Posts by fero

Britain's costliest mistake? Lord Stern defends his climate maths

"The result was quite possibly the most expensive legislation ever passed by Parliament."

Actually wouldn't the most expensive be Income Tax, introduced in 1799?

Amazon's profit-eating machine revs into overdrive

It could be that the UK operation is profitable and it's unrelated operations in other parts of the world that makes the loss. In this case the UK operation should still be paying corporation tax.

In addition Amazon should be paying VAT at the UK rate (20%) but instead only pays 3% as it manages to pass all its UK trade through Luxembourg and pays there instead. Of course it still charges us punters the full 20%!

Despite the headline loss, there is still a very good argument that Amazon should be paying taxes in the UK.

Whitehall grants copyright pirates safe haven until 2015

" Just 3.2 per cent of the internet-connected population does 88 per cent of infringement."

So quite a few people then. I'm guessing in the half to a million people range?

Apple declares WAR on Spotify: iRadio bags streaming rights

Lady Gaga was reported to have received just over £100 from Spotify in 2009 after her song Poker Face was played more than a million times.

How does that amount compare to a million listens on terrestrial radio?

Reports: New Xbox could DOOM second-hand games market

All this talk of reselling games ignores another large area of the used game market - that of people who pass a game they have finished on to family and friends, for free.

Most of my relatives have Wii's and they constantly swap games around. A few relatives also have Xbox360's and again, games are passed around. I suspect this market is massively overlooked!

Introduce any charge at all, and this exchange is killed off. That won't mean more games are bought, more like less next-gen consoles are bought...

This 320-gigapixel snap of London is size of Buckingham Palace

I found all three buzby's. They are not difficult, look for obvious areas where you can make out people standing. Shame the competition only recognizes your first find.

Australia joins hunt for corporate tax dodgers

Someone will always spout off about how they still pay tax through VAT and employee income tax. This is true however the real issue is how they have a competitive advantage over the local competitors who can't bend tax rules like this. The small players can't compete, end up going out of business, the international corporations then dominate and guess what, prices go up, customers don't gain, and the tax man still loses out.

Tech firms face massive tax bill if Dutch vote to end loopholes

Re: Who pays the tax?

The real problem is that these tax loopholes give international corporations an advantage over local companies who have to play by the local tax rules. Saving 20% or more is a massive competitive advantage and it's no surprise that the big players have in industry after industry closed down the small businesses.

White House raises the signature threshold for petitions to 100,000

I wish the UK petition system had an "oppose" option as I often see petitions that I disagree with.

No increase in droughts since 1950, say boffins

I read this paper just an hour before reading Lewis's interpretation. Sadly the research in no way invalidates the global warming calculations. It just changes some of the predicted effects of global warming with regards to drought.

The problem that the research looked at is the "Palmer Drought Severity Index" (PDSI) that is used to measure drought. The PDSI calculates drought by looking at the difference between precipitation and evaporation. The issue is with determining evaporation (can't be measured directly). The research increases the number of factors used to calculate precipitation.

Fans' loyalty questioned as iPhone popularity plummets

Re: Media loyalty is still extra strong

I don't need 3G because I can use my mobile as a wireless hub but I do need GPS for location info!

Acer takes fight to Nexus 7 with seven-inch Iconia tablet

I want HDMI and microSD so I started to get excited until I saw the screen resolution.

Forget 'climate convert' Muller: Here's the real warming blockbuster

Unfortunately the lead author (Anthony Watts) is funded by the Heartland Institute so he is not a neutral researcher. His draft paper (not peer reviewed) has already had a lot of the theories rebutted by other researchers.

To quote Wikipedia:

The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank based in Chicago, which advocates free market policies. The Institute is designated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service and has a full-time staff of 40, including editors and senior fellows. The Institute was founded in 1984 and conducts research and advocacy work on issues including government spending, taxation, healthcare, tobacco policy, hydraulic fracturing, global warming, information technology, and free-market environmentalism.

In the 1990s, the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public-health reforms. More recently, the Institute has focused on questioning the science of climate change, and was described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism." The Institute has sponsored meetings of climate change skeptics, and has been reported to promote public school curricula challenging the scientific consensus on climate change.

Euro cellcos hoard nano Sims ahead of iPhone 5 launch

No chopping up your old SIM to fit this time!

Spotify coining it at home in Sweden: But are artists getting any?

Re: How come

Cellist and composer Zoë Keating recently published her Spotify revenues on a public spreadsheet. While she commends it as an "awesome" listening platform, she earned just $281.87 from 72,000 plays, or around three-tenths of a cent per play. For comparison, for a five month period she earned $46,477 from iTunes downloads.

Spotify is more like radio on demand than owning a CD/mp3. I wonder how much she earned from radio broadcasts which could be listened to by millions? I suspect a lot less than $281.87.

Solar quiet spell like the one now looming cooled climate in the past

The Maunder minimum has been closely studied and its effect is thought to be a 1C cooling over the period. As we are now looking at a minimum of 2C warming any new Maunder minimum will only slow down the effect, and when the Maunder minimum ends there will be an accelerated rise in temperature as the cooling effect disappears.

As usual Lewis cherry-picks the papers to report upon, and then cherry-picks the findings of the report!

Climate models need revising: Droughts, heat waves not such a big deal

The report does NOT say "Droughts, heatwaves not such a big deal". What it does say is that the effect depends upon what time of year the droughts and heatwaves hit, and recommends that climate models are improved to show seasonal variations. This also implies having better localised climate models and merging with ecosystem models.

New sat data shows Himalayan glaciers hardly melting at all

Has no one read the paper or even the preview?

To quote:

Here we show that GICs, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic peripheral GICs, lost mass at a rate of 148 ± 30 Gt yr−1 from January 2003 to December 2010

But:

The high mountains of Asia, in particular, show a mass loss of only 4 ± 20 Gt yr−1 for 2003–2010

So the high mountains of Asia are showing a lower loss compared to previous research BUT overall losses are 148 ± 30 Gt yr despite the correction in the high Asian mountain numbers...