trying what the quote suggested.
The whole point of the walled-garden, aka App Store, is to prevent exactly this sort of thing. The fact that this sort of thing is able to exist for more than 5 minutes simply shows that Apple is perfectly willing to take its 30% commission and turn a blind eye to scams.
Hyperbolic much?
Doesn't look particularly hyperbolic to me. Looks like a reasonable- if sceptical- conclusion, given the evidence. Honestly, you can disagree with it, but it doesn't seem overly "hyperbolic" given Apple's power over their curated app store.
What happens to you when you encounter a real problem like when you forgot to buy Doritos at the store?
What's the point you're allegedly making here? That such things are a "Mom's basement dweller" problem?
It's 2017. We're long past the "Internet is for nerds era". We're even long past the point where we have to point out that this is no longer the case... every man and his dog, and "Mom" herself has an Internet-connected smartphone these days. This appears to be a scam targeted at these less tech-literate users.
You're suggesting it's not a problem that one of the largest smartphone manufacturers doesn't appear to be doing enough to stop obvious scams that it should be in their power to police- within their walled-garden app store (as OP suggests, this is allegedly the whole point)?
This is barely even a "first world problem" any more. iPhones may arguably still be first world luxuries, but lower-end Android smartphones and the like are being pushed in developing countries, and such issues are no longer solely the concern of rich nerds with their playthings.
So, yeah. What was your point? Or was it just a bit of disingenuous shaming combined with the barely-veiled "basement nerd" cliche in order to shut down the argument without actually saying what was wrong with it?
No, you really can't. It doesn't work in politics. You waste your own time by doing it.
Patronise me all you like- I'm well aware that calling out people on what they are (even if they are that thing) doesn't work in politics- but I'm not a politician, and not trying to be one. I'm discussing my personal response to anyone in that position.
if you consider the process to be illegitimate, it is illegitimate and that doesn't change.
That only applies if you chose not to vote for that reason, and I'm willing to be that it doesn't apply to the vast majority of the 27% who didn't vote. If it had been more than a tiny percentage, we'd have heard about it.
Leaving aside your false presumption that you can tell people to shut up
That's my personal opinion, and yes I can. Those who chose not to participate are still free to bleat about the consequences of something they were eligible to change but didn't, but I don't have to respect or listen to their far-too-late regret. The "STFU" is essentially shorthand for this.
a reason to protest so far as to refuse to participate
I agree that the referendum was badly designed, but there is no major evidence of a protest "no vote" movement, and thus no prospect that non-votes would have been taken that way.
Given that, I think it's fair to assume that the vast majority of non-votes were *not* for that reason.
The electorate rallies around the Conservative Party [..] but at least *some* chance at getting a non-catastrophic outcome from the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
Really? I wouldn't even credit them with that. May has said repeatedly that "no deal is better than a bad deal" and made quite clear she's prepared to walk with nothing more than WTO terms. This is presented as a negotiating tactic, but in truth it's obvious arrogance from someone who- along with her hard-Brexiteering colleagues and other Little Englanders- thinks that Britain still has the power, influence and position it had in the days of Empire; something that was already mostly in the past when it joined the EU in the early 1970s.
Someone who thinks that they *will* be able to demand what they want, and even if they don't will get away with it anyway thanks to their "special relationship" with the United States and supposed connections with the Commonwealth, i.e. the former empire. As this article says:-
A senior Indian official has been reported as saying, "We cannot separate free movement of people from the free flow of goods and services." Sound familiar? It's much the same as every European bureaucrat pointing out that Britain can't cherrypick its terms for accessing the single market. [..] The post-imperial delusion of "old friendships" is going to shatter in the coming months, revealing a relationship of coercion that no longer holds.
And the salient part:-
Britain is a bully going to a school reunion, only to find his victims now have better jobs and better lives than him.
Regarding your second option:-
Enough of the electorate decides to vote for other parties that we end up with a hung parliament and [etc] Never mind being careful what you wish for; the lesson here is that you need to be *really* careful what you vote for, because however this pans out it's going to be on the UK electorate just as much as it is on the politicians they voted for.
...you might begin to understand why (as a Scot in favour of independence) I'm not even considering entertaining the possibility of playing along with the UK electoral and political system that- from my point of view- is fundamentally broken, does not- and cannot- reflect the difference in political opinion between Scotland and England (and Wales) that has been growing since the Thatcher years but is now at breaking point.
We currently have 56 of 59(!) seats held by the SNP, yet are ultimately governed by the Conservative party that has just 1 seat in Scotland, but won due to voters in England and Wales.
We voted 62 to 38% to remain within the EU, yet are being dragged out because voters in England and Wales wanted to leave, as part of a campaign that started as a sop to the Tory party's Euro-sceptic right wing- primarily in South-East England- and consistently revolved around them, using the future of the UK as nothing more than a political football for their internal squabbles.
To add insult to injury, Scotland's position within the EU post-independence had been a central plank of the scaremongering "Better Together" campaign during the independence referendum. I'm surprised that the likes of Alistair Darling still have the cheek to show their faces when we saw how that turned out.
So- England and Wales heading in a hard right UKIP-like direction (UKIP themselves are only in decline because the Tories have mostly taken up that position for themselves and become- as you say "UKIP lite") while Scotland is completely different.
Do I want to remain tied to an elephant that clearly doesn't want to go the same way I do? No.
Only a good third, 17 of the 46 million, electorate voted for a Brexit, implementing it without a say of the other two-third is plain undemocratic.
Speaking as a "Remain" voter... still no. Unless you're going to legally require people to vote, then that's how it works. It's arguable that (like most referenda) the Brexit vote should have been designed to require a larger majority, but that's beside the point here. The 27% of people who were eligible to vote but chose not to had their chance.
If any of them were in favour of Remain and *ever* want to whine about getting screwed over by Brexit... STFU. It's too late. You had your chance, and you wasted it. You chose to accept what you were given, even if that's only because you were too f*****g lazy to visit a polling station. You're as much to blame as the Leave voters and you deserve the consequences.
It looks like there's a good chance that Theresa May will be gone whatever the outcome of the election.
Yes; it was clear from the start- from May herself- that the reason for calling this election was to increase the Tory majority and thus win a clear mandate to pursue Brexit in the way that she wanted.
Of course, back then it seemed almost certain that she would increase her majority- Labour was seen to be in disarray and expected to lose disastrously, and there was no real UK-wide competition.
So expectations- and the whole reason she called the election- require her to increase her majority. If this doesn't happen- and even if she wins with a reduced majority- it's still going to look very bad for her.
Ha ha!
If she doesn't doesn't deliver an increased Tory majority then expect the knives to come out.
Indeed, even the Unionist-biased Scotland on Sunday (the Scottish Tories having positioned themselves as the party of the Union for those opposed to the independence-favouring SNP) ran with a lead story saying that anything less than the overwhelming victory she effectively promised could well prove fatal to May.
Ha ha HA.
I'm about ready to stop visiting Slashdot after coming here since this site started.
Huh? I've been on Slashdot for 15 years, and they've had trolls like that as long as I've been here. Not defending them, but they're hardly new.
The GNAA thing must be at least ten years old by now, and "penis bird" is even older than that IIRC.
"I'm not blaming the IT workers" isn't true, when you follow it up with blaming the IT workers (contracted).
If you go back and pay attention to what I was *actually* saying- rather than viewing things through the prism of your own personal experience- you'll see that the only thing the contracted workers were "blamed" for was for being employed on the basis of cost rather than skill, and for being treated as a commodity.
In other words, it's quite obvious that it was primarily management- both at the contractor and at BA- that were being blamed here. Well, at least I thought it was obvious.
Don't blame the IT workers.
Pretty sure I never did that.
Any blame I'd put at the feet of whatever amoral rent-a-manager decided he could save a few pennies by ditching their established IT staff then contracting their jobs out to a third party company on the other side of the world.
Let's face it, there *are* likely quite a few talented IT people from India- but as the Indians themselves have said, the good ones are probably working in other countries, or at least not for race-to-the-bottom contractors likely paying peanuts to staff with patchy educational skills. The contractor probably making a *very* nice profit on them- still appearing cheaper than the client's existing staff, while overselling their talent. (And I've no doubt that those employees are peons to whatever mediocre middle management the contractor has- and their circumstances in general- so it's questionable how much they're to blame personally).
I've absolutely no doubt that the (apparent) ability to treat IT staff as a pure commodity is very appealing to such managers. At least until the shit hits the fan and it turns out that (surprise, surprise) it doesn't always work that way.
Even if it was a power supply issue (and I'm pretty sceptical about that), it sounds like the resulting problems would still be a result of their penny-pinching sacking of the experienced staff most likely to know what they were doing (and be in a position to do it). It's sure as hell not their responsibility any more. And given how they were treated, they'd be perfectly entitled to feel schadenfreude at their former employer's travails.
Somewhere, there is probably an IT guy who has been begging for the budget to upgrade some old machines, or move the services onto a cloud provider and was ignored.
On the contrary, that IT guy was probably made redundant in 2016. As the BBC article notes:-
The GMB union says this meltdown could have been avoided if BA had not made hundreds of IT staff redundant and outsourced their jobs to India at the end of last year.[..]
"BA in 2016 made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India... many viewed the company's actions as just plain greedy."
Let's hope BA continues to reap as many "savings" from that outsourcing as they did today. :-)
He's crying today.
Going by the likely response of the laid-off employees to the predicament of BA, I guess he *would* have tears coming out of his eyes.
That's a very good point too.
Well, don't commit crimes. Duh.
Way to go to miss the point being made. Unless you genuinely *did* mean that you'd be the obsequiously-deluded type happy to avoid behaviour that people in free countries consider basic rights, but which have been criminalised in this case.
Not that the intention is that you're supposed to be able to follow them anyway, but that the government/regime can catch you in one of a million ways under laws that are impossible to follow.
I've no doubt that even under a non-maliciously written legal system in a free country, the vast majority of people commit multiple technical breaches of the law every day if you wanted to pry far enough.
Government doesn't care a shit if you buy bunny-fur bondage gear or pay strippers.
But it's convenient to have that information and be able to use it to blackmail and/or put pressure on someone if it's convenient for them. For example, threatening to let the wife know, or simply discrediting someone by exposing their furry hobbies to the public at large.
Besides which, you assume that just because something's legal now it won't be made illegal. Not because the government gives a damn about that issue in itself, but because- again- it's convenient to be able to hold these "crimes" over peoples' heads if necessary.
The more that is known about you, the more power government- or anyone else- has over you.
Putting Internet accessible code running over the operating system was a terrible idea and this is the predictable outcome.
Coincidentally, around six weeks back, I bookmarked this article, originally written in 2016. Notably, it says that:-
Five or so years ago, Intel rolled out something horrible. Intel’s Management Engine (ME) is a completely separate computing environment running on Intel chipsets that has access to everything. The ME has network access, access to the host operating system, memory, and cryptography engine. The ME can be used remotely even if the PC is powered off. If that sounds scary, it gets even worse: no one knows what the ME is doing, and we can’t even look at the code. When — not ‘if’ — the ME is finally cracked open, every computer running on a recent Intel chip will have a huge security and privacy issue. Intel’s Management Engine is the single most dangerous piece of computer hardware ever created.
Pedantry; it doesn't appear to be on every Intel chip, only those with vPro enabled(?) Still a horrible idea.
English is not the #1 language in the EU, even before Brexit
While we're on that subject, I'll more explicitly draw attention to the fact that- for those who clearly didn't bother to read it before criticising the guy in this thread- the article (and summary) state that
he said “English is losing importance” in Europe
Which is perfectly correct, given that the United Kingdom of Little England and Some Irrelevant Bits has chosen to leave the EU. Agree with that or not, but pay attention to what he actually said.
(Given that this was probably a snub to Theresa May- and I can't blame him given that she ramped up hostility against the EU by accusing them of interfering in the upcoming general election with no real evidence- I might be a bit annoyed if I was an English-speaking Irishman. But it's undeniably true that English *will* be less important within Europe in future).
You say "cheese grater" semi-sarcastically
Damn right- have you ever tried grating cheese with one? They're completely useless.
Clicks live (RSS) bookmark for Slashdot on toolbar.
Notices story at top of list- "Slashdot Asks: Do You Still Use RSS?"- and clicks to find out more.
Thinks "I guess that's a yes, then".
I guess he *is* a satirical genius then. ;-)
The only thing I'm 'getting at' is generalized, thoughtless responses.
By providing the most content-free, pat answers yourself? Man, you are a satirical genius...
You seem to 'suspect' quite a lot. That's what one does when lacking the necessary information.
Another smug, vaguely insinuating non-response.
The hypocrisy is brilliant. You respond to someone's post with a snide comment that vaguely wants to suggest that you know better while actually saying nothing. When you get called out on that, you seemed to have expected me to join the dots that didn't even exist and respond to a point that you hadn't made in the first place.
When I point out what I suspected what you might have been trying to get at, you come back with the comment above.
Yep. If you want to play silly buggers like that, I am indeed entitled to "suspect" what you might have been getting at, but wouldn't- or rather couldn't- come out and say. That's what one does when lacking the necessary information.
There's no chance in hell that Turkey will be able to join the EU and the chance is decreasing rapidly.
Exactly. Turkey has been pushing to join the EU for decades now, and it has (of its own- or rather of Erdogan's- own volition) been moving further away from meeting the requirements to join.
Even a few years ago, before things got this bad, it was generally seen as clear that Erdogan was not interested in joining the EU- let alone meeting the conditions for membership- but only in exploiting it for political capital... particularly when they were rejected so he could blame them for anti-Muslim bias, say they had no intention of letting them in in the first place, and use it as an excuse to bolster his own autocratic regime.
It'll also be noted how Erdogan exploited the Syrian refugee crisis in an attempt to extort concessions from the EU by threatening non-cooperation and effectively swamping the EU with refugees coming via Turkey. With freedom of speech- let alone expression- being cracked down on to the current extent, with the state shamelessly exploiting its power to push its own message while persecuting and suppressing any opposition, Turkey has- like Russia- become a mockery of a democracy.
Erdogan got his way- regardless of whether the Turks themselves are decent people, this is not a country- in anything like its current state- it would be acceptable or remotely workable to have within the EU. But then, there was never a cat's chance in hell of this happening anyway (and now it's more like a snowman's chance).
If I'd thought there was *anything* like a realistic prospect of Erdogan's Turkey being allowed to join the EU, there's no way I'd have voted "Remain". (Spoiler; I voted "Remain".)
Of course, that didn't stop self-serving scum like Boris Johnson- the guy who shifted his allegiance to improve his own prospects of becoming Prime Minister- using this as a scaremongering tactic to promote the Leave case, and in an utterly shameless display of hypocrisy, once they'd won, saying they were going to help Turkey join the EU. What a piece of shit.
So you can't possibly imagine how a company can provide economic benefits (and others) beyond simply paying taxes either?
You seem to think the onus is on us to guess- and make- your point for you.
Yes, I suspected that's what you might have been getting at. I had also suspected you might do the usual low-taxation fans' trick of parlaying this into an excuse to argue against taxation in general, using the line that- rather than X having to pay their fair share of taxes, it would- of course- be far more reasonable for their competitors to pay less.
I've no interest in living in a country like the US, which- relative to the amount of wealth that exists there- still has (e.g.) relatively poor infrastructure and healthcare (#)- because everyone's racing to the bottom to avoid taxation to pay for the facilities they use.
(#) Horrendously overpriced and broken before, only partially fixed with a compromise system (Obamacare) that was closer to what the Republicans had originally proposed before *they* moved further to the right and smeared it as socialism, now in the process of being broken again. Couldn't give a toss, I don't give there, not my problem.
I see you've though it through.
Looks like she thought it through better than you did with your original pat comment.
Also looks like your response of would-be smug condescension was an attempt to obscure the fact that (contrary to the implication) you had nothing to come back with.