* Posts by DavCrav

3894 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

Samsung grabs 'World's biggest handset-maker' title off Nokia

DavCrav

Re: buys a company's products [snip - title too long!]

"I buy a company's products because a) I'm used to their way of working - I don't have to learn new stuff, b) because it's been reliable for me, and c) because their customer service has been satisfactory when I've had a problem."

Then you aren't buying them *simply* because of the company. There are transition costs to changing brand, you have (at least anecdotal) evidence that the brand is reliable, and (again, at least anecdotal) evidence that the customer service is reliable. These are definitely good reasons to choose a particular brand.

DavCrav

"I can't imagine anyone buys Samsung because they are Samsung - they buy them as currently they make some of the better Android hardware - that's all."

Anybody who buys a company's products simply because they are from that company needs to re-evaluate their life.

Vatican shrugs off apocalypse, fiddles with accounts dept

DavCrav

Re: as it almost always is

"Yup. All done in God name most of the time. I don't think the church has every pulled off large scale industrial genocide like the atheists."

You are comparing the Church itself to someone who doesn't believe in God. If you compare believers to non-believers, using this webpage as a handy guide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

I think you'll find believers come out top on the killing-people list, both numbers and percentages of world population.

Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism'

DavCrav

Re: Good ol' Google

"Google doesn't drive"

And those Google maps cars flew? I want a flying car too!

DavCrav

Re: Governments aren't serious about combatting tax avoidance

"Presumably you would need to increase your margins and the tax rate would be less.

20% tax on profits would probably be equivalent to 2% tax on earnings."

Exactly this. From an economics point of view, companies won't invest without a suitable rate of return anyway, so their profit margin should be at least (say) 5%. A 1% or 2% revenue tax would not eat up profits any more, in fact less, than a 20% profit tax. Furthermore, it doesn't affect investment at all like people pretend that profit taxes do, because this is a tax on *all* revenue, so opportunity cost is also lowered by the tax amount.

It really does work, and is easier to collect, more difficult to avoid, etc.

DavCrav

Re: VAT

"BOFP Calc: Google generated $4.1b in sales in the UK, and therefore extracted approx £500m from UK consumers on behalf of the UK government. That has got to be worth more to the UK economy than whatever corporation tax those fools think Google should be paying."

You mean, unless it's business-to-business selling, like, I don't know, advertising, which isn't subject to VAT. Google give essentially nothing to the UK economy but extract $4.1bn from it.

MPs: 'Chilling' new libel law will CENSOR THE TRUTH online

DavCrav

Re: One tiny little country

"Exactly. And yet when the US government attempts to enforce its laws on the internet, everyone in the UK calls foul. And people in the US call foul when China's government censors things. Repeat ad nauseam."

You are missing the bit where the UK people also call foul when the UK libel laws apply everywhere.

The latest tech firm to be accused of tax dodging: Microsoft

DavCrav

Re: The solution is simple

"simpler then that, reduce your corporate tax to below Luxemberg and see all the companies leave there for here."

I'm not sure whether you were a moron by birth or whether you had to take classes. This is a popular refrain among those for which thinking isn't a top priority, to continually lower tax rates until they all reach zero. Monaco has zero corporation tax. That'll be great. The point you seem to be missing is that the "competitor" countries are not real countries. Bermuda, Monaco, Leichtenstein, etc., are tax havens. They work on being parasites on other countries' infrastructure. A few parasites suck blood from the host (the rest of the world in this metaphor) and make a nice living off it. If more countries become parasites, the host dies.

It's the same as the complete wanker from Germany who once said "why can't every country be an exporting country like us?"

Kim Dotcom shows off new mega service

DavCrav

Re: Pseudo-random?

"I don't know that much about the maths of this, but I thought you were supposed to "get" entropy from an unpredictable source, such as radioactive decay, rather than something VERY predictable, like ones mouse and keyboard use?"

Well, mouse movements are very random. If you add up the mouse movements since your computer was switched on, or just tell the user to move the mouse around for ten seconds, then there is no way you can predict that. You have to be spot on, down to the pixel, if you want to guess it. Keyboard strokes maybe less so, but again if you have ten seconds with "Go mad on the keyboard" on the screen, it should be fine.

Business sues for $750,000 over bad Yelp review

DavCrav

"There's a big difference between claiming someone didn't give you good service or that the work was shoddy, and claiming that they commited illegal acts such as theft and such.

Those acts are subject to defamation suits."

Indeed, and he is well within his rights to sue for defamation. Of course, the damages awarded might well be minimal because he has pretty much imploded his business with the lawsuit itself, so arguably his own actions caused far greater damage. You could say that ultimately that is Jane Perez's fault as well for starting the chain of events, or was it Dietz's fault for agreeing to do the work in the first place, or Yelp's fault for starting a business where Perez could air her grievances? Or Tim Berners-Lee's fault? Of course the last few examples are facetious, but serve to demonstrate that it becomes eventually pointless to argue for the "true" cause of a chain of events in many situations.

The whole point of this is to once again point out that the Streisand effect is alive and well. If someone calls you a paedophile very quietly, don't turn round and shout "did you say I am a paedophile?" at the top of your voice. It might not be nice that the initial accusation is made, but once it's done you then want to repair the damage as best you can. Suing rarely does that.

DavCrav

"I really hope someone makes an incorrect allegation against you someday, maybe then you will realise why people have to go to court to protect their business."

Some people don't like some people. Get over it. My point was that rather than protecting his business he has annihilated it, to remove one negative review on Yelp. So well done him.

"So it would be better for him to not bother challenging the bad review and just let it stand?"

Clearly the answer is yes. Look up Streisand effect, come back and we'll talk again.

Oh, and by the way: AC? Nice touch with the whole having a go at me on an online forum in a thread about defamation.

DavCrav

OK, I want some work done on my house. Dietz Development, right, what are they like? Let's just check Google: oh, they got a bad review once and what? Sued for three-quarters of a million dollars? OK, moving on, let's look at the other firms.

British biz gets one in five of its pounds from the INTERNET

DavCrav

Re: Even though 1 in 5 firms still don't have a website

"Same as a butcher. Does he open on saturday afternoon? Is is worth me going or simply nipping to asda later in the day? Was the newspaper shop a tobacconist too or just a shop? Can I get my father some more pipe tips from there or not (I never go to newsagents so ive no idea)."

This. I wanted to go get a pub meal, new to the area. I know of three pubs near me, the one that I found out I definitely could get food from at that time got my custom. How I found out: the Internet.

Samsung: Demand for mobes forced 16hr days on factory slaves

DavCrav

Re: Not just China

" I took on a job paying more than £20k a year less than the previous one"

Just a point, but for a lot of people to do that you would be working for free. Not everyone has this luxury of many well-paid jobs being available to them.

New laws to shackle and fine the Press? We've got PLENTY already

DavCrav

And tax presumably

This article seems to say "Cameron cannot say he doesn't want to regulate the press, as there are laws that they have to obey". Presumably they pay (some) tax as well, don't stab people in the face, etc. as well.

'Boson' Higgs: Yes, CERN has seen the coming of the God particle

DavCrav

Re: "Boson' Higgs: Yes, CERN has seen the coming of the God particle"!!!!

"The certainty from a scientific view point is the "geius more cash" bit. Idle money-suckers."

Yes, they're awful, dedicating their lives to furthering the knowledge of the human race, while other people do terribly important things like shuffle pieces of paper with faces on them from one place to another, etc.

Google parks panzers on Germany's lawn over 'link tax' plan

DavCrav

Re: What do they need a law for?

"I think the idea of the law is to leech off Google to get some of their money."

Maybe to replace some of the tax Google doesn't pay?

Google, Apple, eBay shouldn't pay taxes - people should pay taxes

DavCrav

"Yes, corporations are legal people, this is true"

Erm, no. Maybe in America, but not in most of the world. So if you are talking about the EU, you shouldn't. Or you could just shut up generally and let non-extremists talk about tax in a grown-up way.

Pirate cops bust LITTLE GIRL, take her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop

DavCrav

Re: @Richard 12

""No, by definition "theft" is an act that is fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE to do to any form of intellectual property."

Lemme fix that for ya!

"No, by my definition "theft" is an act that is fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE to do to any form of intellectual property."

What makes your definition so fucking special?"

Probably because it coincides with that in dictionaries and the law?

Sarcastic tweeter jailed for mocking Communist Party

DavCrav

Re: If this had been the United States instead of China ...

Well, probably because it's par for the course. I'm personally glad that we hold Western governments up to significantly higher standards than China, since I live in the West...

Apple's profits fetish could spell its DOOM

DavCrav

Re: Marketshare != sales

Because market share is what the peripheral companies look at to choose which horse to back, and without the ecosystem the horse gets put out to pasture, to strain metaphors to breaking point. That was the point of the article.

DavCrav

Re: Surprise us all

Well that's just great: you've now destroyed about twenty patents with one prior art post!

Actually, that is just great.

How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it?

DavCrav

"I'm sure it's different for other people but having to pay around £12/mo for BBC seems expensive. I'm sure if Sky were virtually guaranteed everyone in the UK had to pay they could offer their service for less than £21 (entry) and you get a whole lot more."

£21/month AND ADVERTS AS WELL.

HP warns consumers: Don't downgrade Win8 PCs to Win7

DavCrav

OK, well that's HP off the list of vendors for my new laptop then. Looked at Win8. It was shit. No thanks.

Medical scan record that the NHS says will cost £2k to retrieve: Detail

DavCrav

Re: Named Data Subject, Machine-readable Form?

"What happened to "Any data held about a named data subject in machine readable form must be made available to the data subject for a nominal fee" Data Protection Act 1984 - did this disappear in the later revision?"

I'm guessing they are talking about the "machine readable" bit...

French gov 'plans to hand Google €1bn tax bill' - report

DavCrav

Re: Fuck them all

"> If you want to trade in Britain a company should have to have a UK base

But that is trivially worked around.

UK base must buy the services it resells. It buys them from a company in Bermuda, for little less than it sells them for. And the Bermudan company has a strangely-similar name..."

Hence the suggestion of taxing based on turnover... If a company makes so little money that they cannot have a 2% turnover tax (if we assume 10% profit then that translates into 20% tax, about what corporation tax is) then they will go out of business anyway.

Brit 4G live TODAY: At last you can bust your data cap in 5 minutes

DavCrav

"Three won't be making reference to "4G" at all, when it launches in 1800MHz next year"

Are they going to change their name to Four?

Facebook won't pull unmarked police plates page

DavCrav

"I'd say the narcs just have to get used to a brave new world."

And let's hope all your family isn't brutally murdered and nobody is willing to come forward as a witness because of your brave new world. That would be tragic.

Foxconn: THESE child workers were NOT making Apple products

DavCrav
FAIL

Re: It may not be anything to do with Apple

"just a bunch of killer apes."

I read "just a bunch of killer apps"... Must be the booze.

Russian Christians boosted by Pussy Riot law spank 'sinful' Apple logo

DavCrav

Re: I forgot... our own culture is the only True Way

"How would we in the sophisticated West respond to a company that used a Swastika as a logo?"

You should probably look that one up. It's widely used in India. If you are thinking of the Hakenkreuz, on the other hand...

DavCrav

"As for those protesting about the use of a crucifix, you're coming off just like the very people you object to."

That's the point. It's using irony to demonstrate hypocrisy.

Sarah Brightman plans International Space Station gig

DavCrav

She also intends to use her jaunt to "advance education and empower the role of girls and women in science and technology in an effort to help close the gender gap in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields".

Wouldn't it have been helpful if, you know, the woman trying to do this actually had anything to do with STEM? As it is, it looks like "sing well and you can go to space!", which isn't really the objective.

Hackers leak 120,000 student records in raid on world's top unis

DavCrav

Re: a protest against tuition fees that doesnt work

"Far better to let everyone in and train them all up. A rising tide lifts all boats, bitch."

OK, obvious troll is obvious, but who builds the hangars for all these lectures? And who marks the homework?

Steve Jobs backs Amazon from beyond grave in Apple trademark row

DavCrav

Not really

Kleenex is not a generic term, it became generic.

App store is generic in the same way that car park is generic: it is a store for apps, in the same way as it is a park for cars.

Key evidence in Assange case dissolves

DavCrav

Re: Very strange

I must admit that I've never actually set foot in a Systembolaget when I've been in Sweden, but all the Swedish people I know seem entirely normal...

DavCrav

Re: Very strange

"Also because they are robots they cannot serve on juries. They would not be able to make a decision without years of legal training. They would all be confused and not know what to do. Like daleks they would be out of control, except they would be calmer about it. So what happens is they do not have juries. This means everything in the swedish legal system becomes part of an automaton, which politicians and the I guess now the CIA can exploit."

They also don't have jury trials in for example Germany, Spain, Poland, Finland, and many other European countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial

DavCrav

Re: The smoking gun.. @garbo

""To have a trial. You know that thing where evidence is tested to determine if the accused is guilty of a crime"

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't he have to be *charged* with a crime before arrest, trial, conviction, extradition to Guantanamo via USA?

Assange has NOT been charged. Or doesn't that matter anymore?"

Oh for the love of God, not this shite again. Engage brain first: Sweden is another country. It's possible (and in fact true) that their legal system doesn't work the same way as the one you know.

Governments block YouTube over that video

DavCrav

Re: atheist 'sense' (J1 @ 09.20)

"I expect you'll want evidence.. God provides evidence.. the Quran is the evidence, the creation is evidence, you are evidence."

Moron alert. Whoop whoop. A book written by humans is not evidence; in that case Harry Potter is evidence of wizards. Creation isn't evidence of a will or creation force, so don't use that, else what created the god? And I am evidence of evolution. Surely you believe in that, since I can demonstrate it? Or next time you get sick with drug-resistant illnesses, you can die.

Content convenience squeezes freetards: Swinburne Uni

DavCrav

Re: As one of the 65% who look for...

""....Like some of those above, I also listen / watch classical music...." You're only making my point in that your choice, classical music, is not the popular one. As I said, you can watch whatever minority interest you like, just don't ask me as part of the majority to pay for it."

Name those shows that are watched by more than 30 million people.

Assange granted asylum by Ecuador after US refused to rule out charges

DavCrav

Re: Well Done Equador

"What about the Ecuadorians' offer for Swedish investigators to come over to London and talk to Assange (TM)?

Turned down.

Apparently the Swedes aren't even interested in getting their charge sheet right...

Regardless of what he may have done, this reeks to me."

There is of course the reasonable position of why the fuck Sweden should listen to any offer from a third party about their own law? This is between Sweden and Assange, and Ecuador has nothing to do with it.

Separately, I also bet both London and Quito were swearing in their respective languages when he turned up at the embassy, because it's a headache both could do without.

Seriously, one self-aggrandising twat, not even British or Ecuadorean, can cause a diplomatic incident?

DavCrav

Re: Best outcome. @Doug10

"I understand that but are you really suggesting that even he is so pig ugly that they had sex in total darkness and the girls didn't know he was bareback?"

Wasn't one of them unconscious? Would kind of negate this argument.

DavCrav

Re: Who cares about him?

"Well, obviously someone. You don't cause international incidents and talk about raiding embassies for some minor crime. As far as I can see, the evidence for any major misdemeanor is really rather slight"

His major crime is contempt of court. The evidence of this is overwhleming, since he's sitting in the Ecuadorean embassy and not on a plane to Sweden. So even when he finally is arrested -- and since there is no way out of the embassy, that seems the most likely outcome -- he will likely serve a jail sentence here for contempt first.

Don't get sued or cuffed on Twitter: Read these top 10 pitfalls

DavCrav

Re: The "substantial part" is more of a worry

"The "incorrect base assumption" was that every word is likely to appear with equal frequency in random order."

Ah, so not a base assumption then, but a basic assumption. A base assumption would be that I was working in base e, for example, not base 10. Sorry, I read the sentence mathematically, since I was talking about mathematics. It's difficult to switch that part of the brain off.

Of course the number is far lower than what I said. But there are plenty of sentences that have never been displayed before. For example:

"John Major thinks 12ft otters rape each other nightly on his balcony."

This is well under 140 characters, and I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I am right about this being a new sentence. Because of the creativity involved in this sentence, it is actually probably copyrightable. However,

"Going down the shops today. Might buy some fish."

Is probably a previously spoken phrase, and also is unlikely to be copyrightable. As a complete aside, it is also much more likely to have been a previous tweet.

DavCrav

Re: The "substantial part" is more of a worry

"Your fundamental error is to omit consideration of grammar, syntax and word frequency. "

Well, sure. I was just answering the question. If he wanted me to answer a different question, he should have asked a different question. :-)

"I think an awful lot of your zeroes are artifacts of an incorrect base assumption."

5500^28/10000000000/3600/24/365.25=1.70235973559254851048496876136E87. There were supposed to be 80-90 zeroes. I hope I didn't make too many, but it looks about right.

DavCrav

Re: The "substantial part" is more of a worry

"How many 140-character strings, using dictionary words, are not copyrighted somewhere?"

Back-of-the-envelope calculation. Assume that there are 39 possible characters (a-z, 0-9, space, comma and full stop). If 10 billion people typed a different (this is obviously ridiculous) 140-character string every second (also ridiculous) it would take approximately 1 778 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years to make all of them.

Using dictionary words of course brings the whole thing a lot lower. There are about 5500 four-letter words according to Scrabble, and with a space in between each one, you can only fit 28 of these in a tweet. With the same assumptions, to get through all of these would take approximately 170 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years. Of course, this is just for four-letter tweets.

I think you're safe.

Unite workers at Capita ITS vote for strike action

DavCrav

Re: so 25% of 65% of members voted for a strike

"The union Unite said 65 per cent of members at Capita ITS voted 1-in-4 in favour to strike and 1-in-9 for action short of a strike."

"so 25% of 65% of members voted for a strike "

I read it the same way as you, and then thought, why are 25% in favour of a strike and only 11% in favour of short of a strike. Does that mean that 14% want to strike, but not to work to rule? Something weird about this...

BMW slams ad machine into reverse, screeches out of pirate den

DavCrav
Coat

Re: Shriley

"who have blown their wad on a BMW"

Surely Kleenex advertisements would be more appropriate?

DavCrav

"...profit from human misery from copyright infringement to mail order brides."

I never knew that downloading a copy of a movie was similar to human trafficking.

US will fight ITU members for internet domination

DavCrav

Re: I don't understand why they even bother

"The US has absolutely no reason to give up control over the internet. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Why even make the proposal if you've failed to present a good reason for the current owner of the status quo to just give it up? Who are they trying to score points with? The US doesn't even have an incentive to pretend to listen to these proposals, much less do anything about them."

Well, the idea is if World - {US} wants the US to lose control, they should be able to forcibly remove control from them. I mean, your attitude seems to be that if one entity has control of something and doesn't want to let go of it, then all other entities involved should just lump it; an interesting idea.