* Posts by TopOnePercent

234 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jul 2011

Page:

Google Glass gets 2GB of RAM. Think about this. Two gigs of RAM

TopOnePercent

Re: Voice commands

They'll work the same way trendy hipster beards work, or clothes two sizes too small, or hair product etc etc.... Some people will just not acknowledge how stuipid they look until years after the fact.

Labour vows: We'll pause one-dole-to-rule-them-all for drastic fix-up if elected in 2015

TopOnePercent

Re: lifestyle choice. really? always?

You probably understand what I am about to say,but I want to say it anyway.

Some people can't work. They might be very disabled. Or they might be looking after someone who needs lots of care. So not working isn't really a lifestyle choice

You're right, on both points - I understand that, and I agree with you that their situation should not be penalised.

However, no system is perfect and there will always be edge cases for whom no system works. That's not a reason to persevere with the current mess, especially where the situation you describe will be a small minority of cases.

Doing nothing will simply soak up still more cash that we as a society don't have, until the tipping point is reached where welfare implodes.

My two disabled friends both have highly lucrative careers, despite what I would consider significant adversity - to them its just life. While disability varies from case to case, I'd say each of them was more disabled than half of all claimants I've met.

TopOnePercent

It'd be cheaper, fairer, faster, and all round better, if we just abolish all benefits other than OAP, and give people larger tax free allowances - that way all work pays, and not working ceases to be a lifestyle choice.

People could then buy their own short term unemployment insurance from the private sector (as those of us with any assets must) to cover any transient unemployment.

Snowden defends mega spy blab: 'Public affairs have to be known by the public'

TopOnePercent

Re: tom dial Creamy-G00dness AC pattern forming

Matt,

I've upvoted you because I think you're largely right that IQ typically follows family lines. Continuous lifetime exposure to highly intelligent people should logically ensure you gather more of your potential IQ; conitnuous exposure to chavs that hate education, disrespect intelligence, and have no greater ambition than a slot on big brother is unlikely to help the same child fulfill as much of their potential.

However, IQ is not truly an indicator of likely lifetime earnings. I'd argue my dad is smarter than I am - he's certainly better at maths. He broke his arm on the way to the 11+, so spent most of his years as a factory worker.

I had supportive parents, and was lucky enough to pick a hobby that later became a highly paid career. I pay more in taxes than my parents ever earned.... But I'll never be smarter than my dad.

Equally, I'll not earn as much per year as Jade Goody did, but I'd have put good money on my being smarter.

Coulson GUILTY of conspiring to hack phones between 2000 and 2006

TopOnePercent

Re: Sacrificial lamb?

Didn't the News of The World continually report that Jails were like Holiday Camps? He has nothing to fear!

Spoken like a man who's never had to endure the horror of Disneyland Paris.

San Francisco issues SMACKDOWN on parking spot sale software

TopOnePercent

Re: Explain please!

I don't get it, how can I be paid for letting someone else in to a public parking place?

I suspect the idea is that when you're ready to vacate the public space you parked in, you offer it on the app. Someone then 'buys' the space, and you vacate it for them upon their arrival instead of simply leaving it empty for the next vehicle to park.

Who needs a ride-on mower when a ROBOT will cut your grass

TopOnePercent

I'm definately in the market for something like this. I can even live with having to move the childrens toys off the grass first.

I just can't quite see myself stumping up a grand for more for one.... That's about 4 or 5 years of paid grass cutting from the local gardner, which is probably how long the mower will reasonably last.

When the price drops to 3 or 400 quid, then I'm in.

It's a Doddle: Amazon inks train station parcel deal with Network Rail

TopOnePercent

Re: Sounds brilliant.

and then carry it home myself...along with my briefcase...and laptop bag...and top coat...etc...etc...

Well, you could always man up a little and stop hauling more shit around on your commute than my doris takes for a weekend away?

Google starts selling Glass to Brits – for £1,000 a pop

TopOnePercent
Joke

I can't wait for the first You Tube video of someone being relieved of their gleggs by a mugger / promising young footballer / up & coming DJ.

"But you have a video of the mugger taking them from me and a GPS read out on their location!"

Sorry sir, but the CPS feel there may be insufficient evidence to warrant an arrest or a search warrant.

Traffic lights, fridges and how they've all got it in for us

TopOnePercent

PFY

“It is scary to think how many devices around us that we have just accepted and ignore as a 'black box device' when really they are a computer running old software - ancient versions of Linux not being uncommon - with basic security failures like default passwords, unpatched and simply exploitable software and web vulnerabilities that make it feel like 2005,” adds Lyne.

Anyone else got a mental picture of Lyne as a PFY? To listen to him you'd think 2005 was actually a long time ago, or that default creds and unpatched boxes hadn't existed before then.

VIDEO SELFIE DRONE: 'AirDog' UAV follows you everywhere you go

TopOnePercent

Incoming......

Anyone else think that sales or thefts of Black Widow style catapults will soar in areas where people use these drones? The local chavs will all want to be the first to bag a drone.

Ministry of Justice IT bods to strike over outsourcing fears

TopOnePercent

The whole of the public sector needs to adjust to an attitude and environment of doing more for less. Outsourcing will inevitably have to be part of that picture, as will redundancies.

To quote the Labour partys Liam Byrne "I’m afraid there is no money".

Bankers bid to use offshore temp techies

TopOnePercent
Pint

Re: Interesting on who is and who is not on the map....

my remark probably is a bit too straight... Individual shareholders are not at fault here any longer (although they contribute, some more than others; and yes, there are exceptions)... It's the collective gambling that happens with futures of sooo many people that just isn't right, especially when things like jobs are being toyed with.

As a shareholding employee, whose future is being toyed with, I can pretty much agree with that.

What would be immensely helpful in rectifying that situation was if the institutional shareholders (pension funds) had to pass along their votes to the underlying investors. That way the big fund managers couldn't ride roughshod over the smaller shareholders, as overnight, ordinary people would become the big shareholders.

TopOnePercent

Re: Guus Interesting on who is and who is not on the map....

Sometimes they get that wrong, but it is not that common, and the banks that do get hammered in the press and the market. They have all learnt from those public errors.

Working for one of the not yet hammered banks, I'm afraid the idea that they have learned anything from it is a delrious fantasy. I wish it weren't so.

TopOnePercent

Re: Interesting on who is and who is not on the map....

I wish they copped on to real reality, rather than shareholder (gambler) reality...

Guus, I agree with everything you wrote bar the part above.

I am both a shareholder in and customer of the bank I work for. As a shareholder, I'm interested in stable long term gains over the cost of capital.

Shareholders aren't the cause of the problem - senior managers are.

World still standing? It's been two weeks since Cryptolocker, Gameover Zeus takedown by feds

TopOnePercent

Re: Oh, like the average muddlehead has a choice!

A neighbor of mine, back in the late 1990s, bought himself a computer, and I helped him get set up with the Internet connection and all that. So he's browsing around the web, and there's a banner ad claiming that he has mail. So he clicks on that and lo and behold, the browser jumps to a site that he didn't actually want to visit. Well, duh!

Yeah, I just removed 17 different bits of malware from my neighbours laptop, as it had finally ceased to function.

But the muddlehead is going to keep clicking on crap, because they are muddleheads, and all they've got to use is a crappy OS.

Thing is, my neighbour is a carpenter, not a techie. He's not supposed to understand how botnets work or malware spreads. Or is it your view that only car mechanics should be allowed to drive?

If it's the job of the police to secure the net, then it's the responsibility of Microsoft, et alia, to write good and secure software. And Microsoft and the rest should be fined, and hard, for not doing it! Using best practices means actually using best practices! Not publishing a book about it, and then writing the biggest bunch of crap code I've seen.

Microsoft have made massive strides forward in security terms, over the past ten years or so, but yes, there is further to go. Given Java is responsible for most exploits last year though, there's only so much they can do.

If we took the view that UK law has global reach (bear with me), and set a mandatory jail sentance of one week per machine compromised, we could go a long way to eliminating the problem. Sure, some people will continue because they'll think they're safe, but the first teenager jailed for 10,000 years will curb their enthusiasm for exploits.

Assange™ makes fresh bid for FREEDOM from Scotland Yard's 'physical encirclement'

TopOnePercent

Re: Who cost the taxpayer £6M?

So, the CIA set a honey trap in Sweden

....

totally made up honey trap from the CIA.

So in your mind there's no possibility that the ladies in question weighed up the risks of a painful AIDS related death or a lifetime of ARVs against 2 1/2 minutes fun with Julian, and came to the conclusion that he wasn't worth the risk?

TopOnePercent
FAIL

Re: state shills

as we know from snowdon, the state engages in social disinformation big time. hence all the helpful shills presenting their "opinion" here

So anyone that disagrees with you must be a paid "state shill"? It can't simply be that they disagree with you because you're wrong?

TopOnePercent

Re: Who cost the taxpayer £6M?

The official complaints are that he didn't use a condom. In what rational country is that a crime?

Hang on.... if a lassy consents to a little horizontal boxing provided you wear gloves, and you charge in and turn it into bloodsport, how can you rationally consider that not to be an offence?

If the lady in question insists he wear his wellies, then that is her right, and violating that IS rape. She'd (apparently) not consented to unprotected sex, so there was no consent in place.

Tech talk bloke compares girlfriend to irritating Java tool – did he deserve flames?

TopOnePercent

Re: He is giving a talk about mavern

And thank you both for confirming that men think that attractiveness is a good reasons for getting married, above love, affection, dedication, devotion, etc., etc. ... it is YOUR problem, and it is sad that women are having to suffer the results of this crap.

Hang fire.... If I had a face like Brad Pitt rather than a well slapped arse, I'd have enjoyed even more success with women in my younger days. That's just a fact. Beauty is an attractive trait and it appeals to women every bit as much as men.

Were I hung like a horse rather than a macaque, I'd possibly have enjoyed still more feminine attentions. But you get what you get and you look how you look. If its good, great, if its unfortunate then its just a challenge to be overcome.

That said, I love my (hot) wife for all the reasons you give and many more besides. I didn't marry her because of her looks (lets face it, when people get old they stop looking pretty) but I see nothing wrong in recognising that I'm very happy with her physical appearance. Why is it ok to prize loyalty or sense of humour but suddenly somehow wrong to appreciate aesthetics?

Brit lands on Rockall with survival podule, starts record attempt

TopOnePercent

perhaps our former PM (Blair) might be persuaded to put his hand in his pocket and sponsor him

Yes, he can start with the £42 Million he owes in taxes for the £100 Million he earned while Gordon was throwing phones at people. Its a disgrace that a Labour leader would avoid taxes by squirrelling that much money into off shore trusts, companies, and accounts.

Code Spaces goes titsup FOREVER after attacker NUKES its Amazon-hosted data

TopOnePercent

Good luck to those affected

Did the company get it right? No. And they really should have.

That doesn't mean everyone in the company deserved to lose their jobs - I'd imagine the HR staffer, receptionist etc lacked the technical knowledge to know they'd got it wrong. It may not even be the fault of their BOFH - be honest guys n girls, do your managers implement all of your recommendations? No, mine doesn't either.

So best of luck to the staff who are to lose their jobs, and also to the customers affected - hopefully they have additional backups or onsite copies.

TopOnePercent
Alert

Anyone who stores anything in the "cloud" deserves what they get.

I store a bunch of personal stuff in cloud-like services such as dropbox, google drive, sky one drive etc. Its all encrypted with TrueCrypt, and copies reside on the hard disk of each of my computers.

Obviously it wouldn't be appropriate for a business to store its data in this manner, but for individuals, the cloud can provide free offsite backups of things. Lets face it, it beats mailing a DVD of data to my parents house!

TopOnePercent

Re: just as true for handguns

Never listen to a non-technical person on technical issues

This should be stencilled in foot high letters on the wall of every manager in every company. It could be accompanied by other epithets such as:

Your teenager is not an appropriate technical person.

If the people reporting to you don't think you're a technical person, then you're not a technical person.

TopOnePercent

I doubt that there are that many accounts of disgruntled employees destroying their company when they leave. That is a criminal act and you go to jail for it

Sure, but the key question is how long would you go to jail if you plead guilty at the first hearing, and offered a clean previous record as mitigation? Only 1/3rd of whatever the sentanc was originally.

This becomes important because....

And once you have a criminal record, you can say good-bye to any position higher than flipping burgers.

Certainly you'd struggle to find work if you declared your conviction to an employer. If you didn't, and they failed to do appropriate background checks (smaller companies often fall down here), then you're fine.

Additionally, it appears the maximum jail time under the computer misuse act would be 10 years. Its exceptionally unlikely that you'd be given that as a starting tariff, so lets say 6 years. 1/3rd of that is 2 years. The rehabilitation of offenders act means you won't have to declare it after 4 years.

That's a high price to pay for a bit of disgruntling. There may be many people wishing that they could, but I really don't think there are that many who actually do it.

It is still a high price to pay, but it's not as high as it seems. You could readily fill a 4 year career break with a masters degree and a little backpacking holiday. Obviously, you have the 2 years inside to do as well, but it means you're only out of the game for 6 years total, rather than the rest of your days as you'd (rightly) expect for taking down your employer.

Today's get-rich-quick scheme: Build your own bank

TopOnePercent

Re: Where's the cash again?

There are no lorries because there is no cash - I believe thats Worstalls central idea. The bank exists online only, so all deposits are dematerialised (not cash) when they reach your bank. Its a bit like what ING Direct used to be - no cash, no branches, online transfers from current accounts only, with the additional bolt on of allowing withdrawls direct from cash machines.

In essence, it'd be retail only, no corporate banking. Unless your company doesn't handle cash either, in which case it'd work.

TopOnePercent

Re: Lots of comments from people who don't understand banking...

Completely agree with your point Tim, but its really just an expansion of the 3rd issue I highlighted, allbeit one enacted by the existing Masters of The Universe, rather than another new player in the game.

TopOnePercent
Pint

Lots of comments from people who don't understand banking...

You've got 3 main problems with your plan Tim.

1) To build, run, and maintain the web site you need IT staff. They'll need somewhere to work, so now you need an HQ. You've got an HQ, so now you need facilities staff. You'll also need HR to keep your company safe from legal action by your shinny new employees. Now you need an bigger HQ. Oh, you'll also need a sh*t lot of KYC staff to enforce global financial regulations regarding to whom you offer financial services. And you'll need a compliance & legal department to prove that to your regulators. A still bigger HQ beckons. You're going to need a finance team to pay all those people, and security for your physical books and records. And so it goes..... Pretty soon, you've got most of the cost of running a real bank, but only one profit making opportunity - whatever margin you can chissel from the base rate.

2) Banking licences. You're going to need to get them, and as anyone that watched Bank Of Dave will know, they're not given out like candy or public sector diversity roles....

3) Competition. If you could actually make it work inspite of all the above, I could make it work more profitably by offering mortgages to those requiring say 60% loan to value, where I can pretty well guarantee I won't lose a bean, and anything else I charge those borrowers over the fraction of base rate you're giving to your depositors can be turned into higher interest rates for my depositors meaning you'd lose all your punters.

All of the above assumes you've set aside money for when your website is hacked (you'll need to have cash set aside to cover your losses or you'll go bust) which in your model can only come from chisselling away still more of the base rate that you offer your customers.

TopOnePercent

Re: Im in.

The difference between such a bank and teapot is that you actually cannot rob a bank which keeps all the money at the central bank.

Sure you can.

All I have to do is hack your web site and I've robbed you of the money I transfer away or withdraw.

Shotguns and ski masks won't work, but lets face it, thats not been good business for a long time because its easier to use sledgehammers and steal watches or jewellery - more choice of targets, lesser security, and reduced punishments if caught.

London Tech Week: All for the luvvies and the joke's on you, taxpayers

TopOnePercent
Stop

One thing....

The government could kickstart the tech industry in Britain by making just one simple change - Stop the relentless offshoring of IT jobs to various parts of the third world or cheap parts of Europe.

Even the EU safe harbour data regs are routinely finessed by having half of india remote into virts with the virts based in Europe.

People will happily run malware if paid ONE CENT – new study

TopOnePercent

The sooner internet access requires a basic competency test the better.

How practical is an electric car in London?

TopOnePercent

Re: More privileges?

If it were a right, you wouldn't need a licence.

There's no specific licence for me to pop round and bang your wife either, but that doesn't make it my right to do so.

Driving is not a right, and its not a privilege: its an entitlement having passed the (allegedly) appropriate testing. Provided I'm not caught breaking road traffic law too often, I'm entitled to drive for the rest of my days.

TopOnePercent

Re: Tax On Fuel

So when we all 'flip' to electric vehicles, how do we have to pay the tax on the fuel?

<donsTinfoilHat>

That's what Galilleo is all about - swapping to per mile charging rather than a tax on fuel, plus tracking every car or bike everywhere it goes.

TopOnePercent

Re: Can you afford $15K to replace the battery pack?

Just to point out that the 'shrinking fuel tank' happens with old ICE cars as well because the engine wears and the fuel economy drops. Can you honestly believe a 5 year old Diesel achieves the same mpg as a new one of the same model?

Evidently you know little of modern engines.

Provided the oil and filter are changed after every winter, and 6-7k whichever is sooner, a modern engine is good for more than 250,000 miles. 5 years would be about 50k, and there'd be almost no engine wear at all.

Changes are good that because the engine is ran in properly that both power output and mpg will have improved.

TopOnePercent

Re: More privileges?

IMO, driving is a privilege, not a right.

WRONG. Driving is an entitlement - read your licence.

Cyclists usually trot out the "driving is a privilege not a right" line when they want to pretend that cycling is a right, which of course it isn't. Cycling later became legally permissable due to a cyclists attempt to evade the law having knocked someone over on Muswell Hill, with the judge determining that the cycle was also governed by the 1835 Highways Act - the same act that forms the basis for the cars use of the roads.

TopOnePercent

Re: Driving in to central london

Buses, trains and tubes are all available frequently and fairly cheaply during working hours.

My train ticket costs more than my mortgage.

Try getting a train into one of the northern or western stations and then get to Canary Wharf for work. Walk, train, tube, dlr..... it all just takes so long, and its pretty well unreliable - most weeks one of the "unholy trinity" breaks down or experiences significant delays or strikes or staff absences.

Public transport is great for very short distances, but hasn't been the future for a very long time now. The age of rail has been and gone, and anyone that thinks night busses are safe should feel welcome to travel through Croydon on one for a couple of nights.

Now if we wanted to look to the future, it'd look a lot more like petrol or electric motorbikes travelling in on roads that are built over the top of the disused rail lines, with the train stations turned into multi-story motorbike parking..... Or we could just carry on with our current inadequate and crippled infrastructure hoping somehow that the train and bus will one day make sense again (they won't, of course).

TopOnePercent

Re: More privileges?

Sorry, what? Are you saying that leccy cars can't overtake cyclists? We're not talking about the Sinclair C5.

Its not a speed issue, its a problem of width - London has very narrow lanes (where two exist). Ironically, the C5 would seem to be the answer to passing the cyclist as it'd have loads of room.

TopOnePercent

Re: On Street Parking

Err... they were primarily competing with electric, diesel and steam driven cars and horse-drawn carriages, rather than simply horse-back riding.

Sure, but electric, steam, and diseasel cars were worse than the horse, so the horse was the best option available. Once the car could achieve a similar daily range (albeit at a lower speed per hour), the future of transport was set.

Horses don't have a very limited range, or a low top speed compared to early cars, and carriages were more comfortable than early petrol driven vehicles. Old car also require daily maintenance.

Sure they did. A horse can optimistically go about 40 miles per day. The Benz Patent Wagon, the frist commerically available petrol car, could do that in 5 hours. The first long distance trip in one was some 66 miles in a day, during which the lady driver (Mrs Benz) invented brake shoe lining, and had to locate pharmacies at which to replenish the fuel. The vehicle carried 3 people on this occasion, which no horse could do over a similar distance even if it could cover the ground.

The very first petrol powered car had already beaten the horse in all but top speed.

To compete with a modern car which can hold say 70mph all day with a few fuel stops, you'd need more than 8000 horses (assuming a 200 horsepower car). The modern leccy car has 120 years of automotive development to overcome, which is a very different and difficult challenge.

Likewise. But that is indeed because I am a motoring enthusiast and WANT more than one vehicle, rather than for a legitimate, practical reason.

I need a cheap track day car (for when I run out of talent or get collected by someone else that has), and my proper car. The wife also needs a car (something less powerful and costly to run than mine).

Realistically, my wifes car could be replaced by a Leaf - but since it cost £500 to buy and has been reliable for the past 3 years, she may be waiting a while before Nissan want to do a like for like swap.

TopOnePercent

Re: On Street Parking

So as long as you get everything for free, without any of the restrictions imposed on other equivalent personal transport, then it "works" for you? Well, I'm sure it does...

I was trying to be positive :) Leccy cars just won't work for me in any realistic scenario.

While I simply don't buy the whole MMGW/AGW/AAGW/Whatever the mentalists are calling it this week, I am pleased we're at least looking at alternative fules in case the petrol runs out in 50 years when my potential grandchild wants to learn to drive. I don't believe it will, but only my wife is *always* right, so a plan b is ok with me.

TopOnePercent

Re: More privileges?

"I can't possibly see how you justify letting them drive in bus lanes too."

Would it be a problem for you personally, then?

It'd be a problem for me, yes, unless cyclists were banned from the bus lanes when leccy cars are approved.

At the moment, the slowest cyclist can be overtaken by the bus so while they might cap the busses top speed for a short time, the bus either overtakes and pulls away, or the slowest cyclist eventually gets far enough ahead of the bus while its collecting passengers to stop delaying it.

If cyclists continue in the bus lanes and are joined by leccy cars, then the fastest leccy car is capped at the pace of the slowest cyclist. Only now the bus is also stuck in a tail back of leccy cars, so can;t regain time by going faster between stops. The whole city then moves at the pace of the slowest, which despite what brake/ecotard groups may tell you, isn't actually a good idea.

TopOnePercent

Re: On Street Parking

Remember that the first petrol engined cars weren't exactly practical, either.

You have to remember that the first petrol engined cars were competing for market share with a horse.

The horse had very limited range, low top speed, little comfort, was expensive to keep, and required daily maintenance.

An electric car that had free parking (in London), free charging, and could use bus lanes would work for me as a daily driver / snotter to get me to work. At £30k, it'd only need to work for 5 years to beat the train on price. I'd still keep my petrol cars for longer trips / fun (a mans gotta have a hobby), and have the eleccy car in addition.

Unfortunately ecofeco is wandering about in fantasy land if s/he expects the changes described to come about in 20 years. They won't. Nor will most of our power be provided by windmills.

Slippery Google greases up, aims to squirm out of EU privacy grasp

TopOnePercent
Facepalm

Re: TopOnePercent

Oops, sorry. And yes, you're quite right - confusion due to my inability to read... or was it comrpehend... or both.

TopOnePercent

Sorry Vic, but you're still wrong. You need to check the updated guidance issued on 10 March 2014.

To be life long declarable its now a minimum tariff of 4 years. Community orders are now dispensed with in just 6 months.

TopOnePercent
WTF?

Why are comments being premoderated and simply disappearing from this story?

TopOnePercent

If you were convicted of murder, you wouldn't be able to get it removed...

Convictions for literally almost any crime would have to be removed due tot he rehab of offenders act. The day the conviction becomes spent (as little as 12 months now) and the criminal can demand you stop disclosing it publicly, even if you were their victim or a relative of a deceased victim.

Piketty thinks the 1% should cough up 80%. Discuss

TopOnePercent

Re: Taxin incomes is both immoral and ineffective.

Progressive taxation of income is the fairest means of taxation we have come up with.

Not it isn't. The fairest system is everyone pays £X where X is the same number for everyone. Its simple and fair. The more you earn, the more you keep.

We make no attempt to equalise beauty, intelligence, number of sexual partners, leisure time etc etc, so why the fuss over equalising incomes and wealth?

TopOnePercent

Re: If I had his and he had more, we'd both be tickled.

If that were true, you must have been watching her, continuously, for several hours. I doubt it.

A little over 3 hours to be precise - so close to half her shift.

And you'd have to have been watching very closely, to be absolutely sure she was doing no work, behind that desk. I doubt it.

Due to the seating configuration she was sat less than a meter away from me, with her arms folded just staring into space.

There is waste in the NHS, just as there is waste in any human system. It has to be geared up for a major disaster, or a major epidemic (or both, at the same time). When the disaster or epidemic fails to materialise - what a waste!

She could always stop writing clerical reports and just do the booking in procedure in the event of a major disaster. Its unionised waste, pure and simple. The receptionist can't do the department clerks work, because that would put the clerk out of a job. Well, yeah... it should.

Same reason one of the countries main fire services deleted Word from its Office install. Dept. managers writing their own memos would put the office clerk out of a job (I shit you not).

TopOnePercent

Re: If I had his and he had more, we'd both be tickled.

Who decides what the state should be doing? You? Me? Or a vote amongst all of us?

The state should, self evidently, only be doing things that people could not organise for themselves at a higher quality or lower price. National defence being a good example of what the state should be doing, the NHS being a great example of what it should be doing differently - most of the staff don't do doctoring or nursing, they do management, admin, and co-ordination all of which should be kept to a minimum. I'm a massive fan of universal healthcare, but the model we use for its provision is end of life.

We can't all vote for what the state does in an efficient system, because state workers will always vote to do less and earn more - hence a 3 term labour government has bankrupted the country again.

Clearly we should restrict voting to those that contribute (private sector workers because public sector workers don't pay tax - they only think they do), and then limit that to the most intelligent 50% as you'll get better informed decisions being made rather than emotive claptrap.

One man one vote just results in the country being governed for the benefit of the feckless and the dumb - because they breed faster than the rest of us.

TopOnePercent

Re: If I had his and he had more, we'd both be tickled.

The question is, rather, at what level of income tax are incentives to achieve balanced most effectively against the tax base required to sustain a stable economy in which the value of specialist skills can be maximised.

If 0% or even 20% were the correct answer then I contend that more advanced economies would successfully have used it (the same goes for 80% or even 50% which make no sense to me either).

To run as we do now? 45% of GDP.

To run efficiently, doing only what the state should be doing? 20% should be fine. It should be more than enough. There's also the moral component of demanding with menaces (threats of imprisonment and sequestration) half of the produce of someones labour to hand to those that do very little or do nothing at all.

The state has no business with diversity co-ordination, managing street football, etc etc. There's far too many non-jobs and administrators moving at a snails pace who should rightly be offshored, automated, or replaced by staff with a little get up and go.

A great example of this is Hector Sants. Rises to the very top of the public sector, but lasts 5 minutes in the private sector before going off with stress and exhaustion.

Last time I visited an A&E department the receptionist was literally doing 5 minutes work every hour. Then just sitting around waiting. In the private sector, she'd have been given other administrative duties to fill the void between booking in arrivals, and the clerk who used to do the role would be let go. Efficiency, you see.

TrueCrypt hooked to life support in Switzerland: 'It must not die' say pair

TopOnePercent

The name isn't important. What is important is the ongoing ability to use TrueCrypt, so well done guys for at least attempting this.

Though I'll just suggest CHuCrypt (given it's hosting in alpine quarters). To be pronounced TrueCrypt.

Page: