Posts by Grubby 153 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2010
Give an inch and some people will take a mile. I've seen too many people assuming that to assist or aid is to do completely, it isn't. The person that has 100% responsibility when they start the engine of their car is themselves. Ignoring warnings, basically lying back and assuming that everything will be done for you is lazy and resulted in his death.
I see it all the time when I go to companies that are implementing some sort of new tech and the boss says, well if we automate x we'll never need to do anything. Nope, if you automate X you're still responsible for ensuring its completed to a satisfactory level. If you don't monitor it and it doesn't work, it's your fault. Automation changes your job it doesn't remove it.
Your books should say how much revenue you made by country and costs incurred by country. And then tax should be applied to the profits, simple as that. No dodgy rerouting of money etc. In the case of Apple they would end up paying little or no tax in China as the assembly costs are all accumulated there, but they would pay a shed load in the UK and Europe where the products are mainly sold. China would benefit from employment and so make up for the lack of tax income, UK would benefit from the tax. Swings & roundabouts so they say. Don't want to pay too much tax, build it there.
You could argue that the company, in this case apple, would not want to sell their product in the UK. So OK, don't sell your product in the UK. But if you combine tax changes with patent and copyright protection law changes to say that the protection is only relevant if the company holding it intends to use it they'd soon change their mind. Spend millions developing a product you have no intention to sell in the UK, then your patents mean nothing in the UK. I'm sure there'd be a few firms eager to build the UK i-Whatever in Manchester to sell to all the London folk.
This is just one way that could improve things, it's not going to be the only way or even the best way, but building on the 30k word current process is the wrong way forward. Throw it in the bin and start a fresh.
Also, no way Apple will ever pay anywhere near that 13bn...
An app that allows you to make calls to certain people from your mobile and take the minutes off your landline account. So a bit like the phone services whatsapp, skype, facebook, snapchat and thousands of others offer only to everyone, and without taking minutes off your landline, and that work. I don't see the point of the app. It's a bit like saying you'll knock off the £5 a month charge for Freeview TV. ahhhhh... their retention team do that too. Now I get it.
Day 1
dev team:
"DVLA db.All stuff
UNION
NHS db.stuff"
1 day after release:
Project manager
"Oh... it broked"
next day:
Cameron
"The threat of Brexit has resulted in a complete failure of the database project which would have prevented world hunger, created jobs and reduced immigration"
I haven't actually heard a single positive argument for staying in the EU so far. I've heard a lot of statements as to why going will be bad but no-one has stood up and said this will happen if you stay, it's all, you'll lose this if you go, and this, and this.
I don't believe there's enough information out there about the pro's and cons and the government are hiding the facts to make it an emotional vote rather than an informed one. Both sides of the argument are guilty of it. Show me the facts in pounds pence and everything else and I'll make a decision, in other words write me a business case and I'll decide if the case stacks up. Change is definitely needed but in or out is like saying my car isn't working properly, sell it or keep it. Well you can't keep a broken car, but you can fix it, and if you sell it you have no car so what's the alternative?
She's not there because of her abilities, she's there because of her contacts. Mates with Dave and co, very, very close ties to Google and Sky execs (suspiciously close when you think about the huge conflict of interests it could potentially create).
I would imagine her interview went something like:
What do you think you can offer TalkTalk?
Access to my phone book.
When can you start?
After reading the headline I thought WTF is he on about now but if you look at the root cause of the problem with companies making billions and not paying tax it comes down to companies shifting their operations around. Why not reduce tax for companies that are based in, and operate in the country. If you're based outside the country and have the bulk of your operations outside the country then you should pay a higher rate of tax. It comes down to what the tax is used for, the higher the rate of employment the smaller the state and therefor the smaller the tax income required, the more people out of work (because a company is mainly based outside the country) the larger the state and more tax is required. It would remove the ability to escape tax by moving your business off shore as to do so would mean you incur larger taxes, unless of course you choose not to sell in that country at all, which just creates room for another company to move in.
There are a number of laws already in place relating to the use of recording equipment for the purposes of criminal investigations, for example an officer must provide grounds for suspicion of speeding before they can train the speeding camera on a vehicle as the camera is only to be used as validation of the suspicion (or invalidation). So I'd be interested to hear what sort of justification she manages to provide that doesn't conflict with these existing laws, or if there are conflicts, what the government plan to do with the existing laws.
The government are claiming they could claim an additional 400 million from 4 million contractors is the UK. The maths doesn't work for starters, as soon as they are made perm they will have to take a huge pay cut and will likely pay less tax than they already do (as the figures seem to focus purely on PAYE and ignore corp and VAT which will stop as soon as the person becomes an employee of another company).
But let's say it does work and they make 400 million by screwing over 4 million people in the UK. They could claim that from Google alone, who have avoided billions in taxes, or Stabucks, Facebook, Microsoft. There is literally hundreds of billions that could be claimed in tax if they took on just a few of the bigger companies. Ohhh, but the ministers lined up to join the boards of these huge companies the day after they leave office... Can't go pissing off a future employer.
Why not bring in a law that prevents ministers from being directors at private companies while in office and make all records of interactions between them and private companies, while in office, public to highlight any deals that may be done to gift jobs when they've left office?
The implication is that speed alone kills, which if was true, everybody would be dead, any movement is done at speed. So clearly speed alone does not kill, and it's not even high speed alone that kills, planes are pretty fast but I've never died, not once. And I travel on them a few times a month.
Speed + [Something else] kills. The something else could be stupidity, alcohol, malfunction etc. But to state 'Speed Kills' is incorrect.
Being alive kills, you can only die if you are alive. So where are the alive cameras fining people for being alive, it's the number one killer all over the world!
Ofcom have the power to demand a company stop talking when what they're saying is bull, but for some reason they don't act when it's a government department. Take GoSafe who run the speed cameras in North Wales and areas of England, all material they produce states "we don't hide cameras", "speed kills"; both claims have been proven to be untrue or cannot be proven and therefor, under Ofcom rules shouldn't be used. A number of UK prisons promote their rehabilitation scores, but the methods used to come to this conclusion are very, very dodgy. Then there's the government itself who are able to base whole campaigns to get votes then change their mind, surely making a claim in order to obtain a vote should be binding in some way?
It is irrelevant how many customers' data were stolen, the fact is they have proven beyond reasonable doubt that they cannot protect the data of their customers which is a breach of section 8.2 of their own terms and conditions which states they "will not be liable for breaches beyond their control", or to put it another way they are liable for breaches within their control.
So either they are saying that there is nothing they could do to prevent the attack, in which case there is also nothing they can do to prevent a future attack; or they are saying that they will make improvements to their security and therefor they do control the process and so the breach was within their control. All 4 million customers have the right to challenge this and terminate their contracts.
I would recommend that they just cancel, ignore any letters and let's see how many cases make it to court for the termination charges... (None).
TalkTalk terms & Conditions.
8.2 We try to keep your data and communications secure; however, for reasons beyond our control, these may be unlawfully intercepted. If they are, we’ll investigate and advise on next steps.
You could argue that the term, 'beyond our control', in the context of the recent data breach, would mean that they are claiming they have done everything possible and there was nothing they could have done to prevent the theft, and more importantly nothing they will do, as to make changes now will infer that there were improvements that could / should have been made and that the previous safeguards were not adequate.
Dido actually stated in an interview that she admitted their security measures were not good enough. Anyone in a contract could use this as reasonable grounds in my opinion, but what do I know.
But isn't that the very definition of 'news'? This is a news site, technically everything that has ever or will ever happen is 'news' so a decision has to be made about what is relevant and currently people are interested in this sort of story as, as you correctly point out, it has recently impacted many people in the UK.
The general rule for land ownership (for residential property) is about 400 feet above the land you own so assuming the drone is within this limit, it is technically trespassing and reasonable force can be used to protect yourself, this includes firing at it in the US. The same law applies in the UK only the level of reasonable force is slightly different.
A company is allowed to lose your data to people who intend to use it to commit crime which may financially impact you and you have to pay to make any changes to the data (like change bank etc)? And this is legal?!
Has anyone checked to see if any of the senior management at TalkTalk bought shares in Noddle in the past few weeks? The value of that company will be rocketing at the minute and TalkTalk have effectively created a revenue stream.
I think it's incredibly misleading and unfair of TalkTalk to be advising customers that the information stolen is 'nothing more than you would use when writing a cheque, or to receive payments'. Dido is deliberately trying to mislead people into believing that the information held is useless, or can only be used to pay money in.
Surely Ofcom have grounds to step in as it's a public communication designed to mislead, effectively an advert that lies.
https://d35r1y7lonozn6.cloudfront.net/
Watch for yourselves.
All residential, small business and ex-customers' data is stored in the same system so if they have managed to get one set of data they will have probably obtained all as it would actually be easier, once in, to take everything than to identify specific accounts.
I wonder if the government will be doing anything about companies holding (and losing) the data of people they don't even provide services for anymore. Oh noooo... Dido is married to one of Mr Cameron's friends in government. What are the odds, a guy is a member of the party that leads the country, and his wife gets offered a job to lead one of the biggest communications companies in that very same country. Some people get all the 'luck'.
The customer base is very, very old when compared to competitors, and getting older. 60% of HRG profits come from their ridiculously expensive store card.
They'll go the same way Phones 4u went as they add no value to the model, if you want something you can often buy it direct from a manufacturer via a number of sites as companies like Amazon open their sites up and step out of the sales bit and choose to make their profits from space on the page. Companies that buy something, add a profit on top and then sell it will always be more expensive and the expense only there because they add an unnecessary step in the process.
Why does it matter how many men, women, gays, blacks, whites etc a company hires? The people doing the counting should be the ones ashamed, they're grouping / labelling people because of the sex, colour of their skin or where they like to put their d*ck. Will these same group of bean counters, after they've forced companies to hire people based on the above, hold their hands up and apologise when a company goes bust because they had a choice of hiring a person who was qualified but were pressured to hire the guy in a wheelchair because they hadn't hired any for a while. Also, will the guy in the wheelchair be happy knowing the reason he got the job has little to do with his abilities and everything to do with his disabilities?
So people are complaining that they added an option which was basically abused by developers who decided they would charge for previously free things rather than make more? And that is Valves fault how exactly? It's a bit like Cadbury deciding they to sell chocolate at Asda when they used to give it away for free, and people blaming Asda... In fact it's not just like that it is that. Some customers are stupid, some developers are greedy, would have been nice to let it run I like the idea, now they have lost the chance to make any revenue at all which removes any incentive for developers to make really good add-ons, so the devs and customers lose, because the devs and customers where d**ks.
I'm starting to like the idea of wearable tech more but only if it can provide me with something extra or remove the need for an existing piece of tech. Telling the time adds nothing as it's a watch, that's the bare minimum. Being able to tell you that someone has sent you a text, for when the phone in your pocket is an inch out of reach?
I do like the heart monitor, pedometer , temperature features etc. There are devices that can do this but you don't need them if you have a decent smart watch.
I'd like to see some decent applications like the ability to replace credit / debit cards, ID passes, home and car keys. The security would have to be increased significantly for me to trust the provider of such a service with anything more than pictures of my dogs though.
Job titles - Thought up by someone who hasn't read the JD to attract people to apply.
Job Description - A list of things the recruiter thinks they want based on a problem they haven't investigated, don't know the root cause of, yet have decided on a solution.
Salary - As the problem has not been scaled or scoped the impact of it is usually unknown, as is the size of the project required to resolve it and so the salary is based on the job title, which was made up.
I recognised a few but I'm not good with names of stuff so just referred to them as the spinny one, that dead thin Motorolla one and the Nokia one that looked small in every picture I ever saw of it but in real life was like a brick.
The one thing I did find interesting though is how different they all looked, good or bad they all non-uniform. Unlike now where 'difference' is measured in tenths of millimetres and whether or not the back has a brushed steel effect or brushed aluminium effect, or brushed silver, or brushed...
I'm a big fan of Amazon, I have a Kindle and am a Prime customer and use both a few times a day. As for the customer service, again, excellent. As a company they're very good at knowing what customers want and the variances in how they want it, for example offering the same level of customer service via live chat, email and phone etc, and the same for their content, the experience is the same whether watching via my Playstation, iPad etc.
The main problem is content, I've had this rant before on here about media content and the way it is packaged up and sold. The only way you'll get true choice is to buy every device / service as they all have 99% of the same stuff and 1% of the things you want to watch. When they review this outdated model and make it more affordable and therefore commercially viable for resellers the industry will move forward as the technology (the how) is far outpacing the content (the what).
If the big content providers persist with the current model the pirates will win and the whole industry will decline. The same happened with music, and all the retailers went belly up, you can now buy almost any music in any format from any provider. The model is flexible and combined with good tech the music industry is starting to make money again. Movies and games will go the same way within the next year or so I think, but what do I know, it's not like I'm an analyst or anything who's been looking at this industry for years... :P
Technically every single event that has ever or will ever happen is news, whether or not it is worth reading is subjective. I agree with the people on here saying it shouldn't need to be 'big news', but like me, you took the time to read it, then the comments and then comment yourself; so by definition of your own actions, yes it is newsworthy.
It's just very meh. Out the corner of your eye you think ooh, looks a bit like a Mercedes A Class. Then you turn and look properly and go hmmm... it isn't. A bit like when you see someone stunning at a distance with the glare of the sun, then as she gets closer you see that while not ugly, she wasn't worth the watery sun burned eyeballs you endured to get a better look.
I suspect that she's playing the fool rather than an actual fool. if you act stupid then no-one could ever assume you're actually watching your people's every move. It's a bit like how George Bush remained in power for so long and manage to invade all those countries, the reasons he's giving must be true as he's too stupid to make up a story right?
Having said that I work with a very wide range of people doing my consulting job and the higher up the chain you go the lower the IQ, so she could actually be as stupid as she appears.
The purpose of a process is to deliver an output. A business is merely a set of processes that are designed to produce a number of outputs. Money can be used as a measure, for example some companies only focused on squeezing as much as possible out of their customers will measure their success by how much money they make.
Others will measure customer satisfaction, innovations delivered; the number, quality and happiness of employees. Personally I would rather work for a company that shows these values, I'd rather be a customer of a company that shows these values and I'd rather invest in a company that shows these values.
As a rapper from the early 90s once said, don't hate the player, hate the game. The reason companies can pay no tax is because the government have created a set of rules designed to let them escape it. They're only adhering to the laws that govern them. You don't drive down the road at 30 if it's national speed limit do you.
The government needs to have a fair and simple set of tax laws that make it easy to administer, measure and control. The current set of laws are so complex that for every reason to pay there are 5 reasons not to pay. The reason it always seems to be the rich that get away with it is because to identify the loop holes you have to know the law, which is expensive. Technically if we could be bothered we could all avoid paying any tax but we don't because the return on investment doesn't add up. But if someone said to you, you could pay them a fiver and they would give you back that 20k a year you pay in tax... you would.
The trend with most of the companies that have gone under is that they refused to adapt. HMV / Virgin fought downloads and tried to prevent people moving away from physical media. Phones 4U tried to maintain the age old 're-seller' model which is effectively to be a middle man. They chose not to create an app market or a media rental service or to expand their offering in line with the expansion of the capabilities of the technology. The networks are getting more advanced (4g, more wifi coverage, ability to pay etc), the devices are getting more advanced. All these advancements create immense capability which should be embraced by retailers* not held back, fight it and you will lose.
*Phones 4u, despite what their management team said many, many times, are not a retailer. They are at best a broker. You go to tesco and buy a loaf of bread they give you bread you give them money. That's retail. If you went in and they gave you a loaf, £500 and a ps4 to persuade you to sign a contract where you would pay Warburtons £50 a month for 24 months then that would be a closer match to Phones 4u's model... which is not retail.
Comparing the operating systems is one measure, but there are only really 3 of them, and 2 of them are available on hundreds of phones across a wide range of customer profile / targets, one of them is only available two phones (plus the older models) so it is inevitable in an industry were the price you pay is determined by the device you have and not the OS it runs, that the bulk of custom will go to the OS that is available to the widest audience, so it's not really a comparison worth comparing.
That said, the additional revenue streams which are a result of the OS you have are worth measuring, I'd be interested to know the annual value of OS purchases vs Android and Windows, then if you overlay that with the overall number OS customers and then by device you'll probably find that Apple has a far higher spend per device and spend per OS instance.
I'll speculate, as everyone else is...
Firstly what were they going to do with them? I recon create off-shore data centres to protect it from governments, but that plan has been scrapped after the US government have since made a number of successful demands for data in other countries.
Secondly why scrap and not sell? For the same reason companies buy paper cups, they're disposable and therefore cannot be classed as an asset. If they were sold they would be at a significant loss, if they're kept they're an asset, but if they're scrapped they can claim back the cost of them as they're not an asset and, technically, resulted in no profit being made.
Or, they were making Waterworld 2 but Kevin Costner turned them down.
I don't see it as having backfired on Google, I actually agree with the stance they have taken. It highlights the stupidity of the ruling. Google have said all along that to allow / force the search provider, whether it be Google, Bing etc to determine what it should or shouldn't decide to remove is wrong so they have decided to remove all as the EU have not bothered to stick to their side of the deal in implementing a process to make the decision.
If the idiots in Europe want to have a rule to "protect the people" they should own and regulate it. All requests should be made to them and they should make a decision, liaise with the 'customer' to inform them of their decision and then if it is deemed right to remove they should contact all search providers (which is going to be very difficult as anyone can set one up, and to only force the big guns to do it is anti-competitive) and tell them what to remove.
As much as competition can make things cheaper and improve the level of service provided to the consumer, it can also have the opposite effect. There will soon be so many services that offer 99% of the same stuff as the rest with 1% of exclusive stuff. But unlike other competitive industries that operate in the same way you can't just pick the 1% you want. When Tesco are selling Levis jeans at a penny a pair they don't force you to fill your basket with crap before you can buy them (they hope you will, but it's not a requirement). Yet when you want the 1 football game or film, you have to buy the 'bundle' or 'package' or 'boost'. The result is you end up with 100 ways to watch Only Fools & Horses so that you can watch the game on Saturday and the other game the following week... False competition.
The NSA said a few months ago, to the press and made it very public that there had been no emails to the higher ups, none at all, only to then release a single email which they feel strengthens their case. But in fact they have contradicted their original statement which was that there were none, not some, or one, or the ones we have selected that we think are good.
The defendant now has reasonable grounds to assume, and any court should also assume, that the company which controls all the communications has either a) deliberately withheld information or b) are not aware of what information they hold, and so any statements they make cannot possibly be valid. This will drag on for years and destroy a man and family, because the little guy cannot win.
I said a few weeks ago it made good business sense to happen and I still think it is. When you look at the 2 things apple have bought, firstly the hardware, mid-range, over-priced with a strong customer, almost fan, base who believe that the best products are the shiny, most expensive ones with a well known person at the helm. So lots in common with the apple customer base then.
Secondly they have bought the streaming service, and I think over the next few years they'll make their 3bn investment back a few times over just with this. They have recognized a shift in people's listening habits and realized that although have their own, they've lost ground on some competitors, combined with the trillions in the bank it was a no brainer. if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
Their reaction to an advancement which enables the industry to move forward, create competition and ultimately lead to a better quality and better priced service is to try to very publicly show their disapproval and act like thugs. Having lived in London, that's how business is done, if it's not over priced; run by miserable people who hate their job, life and everyone around them, then it's not going to work.
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