Posts by James Micallef

Firm-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's tax dodge profit shift? Totally legit

"it was bollocks when thatch was banging on about it in the 80's and it's still bollocks today"

I think in the 80s the top tax rate was in the 70s or 80s, in that context, yes, bringing tax rates down DID help the economy to improve (after all why should any entrepreneur start a business if 75% of their profits are being taxed away?). So it wasn't bollocks at all in Thatcher's / reagan's time.

It IS bollocks today because the actual rates are so much lower. The 'Republican party-style' idiocy / mathematical fail is that this can be extrapolated indefinitely, while really there is hardly and benefit to be gained from lowering top rates below around 30%

Re: Why is this so difficult for governments to understand ?

"High taxes lead to tax avoidance strategies"

I disagree. If Starbucks has a loophole that allows it to pay zero tax, it will choose to pay zero tax whether the nominal rate is 5%, 15% or 50%. The solution is to close the loophole not to lower the rate

Re: Nope

"Make AVOIDANCE illegal."

or simply close the loopholes instead of complaining about them

Re: Ban international companies.

"plenty of rules on transfer pricing... tax code becomes ever more complex "

one of the problems is that amendmenst to the tax code increase teh amount of tax laws instead of just stripping out vast swathes of the tax code. More complex tax code has only 2 winners (1) tax lawyers (2) companies who can afford to pay the best tax lawyers.

Politicians play the game with citizens by dangling exemptions for teh citizens, who then want to hang on to their exemptions, little knowing that the citizen exemptions are tiny fry next to corp exemtions. Just remove ALL exceptions / exemptions, remove the difference between corporate and private rates, and remove the difference between tax on earned income, capital gains, private equity etc. Making the tax rates super-simple and closing the loopholes will probably allow rates to be lowered, individual citizens to pay less tax and total tax take to increase, all in one fell swoop.

Corporations WILL pay more tax, but citizens will have more money to spend on whetever they're selling, so successful companies will continue to profit. In theory, only the tax lawyers will suffer, is that such a terrible thing?

"We need more businesses to see the UK as a 'low tax' option..."

That will just result in a race to the bottom. As long as there are places that are effectively zero-tax, there is no way that the UK can ever compete. I don't see why a high* tax rate will deter most of these companies anyway. For example, if Starbucks had the option of either paying their proper taxes (and still rake in a good chunk of profit from the UK market), or else not operate in the UK at all, they surely will prefer the former.

*relatively high compared to corporate tax in other countries. In effect corp tax rates are lower than individual rates, AND they pay tax only on profit not on revenue, so they REALLY should not be allowed any further loopholes.

Re: So cancel corporation tax

There's no easy solution here, but from a 'fairness' perspective it has always struck me as odd that corps have all the advantages of 'personhood' and very few of the disadvantages. For example a corp can 'live' forever so it's assets are never subject to inheritance taxes. Corp directors and officers, although in some cases technically liable for illegality of the Corp, are frequently shielded by several layers of non-accountability.

And, of course, the big one - individuals are taxed on their income while Corps are taxed on their profits. I understand the basic rationale here, since most companies make losses in their first few years, or periodically because every so often they might need to invest heavily in capital goods etc. But I'm sure that a way can be worked out to balance the needs of startup companies with the proper taxation of humungous corporations.

For example, tax a company on profits for X years, and on its revenue thereafter, with safeguards in place so a company can't just create a new subsidiary every X years and reset the count.

Loopholes for individuals are hammered shut by executive decision at HMRC without needing new legislation, I don't see why teh same cannot be done to corps

USS Enterprise sets out on its final mission

@Bryan Hall

"DOD makes up less than 20% of the budget - and that was while we were still in IRAQ."

You make it sound as if it's quite reasonable to spend 10-15% of a nation's budget on the military. the US could very comfartably cut it's military budget in half and still have more ships, planes and firepower than the rest of the world combined

Debenhams cafes ban outré terms like 'espresso' and 'cappuccino'

Re: rantomatic

What pisses me off about Starbucks is that they don't even use real Italian terminology for coffee, they make up their own. All the Italian terms are well-understood by every barista in every bar in Italy. Only a 'Starbuckee' can understand Starbuck-speak for coffee ordering.

'Venti' literally means 20 because in Starbucks that's a 20-oz serving. No Italian in their right mind will EVER order a bucket of coffee. On the other hand, why do they use 'tall'? It's translating the italian 'lungo' to mean 'long' or 'large', but using it to mean something completely different.

Re: Sounds fair enough to me.

"I hate Starosta coffee places where you have to piss around translating faux-italian names just to order a simple coffee"

>>

"I hate these fancy pubs where you have to piss around knowing exactly what the difference is between an 'Ale', 'Lager', 'Amber', 'Wheat'... why can't they just get me a beer?"

For people who are happy with "just a coffee", any coffee will do, so if you^'re not arsed to learn, just order yourself a regular coffee. For people who DO know the difference, it's not just the size. "Espresso" is not a small shot of filter coffee, it's brewed with steam pressurization and has a different taste. etc etc

I might understand if they were no longer using the less common Italian terms like Ristretto or Macchiato (even if these are also fairly well known).

But Espresso and Capuccino??? I thought they were pretty universally* known terms

* In Europe. West of the pond, outside of specialized bars, coffee apparently comes in one type only that can be served in sizes of 'large', 'huge', 'humungous' and 'bucket'

Bond fans: Test your 007 trivia, now!

22/50

Not bad considering some of them were extremely trivial trivia.

Lots of fun nevertheless. Well done, have a Pint!

Inside the iPad mini: Pray you never have to open one

"Right so how many people would replace a defective turbocharger "?

That's not really the point, is it? Most people do not repair their own cars, so the question is, "how easy is it for a competent mechanic to replace a defective turbocharger?"

By the very nature of El Reg, a good proportion of readers will have both the interest and the competence to service their own computing equipment and replace some parts, but this is a lot less (or even at all) possible with iKit.

And seeing that someone mentioned cars, this IS a gripe I have with cars. My dad's old car, pop open the bonnet and all the innards were there, I could see every components and know what it did. Pretty much every screw was a standard flat or Philips (cross), and every nut or bolt was a standard hexagon. Modern car engines are packaged much more tightly and use all sort of esoteric screw and bolt heads just so that you have to take it to a garage to do teh simplest servicing. And that's not even mentioning the electronics...

Uh-oh! Kim Dotcom is back with a brand new Megaupload site

Re: seems reasonable

"If I rent out a lockup garage or warehouse to someone and they store naughty things there, am I legally responsible?" - Yes, if you are aware of it and choose to ignore it

Not so simple.

1) Mega is specifically refusing to even know what's in there, so by definition they are not aware of any naughty things stored in there.

2) "Legally Responsible" in what jurisdiction??

SMARTPHONES make TEENS have SEX with STRANGERS

Re: So...

Teenagers are roaring maelstroms of hormones, many of which are screaming "SEX" at them, so yes, teenagers want sex and they will look for new people to have sex with. So I don't see why "teenagers with smartphones have more sex" is remarkeable, it's the same as "teenagers who are better connected have more sex"

The lack of condom use is what should be concerning, but then again, good old US of A and it's 'abstinence-only' sex-ed classes!!

Japanese toilet can save penalty kicks

Re: Can it save a Panenka?

Yeah, I guess you're right that it will automatically handle gravity-induced dip. That leaves a couple of unexplored route to goal I guess...

1 - blast the ball low and hard at the toilet bowl itself, just a little off-centre. The 'saving' ball cannot reach here, it needs to be physically blocked by the toilet bowl itself. So maybe the ball can just deflect off the edge of the toilet bowl and go in

2 - If it's not continuously tracking the ball, putting some (OK, a LOT) of swerve will confuse it

If it IS continuously tracking the ball, a combination of 1 and 2 might do the trick. Hit hard just to the right of the bowl, swerving to just go in off the left part (vide Roberto Carlos free-kick vs France in '97, it's possible to get 2-3 metres lateral displacement off a good swerve).

Damn, where can I find a toilet keeper, I'd like to give it a go!! (Now that WOULD be a great fairground attraction)

Can it save a Panenka?

If it is designed to calculate the trajectory super-quickly to handle 160 km/h shots, maybe it can be fooled by a dipping trajectory of a chipped shot? Inquiring minds etc...

Beer for whoever thought this up, and god bless teh Japanese and their wacky ideas

El Reg acquires wildly dangerous laser cannon (with lightsabre option)

"holy shit, its cool" isquite enough for me

MULTICOLOURED TARANTULAS found UP TREES in Brazil

Re: genuine question

Silk is of extreme interest to engineering companies more than pharma. strength-weight ratio is better than steel, but no-ones been able to properly replicate it industrially. BUT - do tarantulas even produce silk at all?? I thought the were hunters rather than trappers

Hurricane Sandy smacks the Big Apple around

Re: No politics

" how big do you build your defences even if you had the money?"

Good question, I guess it's a trade-off between how much the defences cost and how cheaper it is to just evacuate for a few days and rebuild a lot of stuff once every X years. That equation is going to be different depending on those parameters. For example the Dutch, for whom any significant breach of their water defences would be a huge catastrophe, have a specific tax (not very big either, I believe) that goes toward maintaining and improving those defences. The funding of their water authority is absolutely and unquestioningly supported by both citizens and politicians. When it's a nation's survival that's on the line, nothing less will do.

In the case of New York, I don't know any of teh city / surrounding terrain so I won't comment onspecifics, but in general it's good to focus on well-built infrastructure (to survive as big a disaster as possible) + well-funded disaster recovery.

No politics

I agree with not getting any UNRELATED politics (such as US foreign policy) into this. BUT there are very pertinent political issues here. Republicans in general and Romney in particular want to gut government spending, including emergency services, and are on record as fighting to de-fund FEMA.

Disasters liek Sandy DO put some political questions into sharp perspective - do you want to spend an additional trillion dollars on unnecessary military spending and another 5 trillion dollars to cut taxes for the richest people, or do you want that money to be spent on civil infrastructure?

Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

Re: Oh, you, silly

"Vodka must be drunk in a particular way " = neat. You don't mix good vodka

Geneva devastated by monster tsunami, millions at risk

Re: warning system

True, the traffic is quite bad considering the short distances, but since Geneva is really tiny, even in rush hour conditions an hour is usually more than enough to get from the lakeside tohigher ground. Anyway most of the congestion is caused by constriction at the bridges, so if everyone is just making for high ground on their own side of teh river, it would help a lot.

The Swiss are a pretty organised bunch, if anyone can pull off a drill to evacuate a small city in an hour, it's them... and I half-expect to receive a detailed evacuation plan in my mailbox within a few months!!

Lucern and Geneva??

I suspect you mean Lausanne and Geneva? Certainly the narrowing of the lake approaching Geneva would encourage a build-up of water, but I would think that the crescent shape would mean that the wave would be pushing towards the northern shore, playing pretty havoc with swathes of excellent wine-producing vinyards and numerous mega-villas belonging to ultra-loaded tax-avoiding ex-pats, and would thus hit Geneva less strobgly than it would hit Lausanne

As a Geneva resident...

... I'm glad I live on the 7th floor :)

Hurricane Sandy blows away Gizmodo, HuffPo, various other blogs

"Conspiracy theories about the hurricane being a man-made weather weapon"

Cue the next Bond film?

EDF: We'll raise bills 11% - but only 2% is due to energy costs!

@ledswinger

"You've put a whole lot of thought into this idea, haven't you?"

Actually no, the example you mention of elderly people did not occur to me, and no doubt there are many other factors. Still, I think waht I thought up in 5 minutes back-of-an-envelope is better than the status quo. And instead of just shooting down other people's ideas like 80% of the comments here, I'm proposing something.

From what I can understand of your comments about government incompetence etc, I guess that you're against government regulation and all for the free market.Well, in that case what you will see is EXACTLY higher prices that will mostly affect those that can least afford it. So do you have a solution that can reconcile the two?

"Go ahead and let the oil run out"

That would work in the sense that the market WOULD correct, companies would invest in renewables anyway etc... BUT in this scenario instead of prices going up 10% at a time every few years, they would spike by hundreds or thousands of percent, and poorer people would have absolutely no-zero-nada-zilch access to any sort of energy.

I suspect that at that point instead of sitting in a corner and quietly dying off, they would storm the castle gates. Either way it won't be pretty

Given that energy is a finite resource...

...it makes sense for it to be more expensive - at least expensive enough that people are thinking about how much they use. What does NOT make sense is the pricing model that the government and utilities are using.

There should be a minimum consumption level (enough for a person to live comfortably on*) below which prices stay around the same, and above which prices double or triple. That will promote efficiency and penalise waste.

The second thing is for government to subsidise green technology directly with money raied from taxes instead of passing the costs to consumers through the utilities. That way the burden does not fall disproportionately on those least able to afford it.

*of course this level in itself would become a matter for debate ut at least it's a start

The Big Debate: OK gloomsters, how can the music biz be FIXED?

Re: Yes but...

" I don't see there being any way a key&lock mechanism could be designed that would be secure enough"

The thing is, it does not need to be 100% unbreakable, just like a car key isn't 100% foolproof. Thieves can break open and start up a car that they don't have keys to, but it takes a lot of effort. As long as a DRM system is non-intrusive (as you outline), simple to use, and content is reasonably priced, the market will work.

Targeting a system that is 100% unbreakable is unfeasible and shouldn't be the target

Re: I don't agree with Orlowski

" Are we willing to give up our privacy to make content creators happy?"

This question seems to assume that it's a complete either-or, and that should not be the case. I should be able to use digital files without that use being monitored, and content creators need to be able to be paid for acquisition / use of their content. Doesn't need to be mutually exclusive.

Sure there are technical difficulties, but these can be surmounted as long as the stakeholders on both sides agree to the broad principle above. And it doesn't need to super-foolproof - it just needs to be set up so that it's more convenient to legitimately buy music than to pirate it... while in reality even from a convenience point of view it's easier to download a torrent.

Not music, but I see it in practice on TV. I have a TV box through which I can pay a small amount to watch a film. The selection is limited, the search functionality is pitiful and many times the film I want isn't available in my desired language. In many cases I would happily pay 3 or 4 quid to watch a film, but the time and aggravation it usually takes means it's infinitely easier to find the film on a torrent site.

Now, what is stopping my provider from having a catalogue of every film that ever made it to a theater in the last 20 years, have it available in 4-8 languages + subtitles (same as I can find on most DVDs or Blu-Rays), and make the whole thing properly searchable? I don't know, but it sure is costing them a lot of missed sales.

Re: Yes but...

I find the car analogy a bit irrelevant, but in principle I agree - copyright shouldn't last so long, I think no more than 20 years (or maybe another 20 for actively marketed content as you mention)

But that's only part of the puzzle. If copyright is limited to 20 years, then the artists should be able to be adequately compensated during those 20 years, and currently they are not. And most Internet users, myself included, object very strongly to intrusive controls and checks on my digital life.

Back to the car analogy, imagine if I couldn't start the engine unless the car sent my fingerprint to the manufacturer's HQ and matched it to a list of authorisd users. Instant FAIL. But that's an issue we solved a long time ago with physical goods - I have a car key, and that constitutes my proof of ownership (not infallible but good enough). DRM needs to be looked at in that way - there needs to be a key to open a protected file, but it can't be so intrusive that it calls home every time, or that it highly limits what I can or cannot do with it.

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

So which plots were plausible?

Off the top of my head, Thunderball, Octopussy, Casino Royale seem to have relatively realistic plots. What else?

Would a gun made of gold work any good?

Is cocaine soluble in petrol / diesel?

Dr No, Thunderball, Casino Royale? Vote now for the best Bond film

Re: Goldeneye wtf!!

Goldeneye is ace - bungeeing off a dam, skydiving INTO a plane, and driving a tank round in a city are all very James Bond. For me though, very few things beat a proper shark tank. So... Thunderball or The spy who loved me??

EC: Microsoft didn't honour browser-choice commitment

Re: Damn right

@Lee Dowling - 100% correct, it was MS's responsability to check their compliance.

It also raises a question for me: did no-one in the EU justice system bother to check that MS was in compliance of their judgement? Or is the EU internal bureaucracy so tangled that it took 18 months for the message to get from the front-line staff up to the higher levels?

While sea ice grows, Antarctica sheds land ice

Re: Reality

Hmmm.... juding by teh later posts my calculations seems to have been correct - hooray!!

According to NASA site, Antarctic is losing about 100 km^3 a year, quite a bit more than the 75.6 I calculated above, but that's still only 7.3mm a year on a 2km + depth, and that means 300000 years before complete meltdown.

Cue the shock tabloid headline - Antarctic ice to melt 96825 years before previous estimate!!!

:)

Re: Reality

Best work out everything in km, km^2 and km^3 to avoid confusion... and the result surprised me so much that I re-checked it

(so sod's law it's even more likely I screwed up a conversion somewhere)

Density of ice - 916.7 kg/m^3 = 0.9167 tonnes / m^3 = 916.7 million tonnes / km^3

Daily / Yearly ice loss*

190 million tonnes/day = 69350 million tonnes/year = 75.6 km^3 /year

Quantity of ice in Antartcica**

30 mil km^3 / 13.7 mil km^2 = 2.18km average depth (of course - 2m average depth seemed immediately strange)

Long - term ice loss

30 mil km^3 of ice divided by 75.6 km^3 /year rate of ice loss = 396825 years of ice melt for it to all melt away - Which seems like a huge number but in fact on geological scale is quite quick compared to probably tens of millions of years it took to build up.

@Fellow commentards - that number still doesn't seem quite right to me - please enlighten me as to where I went wrong - or maybe the quoted ice loss of 190 million tonnes/day is off?

* 190 million tonnes / day figure quoted from post by Ivan4

** from post by Ivan4 / Nomnomnom, Wikipedia caveat applies

Apple unveils iPad mini, upgrades its big brother

Re: FFS - Does anyone know how to do math?

"I can't see even them in the rearview mirror"

Is that because they're already overtaking you?

Can climate change be changed back again? Maybe, say boffins

expect the unexpected

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition....

Craig, Connery or ... Dalton? Vote now for the ultimate James Bond

For me the best to capture the darker spirit of the Bond books are Dalton and Craig, but it has to be said that part of the popularity of teh Bond films is the underlying lightness and jocularity brought by Connery.

For me it's still Dalton, though, by a whisker. Of course, Craig still has a chance to overtake

New Oz road rules forbid touching mobes

Re: cyclist's perspective

Let's face it, people using mobiles while driving are a menace, and let's face it, enforcement is practically nowhere. Enacting new laws specifying exactly what you can or cannot do are useless. Why not specify the same for every knob, switch and light in the car? radio, A/C, cigarette lighter, GPS or any of the multitude of new toys that keep getting added to cars?

Enacting new laws is USELESS because there already exist enough laws against 'distracted / dangerous driving' or such-like. What is needed is enforcement... except of course for parliamentarians it's easy to whack off a new law, instead of properly funding road patrols that can enforce the existing laws

Twitter censors bow to police, suppress Nazi tweets

Re: But, to be fair... NO, TO BE FAIR, THE NAZI'S ARE CONSIDERED FAR RIGHT!!!

"Left" and "Right" can be a bit misleading, there is a mix of social and economic issues here. On the social scale, "left" is more progressive, allow people to do their own thing, "right" is more conservative and conformist to common dogma / central authority. On economic scale, "left" is socialist / communist and "right" is free market / capitalist. So Communist USSR was far left on economic issues but pretty far right on social ones. Libertarians (US liberals or UK Lib-Dem) are pretty left on social issues and right on economic issues. Republicans are very far right on both and Democrats are fairly left on both.

Na-zi = National Socialist = Far right in social policy and left-ish in economic policy (ironically, for all the rhetoric, there is not much difference between fascist and communist ideologies), but there is nothing in itself bad in having this combination of policy ideas. The real nastiness in Nazism (and communism) came from rejection of the very bases of democracy ie all people are equal, freedom of speech and association, rule of law etc

@ Reg Blank

You're right, that's why in my original post I said " given Germany's history it is understandable that these laws exist."

Re: Oh my, how id(unr)ealistic you are

@Notas Badoff - unfortunately you are right and people with rigid views will mostly keep those views. The thing is, they will keep those views whether it's illegal or not. I am not that naive to believe that bad beliefs will die out just because they're made illegal. Regarding "How do you reach closed minds" - you don't. I heard once with respectto science that old ideas only die out when the people holding the ideas die, and the new generation have different ideas. That's the way to effect change, gradually - educate the younger generations and time will take care of the older ones.

When you say "To a great degree, the mere witnessing of someone saying these vile things will give credence ...." that is correct, however having an outright ban on some ideas is also giving credence to their veracity. No amount of laws will make people change ther fixed ideas, so if the law is not useful, might as well not have it at all?

"Please take your ideals and apply yourself ......" etc. Actually, I do my best not to preach my ideals except to people who show interest, and I have no wish to argue with stone walls, and I only engage with engaging people. So nothing is consuming me, and I find I live a lot happier this way :)

Re: @James Micallef

@Ken Hagan - I agree completely. I don't think the law is useful, but it's still the law and Twitter has to comply with it if it wants to operate in Germany, and of course if they don't like it they are free to lobby for the law to be changed

Re: But, to be fair...

"First they came for the national socialists... " subhead is spot on. Either all speech is free and protected or else, who decides what is offensive and what is not? Yes, it was Germany and they have anti-Nazi laws, and yes, given Germany's history it is understandable that these laws exist. Nevertheless, I think these laws are wrong. Having these laws has not stopped the rise of anti-semitism, and of far-right ideologies in general. In Austria which has similair laws, the far-right is now one of the major parties.

If bad ideas can be aired, they can be discussed and countered. If they are just vetoed, they will continue to develop and spread underground, making easy targets of the "what do they have to hide" and the "everyone else is against us" set.

Chinese 'Thunder God' plant could crush cancer

Re: Bad news for endangered species

"Any intervention will have an effect"

So if an intervention has a positive effect, if you understand how the effect works you call it "treatment", and if you don't understand how the effect works you call it "placebo"?

As per the link you sent me earlier, the full extent of how the placebo effect works is not yet fully understood, and a lot of different mechanisms seem to be lumped under the same 'placebo' heading, whether they are understood or not.

Re: The Main Difference

@TheBig Yin

Thanks for the link, I did find it extremely informative. It seems that even in fairly recent studies there's a range of results from ineffective (Hróbjartsson and Götzsche ) to rather effective (Pollo).

It seems that, as I thought, a lot more study is required to really understand them, and contraray to what I thought, there is actually a lot of work being done in the field.

Re: Bad news for endangered species

"evidence-based medicine has shown "real" acupuncture to be no better than placebo acupuncture."

The real question though, is whether real acupuncture and / or placebo acupuncture are better than no acupuncture at all. If they ARE better than no acupuncture, then I suggest that a health researcher's job is to find out by what mechanism the acupuncture IS working and see if they can replicate that, instead of ignoring it (or calling it bullshit) because it isn't better than a placebo.

Re: The Main Difference

"The reason drugs are expected to exceed the placebo effect is so that we can be sure the drug actually does something. That the drug, in and of itself, made a difference" - I am fully aware of that, my point is that sometimes drugs are not necessary and a sugar pill can have the same result. Now clearly it's not the sugar pill that brought about the result, it was the thought of healing that caused the healing.

"how do you explain the studies into the placebo effect then?" - Studies into the placebo effect are made to find out how to better cancel out the effect in drug trials. I am not aware of any studies of the placebo effect whose purpose was to attempt to consciously replicate the placebo effect. To give an example, if I know that some people can cure themselves of a headache when given a sugar pill, maybe I can find a way for curing headaches that does not involve giving drugs. Maybe I can even find a way that I can teach people to consciously cure their headaches with a thought. If you are aware of any such study, please say.

" the placebo effect isn't going to mend your broken bones for example" - drugs don't mend broken bones either

Ice sheets may stabilise for centuries, regardless of warming

@spoddyhalfwit

my reading of a multitude of Lewis Page articles isn't that warming isn't happening, it's that the warming is not accelerating uncontrollably, and that the consequences of warming might be neither imminent nor catastrophic as is claimed by some theories.