Suicide is a verb and result by itself. Would the author also say “he died by murder”?
> Suicide is a verb
No it isn’t. You can’t say “He suicided.”
At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
91–100 of 585 posts
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts and quality test the software, reverse engineering it and try to catch the bugs. This wasn't the classic case of financial fraud, this was all about faulty software.
> Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts Yea and who is responsible for engaging them?
I meant courts should've called in multiple expert witnesses and even computer forensics companies. This case looks like government or in this case courts colluded with British Post Office.
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#93To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details o…
> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight.
These still occur on modern touchscreen laptops (work-provided Dell Latitude 7450 and mandated to use Windows with a lot of restrictions). It's not an everyday issue, but a once a month one.
Other than that, completely agree with your assessment: the ruining of those lives was a completely avoidable tragedy that was grossly mishandled.
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.
Except colloquially no one today thinks the word has any bearing on whether the victim looks bad. It just means they're responsible for the act. I guess some people take comfort in the idea that suicide is thrust on people and they take no responsibility for their actions.
This seems to be a common topic in the current pendulum swing.
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]." If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...
[flagged]
Where are you getting the idea that anyone suggested this?
At any rate, it was the persecuted postal workers who committed suicide, not the software developers.
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#96The four-part mini-series Mr Bates vs The Post Office is worth checking out: > A faulty IT system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of subpostmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates, forms the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. The prosecutions…
I learned a lot from The Great Post Office Trial podcast by BBC Radio 4
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-post-office-...
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]." If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...
[flagged]
I meant top management is in deep shit if their finical departments run low quality buggy accounting software not the staff. Or in this case post office branches run the buggy software. All in all, decentralized nature of post office system was the thing that drove everything to this madness.
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#98To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details o…
> massive deep state cover-up
Let’s not use conspiracy-theory language.
It was a coverup by Fujitsu and The Post Office.
MPs and ministers (part of the state) used their parliamentary privilege to expose it after the campaign by the postmasters brought the issue to light.
No ‘deep state’ conspiracy, it’s just an arse covering cover-up (pared with outright incompetence) which had particularly devastating consequences.
Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
#99I thought British legal system and computer forensics were serious but this case is just a travesty of justice.
The British legal system is and always has been a litany of injustices dressed up in formal attire. To be avoided at all costs.
Compared to?
I mean, it's no Norway, but to remind you the United States, which has continued just straight up executing people who may not have committed any crime, is currently trying to make some of its own citizens stateless, then ship them to a foreign oubliette. Russia doesn't bother with courts and people who are out of favour just have deadly "accidents" there.