Posts by Mole5000 23 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2012
I loved the eee901, I used one for years to do dev work on the train until i's battery went and keyboard packed in then bought a unused one second hand and slapped Lubuntu on it and it is still going strong to this day.
Intel and Microsoft teaming up to strangle the Netbook market was one of the stupidest, most short sighted things they ever did.
I don'y know of any device that lets you skip the ads on "streamed from provider" programming - given that it isn't the device that is in control, it is the (channel provider) player that is governing when and how you can FF/RW. Given the infrastructure needed to support streaming that would be a colossal money sink for anyone who allowed it.
"I'm told that Youview boxes also don't let their owner fast forward through the adverts in recorded/streamed content? Anyone confirm?"
Who ever told you this is telling porky bollocks. I can skip the ads perfectly fine on my Humax Youview box. It's even got a skip 1 minute button so 3 or 4 presses of that skips the entire ad break on most commercial channels to make the vewing experience seamless.
and US corporation law forces IBM to maximize return on shareholder assets.
No it doesn't. Corporate responsibility varies on a state by state basis but I know that Delaware, for example, has precedent setting case law that found in favour of the board when share holders sued the board for _not _ taking advantage of a tax avoidance scheme.
This is the exact opposite of what you are erroneously claiming.
IBM is incorporated in New York, unless you can find me NY state law or precedent that shows otherwise I am calling you misinformed.
*Sigh* Directors of UK companies (and infact pretty much any company anywhere in the world as demonstrated by both case law and statues) have no duty to their shareholders to either minimise tax or maximise revenue. Anyone suggestion they do is promoting a fiction.
Customers pay VAT, Employees pay income tax.
At that ignores the concept that these multinationals are essentially parasitic and force out local competition by using their tax advantage to undercut local tax paying businesses. If Starbucks wasn't here then their place would be filled by local mum & dad coffee shops that probably wouldn't be using transfer pricing agreements to remove profit from the UK.
Company directors are under no legal obligation to maximise returns for shareholders. Not here, no in Delaware not in Australia. There is case law to go along with the actual written law as well. The Delaware case law is about not using a tax avoidance scheme.
People need to stop repeating this lie because it makes you look like an idiot.
In the case of Apple they don't make a mint. Due to jurisdictional negotiations Apple undertook with the Irish government back in the day they pay an effective 2%ish tax rate on their European profits as only the Irish part of their profits is actually taxed in Ireland. The rest has no fixed abode and so escapes taxation altogether.
Unless I've missed it Tim missed the response from Roland6 that pointed out that Apple are going to be able to use the interest payments on their fresh new debt as a business expense against their US profits.
Although fair play for there finally being a article on the Register pointing out their isn't a legal obligation to minimise tax in the UK. Their isn't one in Delaware either, or Australia. I'd be honestly surprised if their was a legal jurisdiction on the planet where that is the case.
Dividends are the lesser of the two? Really?
The Barclays Equity Gilt study rather disagrees with you - to quote Monevator:
£100 invested in UK equities in 1899 would have been worth just £180 by the end of 2010, after inflation.
£100 invested in UK equities in 1899 would (if you had reinvested dividends) have been worth £24,133 after inflation.
That's something from Australia:
In the UK directors do not have a legal duty to maximise profits or minimsie tax. In the US, Delaware (where a great number of US business exist as a legal entity) trial law shows that directors do not have a duty to either maximise profits or minimise tax.
In Australia the duties of directors are:
Duty to act in good faith and not to act contrary to the interest of the company
Duty not to use power for an improper purpose
Duty to avoid conflicts of interest
Duty to retain discretion
Duty not to misuse position to gain advantage
Duty not to misuse information to gain advantage
You'll note that non of them are to maximise profit or minimise tax.
What bollocks. Netbooks had price, weight and, most importantly, battery life.
Price was the least of it's advantages. The cheap Shitty end of the laptop compuetrs was with £130 of, say, an eee901 so hardly a huge leap if you are just buying one.
No, the true advantage came with the 1 kg weight (compare to crippling 3.5 KGs for your £350 laptop) and the battery life measure in hours rather than minutes for a laptop. A 90 min battery life is not a f'ing 'portable'. A battery life of 6 hours (now 9 is typical in a netbook) is.
And given that I did python and flex development in Eclipse on my 901 I fail to see how they were underpowered. The thing that killed the netbook was the release of the iPad causing all the manufacturers to pull their (often very advanced) plans for ARM netbooks. Hacking another £60-£100 off the price of a netbook would have been huge.
Fucking hell. Stop repeating the shit about directors being mandated by law to minimize tax/maximize profit. It is a load of shit. The UK laws say nothing of the sort, the Delaware laws say nothing of the sort (in fact there is case law in Delaware stating that there is absolutely no legal obligation for a company to either maximize profit or minimize tax).
The problem is that the legality of many of the tax avoidance schemes has not been tested so companies cannot say what they are doing is definitely above board.
Tax avoidance schemes are continually being found to be illegal, but prior to them being found to be illegal in court I'm sure the defenders of such schemes would be banging on about them being fully aboveboard and legal. You have to be a little cynical given that many tax avoidance schemes come with a legal defence fund for the scheme. If everything is leagal and above board why would that be necessary?
"Google, Amazon and Starbucks have obligations to their shareholders to make as much money as they possibly can which includes keeping as much out of the tax man's hands as possible."
Could you point out where in the law of the jurisdiction where they are incorporated that is the case?
It certainly isn't the case in the UK and it isn't (backed up by case law) the case in Delaware. You'll find it's probably not the case anywhere in America or Europe. Directors of the company have far, far more latitude to run a company than simply seeking maximal profit as even a cursory reading of company law would show.
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