politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Let’s kill this myth once again. Cameron never had the chan

JosiasJessop said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

For anyone who likes Apple products (you fools!), here is an analysis of their latest massive security bug:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/gotofail/

My first reaction:
Oh. My. God.

My second reaction:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Blimey. Just blimey.

I'm presuming there was a code merge (git) and an extra goto was added accidentally and mechanistically.

I'm guessing that it's more likely that another conditional clause was removed, but not the conditional line. I've seen that several times (and done it myself). It's why I'm a firm believer in the use of curly brackets on all conditionals.

BTW, I'm not against the use of GOTOs, especially in C. I mainly work in embedded code, and they can sometimes be very useful to get efficient execution. But I always tell graduate engineers that if they are used, then they have to expect to be able to justify its use; indeed, to expect the Spanish Inquisition over it.

This should have been picked up by good static analysis tools, code review, or compiler warnings. As it is in security-related section of code, I would have expected it to be reviewed very thoroughly.

However: there but for he grace of God go I ...

All good points!

Curly brackets around if blocks are mandated here - expect a QA fail if you don't use them.
Agree with the compiler warnings and static code analysis bits especially. You would see the dead code immediately.

Elizabeth Peacock performed something of a miracle act winning Batley & Spen for the Tories three times in 1983, 1987 and 1992 given the nature of the constituency which isn't exactly natural Conservative territory. Her majority was never larger than 1,500.

JosiasJessop said:

jayfdee said:

Anorak said:

JosiasJessop said:

Financier said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/

No. The Ben is a terrible mountain and (apart from the Carn Mor Dearg arete which I've never done) a boring walk. If we have to take a Scottish mountain, then can we swap the equally boring Scafell Pike with Stac Pollaidh. It's a real man's mountain, craggy and tough, yet with a friendly side.

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/achiltibuie/stacpollaidh/

Agree on the Pike. Helvellyn and Blencathra are (IMHO) the two finest peaks in England (and the latter is usually wonderfully quiet).

Out of my back window I can see CrossFell,highest point in pennines,and out of the front,Saddleback,both excellent climbs,tomorrow is a Helvellyn run.
As for the Ben,well I have just received confirmation of my race entry in September,it will be my 25th Ben race,the tourist route is unpleasant,but the race route(Parts are only open for race day)can be spectacular,and the upper scree descent can be amazing,and as for the infamous grassy bank,well..

You're a nutter. And I say that with the greatest respect.

Many a time I've been toiling down a hill, pack on my back, only to see some blooming fool come zooming past me as if their feet were not touching the ground.

Was plodding onwards and upwards to the summit of Great Gable only to be over taken by c.100 or so fell runners doing the Lakeland Marathon. Respect.

Was amazed by some of the hill walking clobber donned by a couple of delightful Ukrainian girls on the way to the top of Ben Nevis, crop tops, shorts and sandals.

AndyJS said:

JosiasJessop said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

For anyone who likes Apple products (you fools!), here is an analysis of their latest massive security bug:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/gotofail/

My first reaction:
Oh. My. God.

My second reaction:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Blimey. Just blimey.

I'm presuming there was a code merge (git) and an extra goto was added accidentally and mechanistically.

I'm guessing that it's more likely that another conditional clause was removed, but not the conditional line. I've seen that several times (and done it myself). It's why I'm a firm believer in the use of curly brackets on all conditionals.

BTW, I'm not against the use of GOTOs, especially in C. I mainly work in embedded code, and they can sometimes be very useful to get efficient execution. But I always tell graduate engineers that if they are used, then they have to expect to be able to justify its use; indeed, to expect the Spanish Inquisition over it.

This should have been picked up by good static analysis tools, code review, or compiler warnings. As it is in security-related section of code, I would have expected it to be reviewed very thoroughly.

However: there but for he grace of God go I ...

Using curly brackets was just about the first thing you learn with languages like C and C++.

But you don't need them on conditionals if only one statement is to be executed in the conditional code block. For instance:
if (1==a) b=c;
is valid. But if you want to add another piece of code to be executed in that same conditional, it is too easy to do:
if (1==a) b=c; d=e;
which is valid code, but almost certainly does not do what the coder expected. I've seen this no end of times.

taffys said:

Miss C, is Labour relatively less popular in Wales than elsewhere? I ask because of their reportedly poor handling of the NHS.

QT was actually quite good last night. Anna Soubry pointed out the woeful performance of the NHS in Wales and people clapped.

That's people clapping an English tory. In Newport, Wales.

And they never even got onto Wales' catastrophic education performance under labour.

Agreed, education is a mess. The divergence of exams will build up all kinds of issues in the future as English universities and employers struggle with Welsh sets of pieces of paper. It's bad enough as it is looking through CV's trying to work out what the alphabet soup of qualifications is now, without that added issue.

Didn't see QT, but clapping an English Tory in Newport just shows the joys of opposition. It's easy when you don't have to make real decisions. As soon as you do someone will object, as the LD's have found out since 2010 UK wide.

The Labour administration here isn't bad in all fairness, generally (well since they axed the education chap last year at least), but it has taken an alternative view of divvying up the spending cake (ie cutting the NHS) compared to London.

JosiasJessop said:

AndyJS said:

JosiasJessop said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

For anyone who likes Apple products (you fools!), here is an analysis of their latest massive security bug:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/gotofail/

My first reaction:
Oh. My. God.

My second reaction:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Blimey. Just blimey.

I'm presuming there was a code merge (git) and an extra goto was added accidentally and mechanistically.

I'm guessing that it's more likely that another conditional clause was removed, but not the conditional line. I've seen that several times (and done it myself). It's why I'm a firm believer in the use of curly brackets on all conditionals.

BTW, I'm not against the use of GOTOs, especially in C. I mainly work in embedded code, and they can sometimes be very useful to get efficient execution. But I always tell graduate engineers that if they are used, then they have to expect to be able to justify its use; indeed, to expect the Spanish Inquisition over it.

This should have been picked up by good static analysis tools, code review, or compiler warnings. As it is in security-related section of code, I would have expected it to be reviewed very thoroughly.

However: there but for he grace of God go I ...

Using curly brackets was just about the first thing you learn with languages like C and C++.

But you don't need them on conditionals if only one statement is to be executed in the conditional code block. For instance:
if (1==a) b=c;
is valid. But if you want to add another piece of code to be executed in that same conditional, it is too easy to do:
if (1==a) b=c; d=e;
which is valid code, but almost certainly does not do what the coder expected. I've seen this no end of times.

++

I've also seen this too:

if(foo==bar);
{
//do stuff
...
}

Which is also valid but doesn't do what the developer expected it to.

DaemonBarber said:

JosiasJessop said:

AndyJS said:

JosiasJessop said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

For anyone who likes Apple products (you fools!), here is an analysis of their latest massive security bug:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/gotofail/

My first reaction:
Oh. My. God.

My second reaction:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Blimey. Just blimey.

I'm presuming there was a code merge (git) and an extra goto was added accidentally and mechanistically.

I'm guessing that it's more likely that another conditional clause was removed, but not the conditional line. I've seen that several times (and done it myself). It's why I'm a firm believer in the use of curly brackets on all conditionals.

BTW, I'm not against the use of GOTOs, especially in C. I mainly work in embedded code, and they can sometimes be very useful to get efficient execution. But I always tell graduate engineers that if they are used, then they have to expect to be able to justify its use; indeed, to expect the Spanish Inquisition over it.

This should have been picked up by good static analysis tools, code review, or compiler warnings. As it is in security-related section of code, I would have expected it to be reviewed very thoroughly.

However: there but for he grace of God go I ...

Using curly brackets was just about the first thing you learn with languages like C and C++.

But you don't need them on conditionals if only one statement is to be executed in the conditional code block. For instance:
if (1==a) b=c;
is valid. But if you want to add another piece of code to be executed in that same conditional, it is too easy to do:
if (1==a) b=c; d=e;
which is valid code, but almost certainly does not do what the coder expected. I've seen this no end of times.

++

I've also seen this too:

if(foo==bar);
{
//do stuff
...
}

Which is also valid but doesn't do what the developer expected it to.

Your use of 'foo' and 'bar' is a sign that you are a TRUE CODER (tm) ;-)

And I think about three-quarters of PB are wondering what the heck we are talking about ...

''The Labour administration here isn't bad in all fairness, generally (well since they axed the education chap last year at least), but it has taken an alternative view of divvying up the spending cake (ie cutting the NHS) compared to London.''

Wales will be front and centre next year. Ed Miliband will be forced to defend labour's utterly woeful performance on what are big home banker issues for labour - education and health.

Whenever Labour opens its gob on the issues, the default response is going to be - oh yeh, like in Wales boys.....?????

Education in particular is very, very bad because performance is more quantifiable than health.

This year's PISAs will be very, very interesting. If they show Wales lagging conservative England substantially that will be a big problem for Ed.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/council-tax-higher-wales-rich-6755649

More evidence of the scale of labour misrule in Wales

UKIPs Suzanne Evans on Daily Politics, doing brilliantly in my biased opinion... an asset

On Topic

Interesting - proves Britain's constitution (or rather non constitution) is an ass.

Of course this highlights the fatal flaws of FPTP, but as I said at the time Gordon should have stepped down straight away.

Morally the Tories had beaten Labour, even if they had not won the election outright.

Of course, it would have been better to avoid Tories in government altogether, looking at the smoking destruction that they're going to leave behind next year.

SeanT said:

RobD said:

SeanT said:

Talking of Scotland's oil, here is Andrew Neil's hair in 1975.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVNjU2NhDDI

holy moly!

I've asked Andrew Neil, on Twitter, if he wants to issue an apology for his hair in 1975. I mean, we know attitudes were different back then, but this surely goes beyond the acceptable.

Well, maybe once he gets off air he'll respond ;-)

SeanT said:

AndyJS said:

It seems that until the 1980s most people were far more appalled by homosexuality than by sex with underage girls (meaning over the age of about 13 but under 16).

That would have been the case in virtually all societies throughout human history; it's still the case in many non-western countries today.

It's only since about 1970, and in the West, that we have developed this unique attitude that sex with pubescent girls under 16 is wrong but sex between men is right.

Sex with pre-pubescent girls is a different matter: that's been seen as abnormal and aberrant through history (though not uniformly, everywhere).

Wiki delivers:

The age of consent is 13 in Spain. It is 14 in Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Portugal, San Marino and Serbia. It is 15 in Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, France, Greece, Iceland, Monaco, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. It is 16 in Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine and the UK. It is 17 in Cyprus and Ireland and 18 in Malta and Turkey.

Some of these countries, however, have laws which ofter increased protection for children who have reached the age of consent, but are still minors, for example by enacting laws which stipulate that it is illegal to engage in sexual acts with such children under exploitative circumstances (such laws exist in e.g. Austria, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Lichtenstein). These laws can be found mostly in the countries which have a lower age of consent.

The UK Age of Consent is almost as high as our top rate of income tax.

Funny then that these Labour honchos wanted to lower it.

JosiasJessop said:

DaemonBarber said:

JosiasJessop said:

AndyJS said:

JosiasJessop said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

For anyone who likes Apple products (you fools!), here is an analysis of their latest massive security bug:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/gotofail/

My first reaction:
Oh. My. God.

My second reaction:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Blimey. Just blimey.

I'm presuming there was a code merge (git) and an extra goto was added accidentally and mechanistically.

I'm guessing that it's more likely that another conditional clause was removed, but not the conditional line. I've seen that several times (and done it myself). It's why I'm a firm believer in the use of curly brackets on all conditionals.

BTW, I'm not against the use of GOTOs, especially in C. I mainly work in embedded code, and they can sometimes be very useful to get efficient execution. But I always tell graduate engineers that if they are used, then they have to expect to be able to justify its use; indeed, to expect the Spanish Inquisition over it.

This should have been picked up by good static analysis tools, code review, or compiler warnings. As it is in security-related section of code, I would have expected it to be reviewed very thoroughly.

However: there but for he grace of God go I ...

Using curly brackets was just about the first thing you learn with languages like C and C++.

But you don't need them on conditionals if only one statement is to be executed in the conditional code block. For instance:
if (1==a) b=c;
is valid. But if you want to add another piece of code to be executed in that same conditional, it is too easy to do:
if (1==a) b=c; d=e;
which is valid code, but almost certainly does not do what the coder expected. I've seen this no end of times.

++

I've also seen this too:

if(foo==bar);
{
//do stuff
...
}

Which is also valid but doesn't do what the developer expected it to.

Your use of 'foo' and 'bar' is a sign that you are a TRUE CODER (tm) ;-)

And I think about three-quarters of PB are wondering what the heck we are talking about ...

Indeed. Can you write it in Cobol, please? (Though the errant GOTO I do get).

Financier and Taffys

Exactly. As I said Wales is a basket case without England in the economic stakes. Take out transfers of benefits central Govt jobs etc and I'm sure GDP would be below 70%. In the Valleys I should think it struggles to reach 60% at best. What's the equivalent? Poland? Estonia? Slovakia? I'm sure someone can Google it for us.

SeanT said:

Talking of Scotland's oil, here is Andrew Neil's hair in 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVNjU2NhDDI

When I saw the still, I immediately thought of Raymond Baxter from Tomorrow's World.

Damn I do have a picture but don't know how to insert it. I'll try this:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=XOVLX4JpMOukOM&tbnid=OonSIEATijsjgM:&ved=0CAMQjhw&url=http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/facts-and-figures/people/people-raymond-baxter/&ei=9IgQU-P9K8uthQfirICICg&bvm=bv.61965928,d.ZG4&psig=AFQjCNFHtsltHGYvqLgRrMcBVDJoBxvgcQ&ust=1393678589528386

SeanT said:

Nats who casually deride the No campaign need to think a bit harder. They scoffed at Osborne's Sermon on the Pound as a terrible error, but was it?

The logic behind it is now clear. By making that No Currency Union statement, as Chancellor (and getting Balls, Miliband and Clegg to concur), Osborne introduced serious doubt into the future monetary situation in iScotland, thereby OBLIGING Scottish finance companies to issue uncomfortable remarks for the Nats, as these companies have a legal duty to warn of future risks.

So Osborne made the tactical sacrifice of looking like an annoying Tory in Edinburgh, for the strategic gain of Standard Life saying they might move to England.

We'll have to wait for the polls, but dismissals of Osborne's judgement now look premature.

Keep flogging that dead horse, miracles can happen

DaemonBarber said:

david_herdson said:

JosiasJessop said:

DaemonBarber said:

JosiasJessop said:

AndyJS said:

JosiasJessop said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

For anyone who likes Apple products (you fools!), here is an analysis of their latest massive security bug:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/gotofail/

My first reaction:
Oh. My. God.

My second reaction:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Blimey. Just blimey.

I'm presuming there was a code merge (git) and an extra goto was added accidentally and mechanistically.

I'm guessing that it's more likely that another conditional clause was removed, but not the conditional line. I've seen that several times (and done it myself). It's why I'm a firm believer in the use of curly brackets on all conditionals.

BTW, I'm not against the use of GOTOs, especially in C. I mainly work in embedded code, and they can sometimes be very useful to get efficient execution. But I always tell graduate engineers that if they are used, then they have to expect to be able to justify its use; indeed, to expect the Spanish Inquisition over it.

This should have been picked up by good static analysis tools, code review, or compiler warnings. As it is in security-related section of code, I would have expected it to be reviewed very thoroughly.

However: there but for he grace of God go I ...

Using curly brackets was just about the first thing you learn with languages like C and C++.

But you don't need them on conditionals if only one statement is to be executed in the conditional code block. For instance:
if (1==a) b=c;
is valid. But if you want to add another piece of code to be executed in that same conditional, it is too easy to do:
if (1==a) b=c; d=e;
which is valid code, but almost certainly does not do what the coder expected. I've seen this no end of times.

++

I've also seen this too:

if(foo==bar);
{
//do stuff
...
}

Which is also valid but doesn't do what the developer expected it to.

Your use of 'foo' and 'bar' is a sign that you are a TRUE CODER (tm) ;-)

And I think about three-quarters of PB are wondering what the heck we are talking about ...

Indeed. Can you write it in Cobol, please? (Though the errant GOTO I do get).

$ SET SOURCEFORMAT"FREE"
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. HelloWorld.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
HelloWorld.
DISPLAY "Hello World".
STOP RUN.

That's not the same logic!!

MikeK said:

Blue_rog said:

SeanT said:

Talking of Scotland's oil, here is Andrew Neil's hair in 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVNjU2NhDDI

When I saw the still, I immediately thought of Raymond Baxter from Tomorrow's World.

Damn I do have a picture but don't know how to insert it. I'll try this:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=XOVLX4JpMOukOM&tbnid=OonSIEATijsjgM:&ved=0CAMQjhw&url=http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/facts-and-figures/people/people-raymond-baxter/&ei=9IgQU-P9K8uthQfirICICg&bvm=bv.61965928,d.ZG4&psig=AFQjCNFHtsltHGYvqLgRrMcBVDJoBxvgcQ&ust=1393678589528386

It IS Raymond Baxter. LOL

Oops - :embarrassed smilie :

☺

New Thread btw

@PickardJE: Ukip has just banned the press from fringe debate on sharia law. I suspect this could turn into a news story.

@PickardJE: Ukip official says we can stay. "If he's happy...and if you behave." (But apparently other journalists still being turned away outside.)

@PickardJE: Ukip press officer (Annabelle Fuller) won't say who she is or who banned us from sharia law event. This is getting quite surreal.