Posts by Doctor Syntax 40485 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"But would someone giving to a charity like the fact that for every £1 they give 30% will go to pay (sometimes huge) wages, 20% to administration, 40% to marketing etc and only 5% to helping the cause itself?"
Sometimes this analysis can be misleading. You need to look at what the charity delivers and how.
I remember reading that the Samaritans had problems because of the amount that was spent on offices and phones which counted as administrative expenditure. But, of course, what Samaitans does is seat volunteers in offices at phones.
A charity that provides medical or social care might spend most of its income on wages because paying those professionals to deliver care is what it's about.
At the very least you'd have to separate out management expenditure.
"1) call MS and ask them for the enterprise version. tell them you are a company and need 250 + licences of Windows and Office"
1) Call MS and tell them that you're a large organisation with several thousand Microsoft users who you are about to move over to Linux.
2) Watch a CxO come running with amazing offers.
"You may think that's an odd requirement, but trust me, you don't want to argue the point."
I'll take your word for the last bit. But if I wanted to turn off the heating at some random time, after racking my brains for a while, I think I'd come up with the idea of just pushing the switch.
"But I don't believe the Police are in the habit of lurking outside your house hoping to catch you using a door app on your phone"
Prime example of missing the issue here. The reason the police could trap you is because it's illegal to do so whilst driving. The reason it's illegal is because it's dangerous. This is one instance where "think of the children" is relevant. They might even be the driver's own children.
"Ultimately, it spells out a warning for other companies – that one bad-tempered action can impact the entire business."
It should also spell out a warning for other customers and potential customers - if the server goes down for any reason, including the company going out of business, your toy stops working. That applies to any toy that depends on the availability of someone else's computer.
"ISP's profit on providing a hardware service is surprisingly slim, Big G & F buy servers, not laying cables in the ground everywhere"
I think you're confusing two separate activities here. Telecoms companies lay cables in the ground and/or sling them overhead. The ISP service is one of several that runs over the the telecom infrastructure and it may well be that your telecoms provider will sell you - or attempt to - such services over that provision; companies are apt to muscle into adjacent lines of business to add value profit. But your ISP doesn't have to be your telecoms provider.
So ISPs, like the social network companies, are buying servers and internet backbone access. It's true Google tried to get into the infrastructure business but seems to be back-pedalling from that. The difference between ISPs and free services is that the one sells you a service and the other sells you.
"It's why, for example, the UK has historically had very low gun crime; we used to punish it harshly."
I didn't notice that back in my time in N Ireland. That could have been to do with the fact that both sides had a well organised gun-running operation which got round the restrictions in supply.
"carry out their nefarious plans to reduce the nations of the free world back to the Muslim Dark Ages."
Ah, yes. The Dark Ages, when Islam did so much to carry the learning of antiquity through to a period when the West could pick it up again. "Algebra" and "algorithm" don't sound a bit like Arabic words by chance nor is it chance that we use Arabic numbers.
@ pccobbler
Was that a well-crafted satire or a load of old cobblers?
For avoidance of doubt, you don't dissuade people who are or are intending to break laws by providing them with more laws to break.
In other words those who intend to use strong encryption as an aid to breaking the law will source it from somewhere - the algorithms are not a big secret. So the people who'll be affected are the law-abiding people who you were trying to protect and those you were trying to deter will shrug it off.
You do not make the public more secure by weakening encryption, you make them less secure.
@ MNGrrrl
Whilst I agree with your views on Facebook and wouldn't want an account on it the issue is broader.
I, in the UK, might do business with a company which uses, unbeknown to me, some US corporation as a service provider. Unless US law provides much better protection for user privacy then my data, along with others, is apt to be swept up by an over-braod warrant, as the dissenting judge pointed out.
The Privacy Figleaf withers a little more each time such a judgement comes up.
"French a bit at odds here earlier influenced from the south or there are synonyms."
Even French and other Latin derived languages aren't that much at odds. They're still derived from the same origins, the shifts in letters such as those which gave Latin pater and frater rather than father and brother are systematic and the remainder of the word is often the same.
"French was the language of England"
French was the language of the court which wasn't surprising as the Normans and their immediate successors owned up to 2/3 or so of France. After they lost that they discovered that the Parisian French were laughing at them for using unfashionable provincial French. So they stopped speaking French and started speaking English which everyone else had been speaking all the time.
"I have no doubt it will be renewed"
And I have no doubt about its following Safe Harbor once it hits the ECJ and for the same reason. Google, Facebook & the rest will eventually realise that they'll have to follow an arms-length model such as Microsoft are adopting in Germany.
The only question is how long do we have to go round this loop before that realisation dawns? Maybe GDPR-scale fines will hasten that along.
"That's why they normally wait until it is sold or transferred and tax it there, because the transaction attaches a value to the asset."
A few days ago my annual council tax bill landed on the doormat. It's based on some nominal valuation of the property. This may not be normal where you live but it's normal here.
"That's assuming everyone CAN make what they want or need. Trouble is, in the future, many will lack the skills, the rest will lack the resources."
And in the days when people had to make or grow what they used* their standard of living was limited by just that.
*Which more or less equates to wanted or needed. If they survived then arguably they got what they needed and they probably didn't want iPhones because they didn't know such things were possible.
"I don't think French farmers will be happy at the loss of trade with the UK"
Are you sure? They never seemed keen on UK meat imports into France?
"or German car workers who get laid off because the UK no longer buys BMW/Audi/Mercedes in such numbers will be happy, and all because EU Politicians put idealism over common sense."
And what about the UK car workers who get laid off because their home market has just been slashed and their foreign owners, whatever they say now, will inevitable redirect investment to the rest of the EU?
"Interestingly manufacturing has benefited from the leave vote."
Manufacturing hasn't yet lost the greater part of its home market. There seems to be this notion that as soon as the result of the vote was announced it had taken effect. It hasn't. What you see in the short term isn't what you'll see in the long term.
"The currency falling only became a bad thing"
The value of a currency is an indication of that the market thinks about the economic strength if its economy vs those of other currencies. And you think a fall is a good thing?
"Thats not going to happen. Businesses find a way. As with the 'mass exodus of banking' it turned into 'open an EU subsidiary aka an office'."
Quite. But then remember that for some non-European businesses the UK plant is one of those EU subsidiaries. What incentive do they then have to retain it?
"Except no deal would mean WTO rules which seem to work well enough in the real world."
The whole thinking behind the EU from the European Coal and Steel Community days onwards was that within a geographically compact area it would be possible to draw up rules that worked better. And with one exception everyone within those rules seems to have come to the conclusion that this is so.
The problem with the EU is the political overtones it's taken on board. But an economic hair shirt policy doesn't seem a good idea to deal with that problem.
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