Posts by DavCrav

Labour Party website DDoS'd by ruly democratic mob

Re: @DavCrav - Can someone answer this question?

"So there already *is* what you want?

So what exactly do you want him to say he's going to do which is different???"

Country-by-country reporting is not an international agreement to close loopholes and amend treaties. In other words, Mr Corbyn has said nothing more than "I'll give it a go" as to *how* he's going to collect £100bn or more from corporations, most of which I would guess don't want to give him that money. It's rather like saying "I will catch more criminals if elected to office". How?

As far as I can tell, My Corbyn is exactly like anyone else on the Left, which is to say, all talk no trousers. When it comes down to it, there's never any detail as to how exactly all this will come about. It's just like the Greens, with their manifesto pledge to outlaw lending not done by the government.

Edit: And another thing, while I'm on my soapbox. You are the one who brought up country-by-country reporting, as something he suggested, not me. I pointed out that it's already done. In this case, Mr Corbyn needs to do something *different* to what is already being done. As a member of the electorate, it is not up to me to make suggestions as to what he will do, but up to me to decide whether his policies are sound.

The only explicit, cogent policies of his I have heard are: renationalize the railways, which might make sense, but he's hardly the only one saying it, and buy up the energy sector, to solve his perceived problem of high energy prices (energy prices in the UK are about average in the EU). It is not quite clear how, with energy companies' profits per household being about £40, spending £120bn or more renationalizing it would be of any use at all. And let's not forget People's QE, the inflationary debt cancellation mechanism that throws the BoE's independence under a bus so that the Government can make ill-advised investments with the money.

Edit 2: One last thing. I couldn't help but notice this: "The introduction of a proper anti-avoidance rule into UK tax law." as a Corbyn policy. That's idle talk unless he can miraculously write the perfect tax law. Note: no other country has managed it yet.

Re: Can someone answer this question?

""The aim of country-by-country reporting for multinational corporations"

I think "country-by-country reporting" sounds like he's doing exactly what you say."

You mean like this?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/country-by-country-reporting

Or do you mean a different country-by-country reporting?

Re: Can someone answer this question?

"Obviously Big Business will say "Well if you do that we'll leave the country". This wouldn't actually happen though, because like all bad relationships the abuser makes empty threats expecting the abused to cower to the demands."

But this is obviously ridiculous. If you really did successfully clamp down on tax avoidance, and somehow got the international tax treaties changed, then in the intervening years where major corporations are staring down the barrel of multi-billion pound tax bills, and they would need to be to fund Mr Corbyn's massive spending spree (or else he turns on so-called People's QE, i.e., an actual magic money tree from which inflation-proof spending can be plucked), and corporations make the decision as whether London's various pluses are worth the considerable costs. For some companies, they will decide yes, but many will run away quickly, especially those like HSBC, which makes most of its money abroad anyway.

And this is the problem with expecting the most mobile and cunning sector of the population (the ultra-rich and multinationals) to furnish you with all your tax receipts. They often refuse, and can afford to do so. Mr Corbyn and his policies are simply not suitable for the modern world. At no point have I heard him say that he would gather international support to change tax agreements, which he would need in order to do any of the things he promises, however vaguely he does this promising. To go after a multinational company you need a multinational attack.

Two weeks of Windows 10: Just how is Microsoft doing?

Re: “Windows as a service”

"You may be suckered now with your free upgrade and it's not as bad as Win 8.1 shit but if 10 is the last version of Windows which will be made less (or as likely more) shit over time you will be on a meter while it happens."

This. If Microsoft really don't produce another Windows, then one of three things has to happen, for thenm to be profitable:

1) You have to rent it in future;

2) All your data are sold by them;

3) Both of the previous two.

'Sunspots drive climate change' theory is result of ancient error

Re: @JustaKOS WTF

"If you're adjusting the number down, for a decent scientific reason, you CAN put it into terms that technically proficient laymen can understand."

I don't know anything about you, but have people ever thought that, just perhaps, statistics and analysing experimental data is complicated, and you might not be able to understand it? Some things are hard, and there isn't a dumbed down version for us all to understand. This is why we have experts in the first place.

Another death in Apple's 'Mordor' – its Foxconn Chinese assembly plant

Re: "employees aren't statistics"

"Someone decided to take their own life. That is ALWAYS a story, and so it should be. It does not merit casual treatment."

Unfortunately it is not. If, every time someone in the world commits suicide, it were a story, then you would have about forty seconds to read that story before you got a different story. A million people kill themselves a year, which works out to about one every forty seconds.

A suicide is tragic, of course, and each represents a troubled life, but there are simply so many people in the world that lots of bad things happen to lots of people, just statistically.

Death to DRM, we'll kill it in a decade, chants EFF

Re: Not going to happen

"I know kids that have hundreds of GB of films and music, none of it paid for. They are too stupid to work out that if nobody buys, nobody can afford to make the content.

They whinge about one direction and how crap movies are, but rip everything off and can't see they are part of the peoblem"

Hundreds of GBs of films and music is many thousands of pounds in cost. Where exactly do children get this sort of money?

Hack a garage and the car inside with a child's toy and a few chips

Re: Driving the car

"Wouldn't a far simpler solution be if the door detected say 1000 open attempts that it is switches off the receiver for 5 minutes. Make brute forcing impractical."

What about in a car park with lots of cars being opened? Don't they all use roughly the same frequency?

Apple, Google should give FBI every last drop of user information, says ex-HP CEO and wannabe US prez Carly Fiorina

Re: trust the maths...

"Ok bear with me as I am far from an expert but I thought that integer factorization (which encryption is based on) hasn't been proven to be as hard to solve as we assume today for sure (talking number theory not technology speed up for brute forcing)."

Correct. It is NP, clearly, but I do not believe it is known to be NP-hard. Although it almost certainly is. But then the same was sometimes said about primality testing, which is known to be in P now.

Bitcoin can't be owned, says Japanese court, as Karpeles sweats in cell

Re: Japanese banks are going to be so happy !

"Now they can just steal everyone's money from their bank accounts because it's "not tangible"..."

Right, right. Bitcoin is either a currency or it is not. If it is a currency then it must be subject to all the standard restrictions that currency transactions face, and then you can sue for theft. If it is not a currency, then you are on your own.

Bitcoin enthusiasts/pump-and-dumpers want the Wild West with regards taxes and regulation, but when things go wrong they go running crying to their government to put it right. Maybe he should have spent some Bitcoin on the book Quantum cake: a guide to having and eating.

"Digital piracy is not legally possible in Japan, then?"

No, copyright infringement is not theft. Therefore cannot be pursued as theft of goods. You might try copyright infringement on the ownership of the Bitcoin, since it is a number, and this stands more chance than theft.

STOP! You – away from the keyboard. There's no free speech in our China

Re: Don't be fooled...

"...they are going to nationalise all those shares the super-rich scumbag bankers and asshat Westerners think they own."

Two problems with that:

1) Collapsing the global economy is only not certain doom for yourself if you can wall yourself off from everyone else. And as long as everyone else has nuclear missiles, you can't;

2) Chinese companies, most of which are government related, own a lot of stuff outside China. One word: reciprocity.

Re: At least the Chinese are being "open" about this.

" It would be so easy to alter data packets such as forum comments (like this one) to say the opposite or at least make it look ridiculous. There, did I/they succeed?"

Is there the slightest shred of evidence that that has ever occurred, ever? I'm not sure I accept as evidence the mere existence of ridiculous comments, although some are so horrendous that they can surely only be a false flag.

Wait, STOP: Are you installing Windows 10 or RANSOMWARE?

""Williams told the Reg that it also demonstrates its efficacy by showing a complete list of encrypted files and offering to decrypt five of them for free."

Could this be used to determine the decryption key?"

Sort answer: no. If it could, then anyone with both the plaintext and the cyphertext could be able to work out the key. But since this is public key encryption essentially, anyone can generate cyphertext using their own plaintexts. So no real help I'm afraid.

Windows 10: Buy cheap, buy twice, right? Buy FREE ... buy FOREVER

"the Mobile generation, already indoctrinated into paying monthly for everything, won’t have any issues with paying for 10 on the same basis."

I'm not so sure. I wouldn't pay monthly for a dishwasher or a freezer. Not many other people would. If you are the sort of person to conflate Windows and the PC, then you would not be impressed at buying the PC and paying a monthly fee to rent it as well. It's not going to work.

Twitter will delete jokes after a DMCA takedown – but NOT my photos, fumes angry snapper

Re: It's been said

"It's been said that EVERY joke made since may be found in the long out of copyright _Joe Miller's Joke Book_."

Sure, but it's also been said that the Sun revolves around the Earth, disease is transmitted by smell, and the government can install filters that can't trivially be bypassed. Do you think it's true, though? I guess there's the standard "three things, the last one of which is meant to be funny" in that book, so you might be right in this case.

Re: repeat after me

"if I hear a funny joke and can recall it properly, recount it properly and keep the delivery okay then I'll repeat it. I'm certainly not going to go out to find the original author of the joke....or indeed pay them any royalties."

And that's fine. But probably you shouldn't go on television and repeat them while pretending they are yours. And the same holds for Twitter. You would accept that it's wrong if someone blogged about a novel, every day writing a page of the novel as a single post, until they had copied out the whole thing. What about a short poem, which could fit into a dozen tweets or a single blog post? At what point does something lose its copyright provisions, and should that be based on length?

Researchers say Anthem health hack has Beijing's fingerprints

Why does the rest of the world still allow Chinese connections to the Internet? Is it worth having all information stolen?

New study into lack of women in Tech: It's not the men's fault

Re: Aww

From their response, their last line is what convinced me that they are talking rubbish:

"In light of these analyses, the claims we made in Leslie, Cimpian et al. (1) remain valid as originally stated: Fields whose practitioners idolize brilliance and genius have fewer women."

People who actually knew what they were talking about would not say "we don't like the statistical analysis on this paper which contradicts ours, so ours is definitely true." It's a massive logical flaw that if the proof of the statement is false then the statement itself is false.

ICANN further implicated in .Africa controversy

Re: ICANN has gone rogue

"Every employee should be sacked and have criminal charges brought against them."

What, you mean like:

"What are you in prison for, Bob?"

"Oh, I cleaned the ICANN building out in Los Angeles."

"What? You bastard! I'm only in for armed robbery."

Galloway and Greens challenge Brit spooks over dragnet snooping

Re: Galloway Rocks....@Yugguy

"He also doesn't give a toss about anything except his "legacy"."

"Legacy" = what you did during your time in office, and whether it had a lasting effect? Seems a perfectly reasonable thing to give a toss about.

Ad rivals whimper: Hey Commish, we've 'ad it up to here with ad giant Google

Re: Lifeblood of the Internet

""advertising is the lifeblood of the internet"

I thought it was porn?"

No, porn isn't the lifeblood of the Internet, it's a different substance.

Keep your stupid drones away from piloted aircraft, rages CAA

Since this problem is only going to get worse, and will result in a mass murder incident at some point, we need a register of all drones, with sizeable penalties for not registering a drone, for example 10 years in jail for possession of an unlicensed drone. Fly them near protected airspace, massive fine and/or jail time. It's the only language certain idiots understand.

BREAKING NEWS: Apple makes money

"Greece now has a significant primary budget surplus."

I think you mean 'had'. Pre-Syriza they had a surplus, then they got in, rolled back a bunch of budget savings, then things were completely fucked with capital controls. They definitely don't have a surplus now.

Are you a Tory-voting IT contractor? Congrats! Osborne is hiking your taxes

Re: Yes, they will emigrate

"Also, in this context I think it might be 'Die Computer', but it's been a while so I'm probably wrong."

Indeed. You are wrong. Die Computer is the plural.

Re: Yes, they will emigrate

"And if you work in a technical field in Germany you will find they are pretty much all fluent in English. Most of the technical terms are used as-is (i.e. English words)."

OK, good. The German for computer is "der Computer". Great. Now it's just all the other words that aren't technical you need to learn.

"In time, Bryce thinks some contractors will retire or move overseas as a result the changes and fewer will replace them."

Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, from people at every single election and Budget.

Qualcomm gazes at its navel while stroking the surgeon's saw

"Other options reportedly on the table include reshuffling its board and giving Jana a say in adding independent directors, as well as returning more cash to shareholders."

So this could be written as "man wants more power and money"?

Apple Watch is such a flop it's the world's top-selling wearable

I know somebody with an iWatch. Asked him why, didn't really get an answer as to what it is useful for, other than telling the time.

Here's why Whittingdale kicked a subscription BBC into the future

Re: Subscription version of iPlayer for non-UK customers

"Offering BBC content to a global paying audience over the internet seems like an obvious way to make extra income, and solves the 'conditional access' problem - what am I missing?"

Do they have the rights to everything worldwide? Answer, no. In the UK the government compels for example music copyright owners to give their permission for the BBC to use any music it wants. They do not have such rights abroad.

Bitcoin fixes a Greek problem – but not the Greek debt problem

"By the way, it's not all Greek notes, it's all €10 notes in circulation in the eurozone (and around the world).

So Greece should call their bluff if it wants to throw a spanner in the works."

Small problem there, of course. There are two ways to "print" money: the first is to physically counterfeit the money, and the second is to make it appear in bank accounts. The second is pretty much cut off from the Bank of Greece because any suggestion that they are doing that and the ECB pulls the plug, so they would have to secretly hoard printed Euros. OK, so their debt is around €300bn, so let's print 30 BILLION €10 notes and store them in a few aircraft hangars. Here's the problem: the total M0 (i.e., banknotes) in circulation across the whole Eurozone is around €500bn or so, and so you are roughly doubling the physical money supply. The other problem is time. Suppose you have a massive printing press that can print a sheet of €10 notes, say 100, a second. My back-of-the-envelope calculations is that it would take you ten years of 24-hours-a-day printing to get 30 billion notes. I think someone might notice long before then.

One more problem: how exactly do you pay the ECB back in freshly minted €10 notes? You have to get it back into the banking system, i.e., launder it. So we get ten thousand of the most trustworthy people imaginable, both to not steal any of it and not tell anyone, to deposit a rucksack of 1000 €10 notes a day. That might look a bit dodgy, but still, even doing that five days a week (banks are closed weekends) it will still take over 11 years to put it into bank accounts.

Uber to drivers: You make a ton of dosh for us – but that doesn't make you employees

Re: @Big Ed - Call me a converted Fanboi

"However, there is a slight problem at least in the part of the world where I happen to live. Let's say today someone gets his taxi permit after paying (investing ?) close to 100000 CAD. He is now ready to work as hard as he can to try to make just enough to recover those costs and pay his bills (if he would have been rich there would be no need for him to get into this business). The next day he faces competition from a bunch of people who did not have to pay anything, just download some app on their mobile phone and pay allegiance (and a part of their earnings) to some Californian company who is just a middle man ? If you can show me some fairness in this situation then I might become a fanboy too."

It isn't fair. But the solution is not to get rid of Uber, but to get rid of the 100000CAD fee to run a taxi.

It's all Uber! France ends its love affair with ride-sharing app

Re: News reports on Uber lead me to conclude...

And the ethical stance of seizing people's own property because their employers are acting illegally doesn't concern you?

Britain beats back Argies over Falklands online land grab

"Would the issue be better handled if it wasn't in the hands of a 'Manel'?"

I don't see why. There was definitely a woman on the panel when the Falklands were invaded, and there's a woman in charge of Argentina who is currently rattling the kitchen knife (they can't afford sabres), so why do you think anything would be better involving women?

Climate change alarmism is a religious belief – it's official

Re: Ha! - but in the end the pope adds nothing of value to the debate

"The side that has all the money, careers..."

I think the oil and gas industry has enough money to sponsor its own 'science' actually.

Foxconn's going to 'exploit' Indian labour? SCORE! Bye, poverty

Re: It;s almost like they do it on purpose...

"I'm sure we could *if* we were willing to have the same standard of living as we had during wartime. Get most of the working age men out of the country & sleeping rough while killing 25% of them (that in itself creates lots of job openings). Limit the type and amount of food so that only that which is essential to stay alive can be bought. Bring down the average lifespan by quite a bit. Force masses of kids to travel hundreds of miles away from their homes to live with strangers. Regularly demolish railways, roads, factories and streets full of houses so that lots of workers are needed to repair the damage. Etc."

Don't forget borrowing huge quantities of money to pay for it.

Re: Lefty pay?

""if you paid me £15 an hour, I'd quit

Lucky you. Most people in the UK don't earn that much."

£15/hour at 37.5 hrs/week gives £29250/year (assuming 52 weeks/year, which is not a problem as you will see). According to the Guardian, in December 2013 median weekly pay is £517 (FT employees only) which is £26884/year. I cannot find any later figures than this, but I remember wage growth actually existing this year, at about 1%, taking us to £27152.84. That all works out as an hourly wage (again, assuming 37.5 hours per week) of £13.92. So about a pound an hour off median. Which is a lot in millions of people, and your statement is true in that "most people" don't earn that much, but it's probably no more than about 55-60% earn up to £15/hour.

Re: OK, then...

"Two wasters are sitting in a bar when Bill Gates walks in. "Hurrah!" shouts one, "Drinks for everyone!"

"What are you doing?" asks his friend.

"Our average net worth is now several billion dollars!""

Dude. Look up the word 'median'. That extra 'd' and 'i' in the middle of 'mean' mean a lot.

How swearing at your coworker via WhatsApp could cost you $68,000

"You don't know the content of the message. Don't forget what happened when someone made a one off, off the cuff comment about Doncaster airport. The people making comments about the UAE being backward seem to be throwing bricks in a glass house."

I remember. He was found innocent, and the police and CPS told not to be so stupid.

In the UAE's case, the guy was found guilty, then a new law was introduced, and he was retroactively found guilty under it. This is backward, both ethically and temporally.

Re: Retroactive

"This new law is less than a month old, so probably the man got the smaller fine previous to that. Then comes the new law and the persecutors prosecutors needed to make an example of someone to to put the Fear of Allah in the people. Since everyone had heard about this draconian edict, they were all on their best behavior.

And so perforce this poor sap became 'It.'"

You have to love retroactive laws. It's like justice, only different.

LastPass got hacked: Change your master password NOW

Re: KeePass

"Or 1Password which lets you store the DB locally (not in the cloud) and sync to mobile devices over Wi-fi (e.g. at home)"

Actualy, just use 1Password as your password. Everyone will try Password1 and you'll be fine.

EU reduces science cuts as Juncker finds €500m down back of sofa

Re: Academics need a reality check

"Many academics are pro-EU because a lot of their funding passes through EU programmes."

Citation needed. Very few academics actually get EU funding, compared to the number of academics in UK universities. There are a few schemes like Marie Curie that have a fair few people, but compared with RCUK, EU funding is much smaller. I offer another potential explanation.

"Many academics are pro-EU because they spend a lot of time going around the EU, have friends in many different countries, and being in the EU makes their lives a lot easier."

There is, of course, a third explanation, but you might not like it. Academics are, on the whole, among the best educated in society. Being anti-EU is correlated with being xenophobic and racist. (Not a perfect correlation, but enough of one to work statistically.) Being xenophobic and racist is highly inversely correlated with education. Therefore academics, statistically, are more pro-EU than society at large.

"rules that make them "partner" with second rate EU universities, rather than first rate global ones, and that the money is allocated to EU political "priorities", not scientific ones."

Rules for ERC Starting grant: the primary criterion is excellence of research. Nothing more.

"Where is this money going to?"

You mean Horizon 2020? Most of it goes to EU universities, much of that to French and UK institutions.

Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht to spend LIFE in PRISON without parole

Re: Colossal, global stupidity

"We have a fucking Prime Minister who’s probably done some coke (he won’t deny it cos then someone would probably come out and say that he did). So why isn’t HE in prison? After all, that would mean he’s an evil drug-taking sicko."

OK, nice rant and everything. But you seem to have mixed up the case here. Mr Ulbricht was a drug dealer, not a drug user. We treat them differently. Since he was a drug dealer, selling billions in drugs, he can hardly be compared to a guy offering you a spliff.

Re: Paul 87

"I agree that rehabilitation is an important part of a fair justice system. I suspect his complete lack of remorse and continuing deflection of responsibility didn't help him come sentencing time, since he gave no indication that he could be rehabilitated."

From the article

"In a letter submitted to the court earlier this week, Ulbricht said he realized he had "ruined my life and destroyed my future" ... "Even now I understand what a terrible mistake I made," Ulbricht wrote in his letter."

Do we have a different definition of remorse and responsibility?

CBS boss says he'll show off his crown jewels on Apple TV – for a large enough check

"I love all this "Apple is trying to change the universe" crap, when Netflix already walked in years ago, kicked everyone in the teeth and took their lunch money. I don't have a single device Netflix won't run on - I even have 4K through the decoder in my new TV. Netflix already became the iTunes of TV and didn't write unholy shit software to do it, or lock it down to their preferred platforms. In what universe is this guy living?"

My guess is Apple is "trying to change the universe" by not paying almost anything for the shows it will then charge a lot for.

RAF radar station crew begs public for cash to buy gaming LAN kit

Re: Priorities

Yes, but dogs *can* look up.

Re: LAN Gaming

For me I had two computers in my room when I was a teenager, and played two-player co-op Diablo. Over a serial cable mind, none of this fancy stuff.

OECD nations gang up on internet retailers, tax dodgers

Re: Not a burden?

"Online companies will have to comply with every detail of every tax in every country. And keep up to date with all changes. And this is not a burden? Maybe not for the likes of Amazon, but for anyone smaller it's a huge problem."

I'm confused. People want to sell to customers in a country, but don't want to obey that country's laws? And they consider this a reasonable stance?

Spotify springs bloody leak as losses grow to $197m – report

Re: Something is seriously screwed

One possibility is that artists are making money, just not as much as they want to. What would the losses be in a music subscription service in which artists and record companies got what they consider fair recompense?