* Posts by Paul Bartlett

17 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Apr 2008

Shopping for PCs? This is what you'll be offered in 2016

Paul Bartlett

Apple

Interesting, yesterday I was in local coffee shop here in California. There were 6 people on laptops and all were Apple Mac. None were Windows. This is common place here, I rarely see a non-apple laptop these days. Maybe they have too much money, or more likely they are fed up with Windows and can afford to be.

Apple fanbois cry (bless) as site motionless during iPhone 6S pre-order wrest

Paul Bartlett

The Reg

And of course el reg .com never goes down, especially when half the planet is logging onto it to do e-commerce. Have some respect for what they achieve!

Paul Bartlett

Re: Taken down on purpose

Worked beautifully for me, order was a breeze, but then again I am in California.

What balls! India blocks 0.00008 per cent of web in anti-pr0n move

Paul Bartlett
Thumb Down

India - the country where 100,000 underage girls are kidnapped each year and forced into the sex "industry" and then often killed or ostracized from their families.

Who gives a *** about a few porn sites? This is PR and the country has a disgusting problem.

See http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1iu0hv_ross-kemp-extreme-world-series-3-1of6-india-720p-hdtv-x264-aac-mvgroup-org_shortfilms

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

Paul Bartlett

You save on National Insurance contributions. As a Limited Company you have to pay your salary, plus employee 11% and employer 13% national insurance tax --- on top of the income tax (PAYE). So If you pay a dividend instead you don't pay the the NI nor PAYE if you stay within basic rate. But you can only pay from the profits, which are already taxed at 20%-ish.

Paul Bartlett

Stop ripping off citizens and make a decent country

I moved to USA from UK last year. One clear and obvious fact is that there is lots of money here. When people are earning a lot they are paying a lot of taxes too. I get the feeling that Osborne and co are just taking advantage of the population rather that building a growth economy. Rather than ripping off more growth making citizens and paying dole money, why not change the country for the better. Mind you, if he said he would tax everyone another 10% and guarantee Californian weather all year round in Blighty I'd pay it.

US yoinks six Nigerians to Mississippi on '419 scam' charges

Paul Bartlett
WTF?

If it were UK

They'd be given asylum.

America was founded on a dislike of taxes, so how did it get the IRS?

Paul Bartlett

Well I just completed my first ever IRS tax return, having moved to San Diego, California last year.

My tax return in the UK takes me 15 minutes. Here I had to pay someone $150 to enter a set of numbers into a software package. I'm hoping YR2 to be much simpler as I am no longer a non resident alien, but then they want to tax me on any bean I get in the UK.

It is really expensive here. Half my salary goes in rent and the other goes in bills. I'm left with nothing, yet my salary is near double the UK.

Oh! and it has rained about twice this year. Blissful sunshine -- and not too hot. We have to pay a lot for the sun.

Microsoft: How to run Internet Explorer 11 on ANDROID, iOS, OS X

Paul Bartlett

No good for me

What use is a browser running in a cloud outside my firewall when I have my website i'm testing on http://localhost?

Foxconn to take on 100 THOUSAND workers prior to iPhone 6 launch

Paul Bartlett

Yes they have release new stuff since Steve died.

The completely awesome new Mac Pro. This is groundbreaking. (and wallet busting)

Or else are our journalists expecting a revolutionary product every year! Get real man.

I KNOW how to SAVE Microsoft. Give Windows 8 away for FREE – analyst

Paul Bartlett

Revert to Windows 7 Start Menu

Don;t give it away, just give us the Windows 7 start menu back.

I am positive Windows 8 will be a flop until they put back the old start menu. The 3rd party replacements are not as good.

Apple was bold and brought out the Launchpad for OSX. This was a similar departure as is the Windows 8 start menu. But guess what, nobody uses it and fortunately it is not the default mode. But they didn't remove the Applications menu. If they did as Win 8, there would be a lot of unhappy Apple bunnies.

Techies with Asperger's? Yes, we are a little different...

Paul Bartlett

Re: Stress? I'll tell you what stress is!

Awesome story! For an NT a best mans speech is a major stress event, so as an aspie you must've nearly exploded. You are brilliant.

Paul Bartlett

Re: Great article

See my earlier post. Many see aspergers as a positive. A great number of exceptionally talented people have aspergers. I have met some. I am not a doctor, but my advice would be to learn about it and find & focus on the positives.

Paul Bartlett

Re: Where are you based?

Exactly the same (or worse) in Milton Keynes.

Paul Bartlett

Awesome

Excellent article. I think HRs political correctness was misguided.

There are many aspies in IT, esp. programming, as you mentioned, it is generally a safer place where you can immerse yourself and concentrate with less disturbances than other service jobs. I have met a few people who certainly have the traits, so I would not be surprised if they are on the spectrum. Without exception, they are exceptional and very talented. Highly intelligent and very fair. Of course, their social skills are not great.

I read a book, The Complete Gulde to Aspergers, which is a very good, yet complex book by Tony Attwood. Interestingly, he said that when he first diagnoses an aspie, he says congratulations. Aspies are typically far more talented that NTs.

Hundreds of UK CSC staff face chop, told to train Indian replacements

Paul Bartlett

Good luck to them

Well, as someone who just spent 2 hours rewriting some code that it took some Indians 2 days to write really badly, I can say that CSC as likely to be burnt. If they are outsourcing software development to India, good luck to them!

O2 says 128Kb/s is all its 3G customers need

Paul Bartlett
Unhappy

O2 Don't like me

Well I have been battling for 3 weeks to get my phone (Orbit2) upped from 128K to HSDPA speeds. I have had around 10 calls with O2 and they have called me back numerous times to say "your provisioning is being upped from 5 to 6 and will be active in the next 72 hours". It seems customer services does not speak to the network services department, or more like the network department ignores customer services emails. I pay £35/month and nothing has happened, except I've hung on the phone for 30 minutes at a time. It's like the old days of NTL-Hell. If I could return my phone and shift to Vodaphone I'd do it tomorrow. O2 are not good enough for data.