Posts by Curious 40 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Oct 2007
The Irish Dept of Finance says that corporation tax receipts in 2022 Jan to November end has risen by €7.6 billion to €21.1 billion compared to November 2021.
That's what the Irish people are getting back. With pros and cons. Most of the cons are either self inflicted or the usual market forces when a multibillion dollar blob is dropped into a small city.
Not exactly Faustian, it's a deal with the corporate accountants and tax lawyers.
There are a few cases that I've encountered on Dell business machines of the BIOS losing the TPM 2.0 chip.
i.e.stops appearing in the BIOS, not available to windows (assuming no bitlocker to fubar).
Does this occur for many other makes?
https://www.dell.com/support/article/en-ie/sln305777/tpm-option-is-missing-in-the-system-bios-setup-latitude-precision-or-xps?lang=en
It looks like it's only the server hardware certification that will require it for now in that announcement ; the OS will still run without TPM 2 enabled..
So the motion calls for
"common charger for mobile telephones and other compatible devices" and " standard for a common charger for mobile radio equipment to be adopted as a matter of urgency "
What's the chance that this will be broadened to apply to laptops?
Despite the 100Watt power maximum of USB-C
Sorry, you're writing the same generalisations that you complain about.
I'm irish.
Sky and UK based broadcasters, UK owned papers provide a high proportion of our media
The reasons for leave have been poorly communicated. Tabloids spout tabloid headline nonsense, and the other side echo the worst of it in an attempt to ridicule the whole of the opposition viewpoint.
Not unique to the UK, happens here. Only a handful of loudmouths claim to believe all claims by either side, but they get attention.
And in the USA it's on a whole different scale of divide and conquer.
There are some suggestions that the UK can reach more favourable trade deals with the rest of the world, than the EU did. The alternative possibility is that trading partners like China and India might press their advantage ( UK trying to negotiate trade deals with everyone simultaneously, otherwise struggling to trade on painful WTO terms ) and give the UK worse deals.
There's complaints about over-regulation. I'd guess that we'd agree that some of that is about agricultural protectionism to avoid political fallout. Will that not be present in a non-EU Britain?
For Ireland / NI the effects of UK - Continent trade restrictions will be magnified. There will likely be increased opportunity for criminals and ex-militants to profit from border running, harming both countries.
Most of the issues raised by the media regarding inter-EU immigration have been choices by our 2 governments. E.g. allowing eastern EU workers to work here while other EU countries had a temporary delay, or non-EU to patch some industry desire. Ireland have more workers from Poland than the UK, more from Brazil than France. And they integrate pretty well.
And Ireland has seen the difference since the 80s that open EU trade makes to an economy. The main two British political parties seem complacent.
It won't be a nuclear explosion, but a gradual dropping off in living standards outside the cities.
regarding the price of accessories, used to think that too but,
it's a piecemeal business that they are only too happy to leave to their distributors. The price is high because they find that people are willing to pay that rather than go to the hassle of finding an alternative source.
In the same way that Dell used to be all about high levels of customization, choice and dealing direct with customers. Now there's fixed options take it or leave it, which makes sourcing, assembling and shipping easier for them. Their 'partners' can do the one-off stuff.
17" screens are only really demanded by a small audience. Though I'm sure you could cut a few hundred from the price by using refurbished almost new, 3 year dell warranty stuff, like many of us.
Aspen solutions or similar.
The US allows the big pile of cash from international sources to remain untaxed by US taxes if the money will be re-invested back into international projects.
If the US puts a time limit on this cash-cache, then that might give the multinationals a kick to "use it or lose it". Otherwise they have unlimited time to lobby for the next tax holiday. As Cook put it at his Senate testimony, they're waiting for the US tax rate to drop into single digits. And all the investment return from the big pile of cash is paid to Apple Inc in the States after US tax.
From the property pin (http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=66347)
"
Margrethe Vestager is telling Apple to choose between:
(a) Irish Taxation (€13bn + €6bn fines) = Apple Ireland was always really in Ireland, and owes 12.5% Irish tax.
(b) US Taxation (c €40bn + no fines) = forget Apple Ireland, it was always going back to the US and owes 35%+5% US tax.
(c) EU taxation (c. €40bn + €20bn fines) = Apple Ireland is "stateless", used EU TP system illegally, owes range of EU tax.
As we will see, Apple have already decided to lock in (a) (when they moved Apple Ireland "onshore" as part of the "Leprechaun Economics" moment a few weeks ago), and have also announced a commitment to (b) in paying more US taxes (against which they will get a credit for any Irish taxes paid in (a) - hence why (a) is an immediate no-brainier). Apple have also decided to invest in global data-centres in Ireland (allows you to permanently avoid (b), so another no-brainer). Apple are not going to spend the next 6 years appealing (a), they are going to accept (a) soon, to protect against (c) which they will be fighting for years.
"
c) is the 'stateless' option that Tim Cook told the Senate they were operating under in 2013, though he and Irish revenue object to the 'illegally' description.
Well.. in schools Microsoft OS and software dominate classrooms.
This software has it's merits in business and the home, but it's a poor environment for learning about how computers work; going out of it's way to hide detail on how it works and alternative methods to solve tasks, no easy method anymore to connect up lights and motors.
As for actual development, Microsoft's tools have had an unnecessarily high barrier for newbies in their complexity since VB 6. After kids start hitting the limitations of Scratch, either they start coding for web pages or they stop. Few teachers can keep up to date with Microsoft's constant changing complexity between windows forms, wpf, gdi, silverlight, xaml, mvc, mvvm, directx all with their own limitations and dead ends.
Microsoft, seriously, just pick something, get it to cover the common cases and stick with it. And as you've no qualms about forcing that Xbox thing and other garbage on all Windows 10 users, maybe you could give VS Code / Studio & Xamarin pride of place in the windows store with an introduction manual and classroom friendly samples by Charles Petzold or the other bright people Microsoft have hidden behind their walls, a few code katas to help teachers have a starting plan.
Nope, don't think that's sufficient, with so many long-running systems.
The vulnerable applications should be virtualised, in their own bubble where they don't ooze all over the operating system core and registry, nor other applications, and interaction with the file system / network is through an application specific proxy that looks for unusual patterns of traffic.
The major vendors all have their technology for this (App-V, Xenapp,Thinapp),
Microsoft in particular has failed to popularise this capability, only now looking at building the client into windows 10. Currently it's only for deployment by large enterprises that have bought access via the vileness of microsoft's software assurance volume licensing to get MDOP.
It should have been the cornerstone of their Windows Store, alongside or instead of the App-x throwaway stuff.
Any chance that Intel could work with dell/ hp / lenovo on the Skylake prototypes to make their wifi cards more reliable?
There's little value in a faster processor if the wireless card keeps becoming an intermittent worker on modern latitude and elitebooks; whatever combination of bios / firmware / wifi standards or laptop heat is causing issues where older batches of laptops are rock solid reliable.
49xx, 5100, 5300 in particular developing problems over a couple of years.
The rdx cartridges are slightly modified 2.5" drives, but the cartridge casing and plastic container give a little bit more shelter from damage and liquid, the proprietary 'similar but not quite sata' connector is recessed.
They've got a read-only switch on the cartridge.
Swapping the drives can be entrusted to any conscientious employee, as with tape, to bring off-site each day, without drive letter issues etc.
Some of us are really annoyed by small business LTO tape drives failing us when they are needed.
The 3K entry pricing for LTO4 is just too steep for many; let alone having a second drive in case of failure.
With RDX, it's only the media that needs to be replaced when the backup set grows, the media is more reasonably priced now than it was.
Transfer speed is lacking though.
On a related topic,
do others still have the issue of the windows 7 and 8 patches that are "update(s) that enables you to upgrade to a later version of Windows." still damaging the performance of their PC with high CPU use?
It shows in process explorer as
rundll32.exe appraiser.dll,DoScheduledTelemetryRun
And run by windows scheduler. It's supposed to stop after 30 minutes, but doesn't appear to.
Installed by the updates KB 2990214 patch for Windows 7 (and KB 3044374 for Windows 8.1) in February and purpose is recording application telemetry.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_update/rundllexe-using-whole-cpu-to-run-appraiserdll/b29bdffd-56e2-418f-b0c5-a7f3dfbab2b5?page=1
Sneaky hamstringing of computers on the old OS? Surely not.
Step 1.
Refuse the demands to create a Microsoft account in windows 8/ 10, use a local computer account instead, and this won't operate, I think, on your one computer.
As I understand it, the wifi sense shared configuration is supported to isolate them from the local network, allow me my doubts..
Are there any low cost, non-techie, manageable radius server + GUI implementations for small offices that mix Mac, PC, android and high numbers of guests?
That daloradius + freeradius software on a beaglebone or edgemax?
http://lintut.com/install-freeradius-with-web-based-management-daloradius-on-centosrhel/
Looks like a radius server can be added fairly simply to a Synology or QNAP small office device.
Yeah, powershell for office 365 has been essential since the start to do even basic things like creating a transport rule to block exe, scr executable attachments; mailbox statistics etc,.as the ECP web ui is way way way too limited.
The announcement is for this http://powershell.office.com/get-started website to get people started with this setup.
Thank you,
you're right.
As for the anon above (might be the same person or not),
my problem was with this person (me) in windows camp not knowing enough about windows?
Slight mitigation, that it's under
properties \ security \ Advanced \ Add Permission entry \ Show advanced permissions
so hadn't visited that area of dialog boxes before, nor heard of icacls, and not a clue how to implement in powershell.
Contrast that to the execute bit, which is up front and obvious, off by default, taught in the first day to anyone learning any scripting on other file systems and web servers, and is harder to set remotely than a file extension.
Might at least cut down on the old
filename.docx <space space space>.exe
compromises for certain old people, and get them to ask for help.
>> compromising a current Windows system that is kept up to date by knowledgeable people who are unlikely to fall for common tricks... is hard to do
Yes. And Valve steam, apt / yum, ninite etc demonstrate that the update process for applications and windows update itself could be far more friendly and less fault-prone if Microsoft put effort into it; instead we have every company with their own second-rate update service, changing your home page in the process; scheduled to fight with each other at boot time.
It's windows app store effort is poor in comparison. Can't even record and redeploy our OEM / Retail MS Office licenses from it; that's yet another website mess.
Windows home and SBE licensing up to now has compounded the problem.
You bought a pretty laptop with Windows vista ultimate / Pro? No affordable upgrade to an windows 7 home for you without a complete wipe. So will not be done.
- Microsoft loses potential upgrade revenue for 8 years, (OS followed by Office, services, apps)
- the affected customer associates Microsoft with obsolescence and viruses, when one of their 300 windows updates fails and breaks the windows update service, blocking the rest.
- Developers end up with the costs of supporting XP for 20% of the market.
Can't that SKU stuff just be an aftermarket feature like media centre, downgradable as well as upgradable?
And even the supported upgrades for 8 and 10 are so horribly fault prone, with hours wasted on the "Reverting" process. Wouldn't it be nice if the old and new OS could sit side-by-side with the old as a reserve for a week. In theory it can be done, at the expense of diskspace.
Maybe there's someone high up in Microsoft that thinks that free as in freedom software means every thread is entitled to a right to totally control it's environment.
I'll believe it when they provide a windows SKU that gives home and small businesses a best practice system without needing 6 months study, trial and error of MDT2013.
Don't think that there are any 3rd parties that offer this either.
Will they separate the NTFS "deny execute" from the "traverse folder" permission, add a no-exec flag?
Partitioning of file system and memory, so windows system, windows system temp, applications, applications temp, users, users temp, and the registry for each are not one blob that developers do not have the knowledge to filter? Maybe each user and each application should have to get it's own virtual sub-partition to ease the antivirus' job of looking for suspicious behaviour. And a queue for moving from one to another. Like OS-X "drag to Applications folder" procedure that everyone seems to manage.
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, and outlook 2013, in default behaviour, allows zipped exe, scr to sail right through. (these are not password protected zips, which might be excused).
Home users and small businesses nearly need a second machine / tablet to vet all the internet facing stuff before trusting an antivirus protected windows installation to touch it,
Can Internet facing IE, Chrome, Adobe, Java, .NET be run in a single machine VDI that is more responsive and lightweight than Hyper-V? Pushing IE Edge to everyone including older OS might be a start.
Agree that RT will stay and I think it should stay.
RT devices that could be immediately administered with the same management and monitoring tools as laptops and win8 tablets could do well and would push sales of Microsoft services and servers.
The expensive full fat windows tablets are a cludge in comparison, useful for the odd legacy or specialist application (not unlike kinect for windows and, I'd hazard, destop touchscreens outside the point of sale type setups for which they are currently used).
I think that it's a failing of Microsoft that they've put so many unnecessary blocks in the way of SMEs and home users making the most of Microsoft software and services. This makes it easier to switch to competitors. E.g. Directaccess restricted to Win 8 Enterprise Software Assurance version.
I get that they "charge what the market will bear", but within every business and home there are submarkets, so ability to upgrade licenses and features easily without having to re-buy everything would encourage people to stick with Microsoft.
Have there been any changes to the management of Microsoft Licensing as part of this shakeup?
Libreoffice's a lot thinner of a pig than last year. Libreoffice 4.0.3 is the first version that I've found starts up in reasonable time and doesn't stall on a decent computer.
Not for professional writers, but Word / Access / Publisher have had their ups and downs meeting this description due to this and that missing feature.
What I find disappointing is that MS ship a large percentage of Office sales as OEM but don't price their applications at prices that encourage regular upgrades.
E.g. A Microsoft Steam/Store equivalent that allowed businesses to buy/upgrade just Outlook, or just add Access for €50 or so per application. For small businesses it even becomes a cost barrier to Office 365 / Exchange Online.
Retail business sales of Office of course are a joke. Go into PC World and there will be one copy of Office Pro on the shelf for €700 in the hope that some panicked executive makes a crisis purchase.
Access 95 and Publisher 97 used to be installed across the entire business network, now they are priced and licensed in a way that only volume license customers will purchase, so most people do not encounter them. I doubt that this benefits it's shareholders or sales figures.
What could Ireland change in their tax system?
The 12.5% is not paid. Unclear how increasing this rate would do anything to the multinationals.
The loophole is that Ireland doesn't tax some outgoing money transfers. It's not alone in the EU for that.
Are they to match their tax rules to those of the US? Or change global accountancy rules so Google US can't charge Google Ireland 7.5 billion to 'license' the search technology. (vs 1.5 billion in 'real' running costs )
The US could look to change their rules on transfers between companies and their wholly owned subsidiaries, the famous "double Irish" is a loophole in US law. The Dutch law on not taxing incoming transfers avoids paying the tax to Ireland.
France's nominal corporation tax rate is higher than Ireland, but after all the accountants games, the amount paid at the end is between 2.5 to 3 %, similar to Ireland.
As you write, they " they made loans to people who said they had a great plan.".
In Ireland 2002, Anglo Irish Bank had a loan book of €20 billion. They announced plans to treble this in 4 years to €60 billion. And they did. Half a billion here to a state entity to purchase a toxic waste dump, 150 million there to buy a hotel that was barely profitable. €15 million for a field which can't find a buyer now at €250,000.
An anecdotal talk I had was with a part-time self employed builder was invited for a talk with the bank manager and straight out offered 5 million to build a housing estate, which the builder chose to reject.
So half of the loan book went bad.
The book of risk management was thrown out the window. The one bank CEO that took a prudent approach was ousted by institutional shareholders that wanted the loan book to bloat like the others.
The pension fund managers didn't want single digit growth of their share portfolios.
Some clarification from the Intel site is available, after all this has been some Intel stuff since '08.
"
1. You can set your device to lock from the Intel® Anti-Theft Service website and it will lockdown the next time it synchronizes with the service. Your device automatically synchronizes with the service when it is connected to internet.
2. If your device does not synchronize with the service within the "user selected" number of days, the Intel® Anti-Theft Service will lock your device. The Timer Based Lock uses a hardware based timer that prevents an unauthorized person from defeating device lockdown.
"
It's a subscription service.
The security sites have been pointing out the security risks of vPro for a while now.
Intel/AMD are probably reading this and noticing that they no longer need to put expensive L1, L2, L3 cache on their processors. They can use the cloud.
A more mainstream and general purpose form of Onlive or Citrix Receiver service will probably become mainstream before the scenario outlined in the article.
Google are using Dalvik because Oracle won't have anything suitable for mobile until Java 9 in 2015 or so.
On the other hand, should Oracle win this, will their lawyers be meeting the IBM Nasgul in court in regard to their derivative version of IBM's SQL?
And does Dennis Ritchie's estate now own the world?
If they were restricting by port, then it would only be because the engineers are trying to fake compliance while leaving loopholes available.
Looks like they'll have to redevelop a version of tor that transmits data in other ways.
Proxies that introduce image / video stenography, altered ip packet data, even packet timing to convey information.
Seeing as Metro / WinRT applications aren't compatible with windows 7 and earlier, that'll mean that all that get preserved (apps, settings, license keys) are a few lightweight apps in the near to mid future.
Bets on how long it'll take to release Metro versions of Photoshop / CS Studio / Visual Studio anyone?
According to the software companies, the software is licensed and not sold (setting aside the California judgement on Softman Products vs Adobe 2001, http://www.linuxjournal.com/articles/web/2001-11/5628/softman-v-adobe.html, where "The reality of the business environment also suggests that Adobe sells its software to distributors.")
There is text in the EULA explicitly outlining how the license can be transferred to another party, and the only relevant restriction appears to be complying with US export restrictions.
So anyone got an opinion on whether the court banning the transfer of licenses between countries? Or was the software counterfeit, as the copyright infringement bit would suggest? Or does the court ignore the license and it's "not sold" element of the transaction and state that the software was originally legally sold but became an unlawful parallel import when resold in Europe?
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