Posts by Snake Plissken
92 posts • joined Monday 21st January 2008 10:36 GMT
This is the same law...
That means all those cases of phone hacking against News Corp are being settled out of court.
Of course the one thing the Press doesn't point out
Apart from the 12 or so surveys that the newspapers themselves commissioned on a regulator, all of which showed the public in favour yet somehow didn't have the results published...
..is that the newpaper proprietors are more than willing to sign up to Government regulation. Murdoch, of course, owns Sky, which is subject to OFCOM regulation. He also rather famously did a deal with those lovers of freedom, the Chinese Government when broadcasting satellite TV in Asia.
Richard Desmond decided not to bother being under the auspices of the PCC, yet is happy to be regulated by OFCOM when it comes to Channel 5. Not to mention the censorship involved in whatever of his channels is broadcasting his porn.
And both of them, as well as Associated Newspapers happily signed up to an Irish regulator (and a regime more strict than that proposed by Leveson) in order to publish papers in Dublin.
So, you know, these self-proclaimed valiant defenders of freedom of speech seem surprisingly flexible in their viewpoint.
Re: You have to admire the cheek
The money is there purely to avoid it being taxed at the proper rate. There was a "one-off" holiday in 2004, which meant billions flowed back without proper tax being paid on it.
Now they want another "one-off" holiday. And if they get it, I'm sure in five years time they will be asking for another "one-off".
Re: Lower the tax rate
So with Amazon, Google and others paying somewhere between 2-5% on their profits, how will lowering corporation tax to 12% help out?
And that is before you consider that Dell left Ireland (corp tax rate 12.5%) for Poland (corp tax rate 19%).
I look forward to the answer with (a-ha!) interest.
Posted in 'Mount Doom' rumbling ominously
Re: Theories about why this is happening
Publicity stunt for the movie.
Posted in Space flutes salute Yuri Gagarin
Has it taken this long.
I thought Ron McNair was supposed to take part in a Jean Michel Jarre concert while he was on the Shuttle. Unfortunately, the Shuttle he was on was Challenger.
Won't somebody think of the children?
Even though that is what got them in trouble in the first place...
Posted in Steve Jobs screws my wife (out of $944)
Who will be the first
To submit this article to Private I-I-I-I?
Among other things...sick of seeing this 43% figure
"We've just seen most of the financial system of the western world collapse from the error of lending the money to buy a house to people who cannot afford to buy a house"
No, you've seen the US crash because of the verging on fraud antics of the financial markets, including the infamous CDS. Ireland has crashed because of the verging on corrupt antics of lending money to property developers to build houses noone wanted or needed. Error, my backside. Fraud and gambling. IIRC, if you took all the mortgages in the UK, added them up, you wouldn't cover the potential losses made by selling,chopping up and reselling the same thing five, ten, twenty times.
As for the trick of lumping three separate things together (income tax, employee NI and employer NI) in order to "prove" that tax is too high then this is mathematical trickery. Why stop there? Why not chuck VAT in as it costs for heat, light, water, materials etc. Business rates on the office? Fuel duty? Company car tax? Go hog wild, on that basis, I'm sure we can get the "tax" up to about 125% of salary.
The employer pays NI. The employer doesn't pay the employees income tax, nor the employees NI. (It collects it, but doesn't pay it.) Trying to add them all together and come to some 43% figure claim is hugely disingenuous because they are separate things.
New film out, has she?
Why yes, yes she has. What an extraordinary coincidink.
Not just Trent Reznor
But Tori Amos' "Professional Widow" is supposedly about her too. Pretty scathing about her, the way she ingratiated herself ("China white, Brown may be sweeter, She will supply") and the suicide of Cobain "Don't blow those brains yet, we gotta be big..."
All in all, Love seems a real piece of work.
Posted in iPhone to whup Sony PSP 2
Re: Seriously
"If you are just going on the sales figures that you provided then Angry Birds has netted £5.9M (roughly)
GT5 has netted at least £137.5M (based on £25 per sale so the figure will be higher given it was £40 at 1st launch)
"
Well done. Now, for your second cookie of the day, how much did Angry Birds and GT5 cost to make? GT5 has been in development since God was a small child and they still screwed it up. One is produced and distributed for buttons, the other has to be manufactured, put into retail stores, licence fees for all those cars and music, advertising etc etc.
Posted in iPhone to whup Sony PSP 2
Those who fail to learn from history...
Remember these classics?
The PSP is so much more powerful than the DS, it will wipe the floor with it...
The PS3 is so much more powerful than the Wii, it will wipe the floor with it...
People don't want Angry Birds (sales: 10m+) they want "proper games" like Gran Turismo 5 (sales 5.5m) or MGS4 (sales 4m)...
People will tire of Angry Birds knock offs and turn to stuff like Generic Military Shooter 7: This Time in Space or Advanced Urban Mayhem Simulator 5...
People will want to pay £40 for a game rather than paying 59p...
Version abuse
Massive numbers of beta versions, never actually getting out of beta, Release Candidates, silent updating in the background, security patching...
Is there any such thing as a bloody final version these days? Or do companies - especially all the browser manufacturers - just use the entire internet as some kind of big, free, testing setup?
Posted in Sheep as smart as humans: Official
So if a sheep goes to University
Does it study for a BAA?
Except...
"If the subscription is being delivered via Apple's infrastructure then it's up to them if they want to charge a margin. If it's not via their infrastructure, then not."
AIUI, and I might be wrong, if the content subscription is not being delivered via the infrastructure but the initial purchase was, Apple still want their 30%. And I'm not allowed to work outside of the App Store on generating new revenue (via sales, promotional discounts etc).
So Apple take their 30% of my app sale, and 30% of my revenue and dictate my business model.
It's blessed are the MEEK!
Oh, I'm glad they're getting something, they have a hell of a time.
Excellent decision.
You could say the EU smashed it.
"shop cum post office"
Oh, well played, sir!
Posted in Census threatens spies' cover
We are all in this together
Except *your* information is important for us to know but *ours* should be protected.
Posted in Card surcharges face super-complaint
RE: prepaid credit cards
Last time I checked, the card that BastardAir do not charge you for is only available from BastardAir. And they charge you £75 for it.
As a frequent BastardAir flyer (not through choice, I hasten to add) I did look into it and figured that even as a regular it wasn't worth getting the prepaid card.
(Thanks to all the add-ons BastardAir pile on, I now fly Aer Lingus - usually an extra fiver each way but worth it for the lack of stress and decent customer service.)
1230kph? Pah.
That is nothing compared to the speeds of twunts in their BMWs and Audis in the outside lane of the M25 most days.
How about...
Stop ideological vandalism like selling off the forests and cutting local public services just because they exist. History has proved repeatedly that it doesn't work. Try investing in the economy instead of hacking at it with an axe and expecting business to pick up the pieces.
Posted in Judge rebukes 'World's No. 1 Hacker'
"Evans has regularly appeared as a security expert on Fox News"
That should be ringing alarm bells about his competence right there.
Posted in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Takes from so much else
Cop Mode is just a shinied up Chase HQ and that is nigh on twenty odd years old. The progression/reward system is Burnout. Seacrest County is the hilly bits of Paradise City.
Having said that, the game is massive fun and I haven't really got into the online racing aspect of it yet. The social side of it, with the integration of your friends list, is going to be pure crack as you get close or beat your friends times.
Posted in Capita says gov cuts hit hard
Nice to know...
That 500,000 public sector workers will be out of jobs but this bunch expect the consultancy gravy train will keep on rolling.
Knowing the way the world works, these will be the guys picking up fat fees for "advising" on how to get rid of people.
Posted in Brits don't want in-flight calling
Sky Marshall already dropped them..
I fly BastardAir regularly (not through choice) and there used to be a great big fanfare on some flights with the plane had been equipped with the mobile facility and some lights would go on saying you could use the phone.
This got dropped a few months ago - you can still see the displays but at no point do they switch on so presumably O'Lairy was annoyed that he wasn't coining in enough cash and decided to kick beggars instead.
Posted in Open source PS3 hack code posted
Re: Sony have themselves to blame
"This hack might not have appeared if Sony hadn't dropped support for running Linux on the PS3. As a result they now face the possibility of game piracy."
Oh please. The vast majority of people want to hack their console to play pirated games. People have been trying to crack the PS3 from the moment it came out and very, very few of them are doing it for altruistic reasons.
If this crack hase been downloaded 1000 times, then 999 times it will be use to play games, and the remaining one time for "homebrew" or "curiosity".
And I'm being generous with the 1 out of 1000.
Posted in Paris Hilton tweets armed intruder drama
Can you get that on the NHS
"adjusted by my chiropractor"? I bet she was.
I look forward...
to seeing this on the front page of the Guardian and Daily Telegraph, along all their other Twitter puff pieces.
I suspect I'm in for a long wait.
Posted in GPS-guided wreckers flatten wrong house
Hmmm...
How did they manage to demolish a house that presumably was connected up to the mains, gas, water etc without setting the place on fire or flooding it?
If 25,000 repetitions count
Twitter would have made it purely on the Guardian website alone.
About bloody time
I was at Kennedy Space Center last week (though saw the Atlantis launch from elsewhere) and the lack of British representation is absolutely shocking. Unsurprising, but when you see the pride of the people from the countries working on the various space programmes, it did make me embarassed.
Posted in Discovery crew prep for return to Earth
But the really important question is...
Will Spacebat return with them?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/lost-in-space-bat-hitches-ride-on-shuttle-1646093.html
Paris. Because she knows all about getting a free ride.
Noone done this yet?
One Server to rule them all
One Ping to find them
One LAN to bring them all
And in the darkness BIND them
Tolkien Ring Network.
Mine is the one with the orc.
Ouch
You know you are in trouble when Greenpeace declare your event too low profile to bother doing a pointless publicity stunt at. I bet all those students were looking forward to a jolly in Vegas, too.
Guido Fawkes blog had it right
Given that Jacqui Smith and others are in deep shit for claiming they reside in one place and taking travel allowances, yet actually residing in another, this is a convenient way to hide which address they are claiming expenses for.
At this rate
It gets worse, when she finally carks it, she'll be given an estate funeral.
Posted in El Reg suffers identity crisis
Stop stealing my abuse
As one of the people who Ms Kiss called an "aggro loner twat" as well as a "twatty commenter", can I just ask El Reg to stop muscling in on my territory? This is no way to treat one of your long term lesbians. Er, readers.
Sigh...
Just when you think they have learned their lesson, Microsoft load up the shotgun and aim it at their feet.
Wonder if the state of the economy has given the idiot lawyers the opportunity to go "Look! Free money!" without ever wondering about the consequences.
@Chad H
"Eventually Ryanair is going to annoy so many people that noone will fly with them anymore..."
To bastardise the old saying "Noone ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the public".
Ryanair seem determined to weed out knowledgeable travellers in any way they can, up to and including downright abuse. They can then fill their planes with those who are too thick to care and too stupid to get off their mobiles for twenty whole seconds and charge them a fortune for things like the seat cushions, the carpet and the air inside the cabin.
Only one way to describe this
The hypocritical *bastard*.
Posted in Jacqui's jihad on web extremism flops
Business as usual
Government minister publicly announces intention to do something, then does nothing of the sort.
About par for the course for this lot. But it gets them some cheap headlines, so job done for Jacqui. I think one of the MPs pointed out to Supreme Leader Brown yesterday that an average of three initiatives a day had been announced to fight the credit crunch.
Now, where was that Monbiot article on the Guardian site taking the piss of Blears... that and the comments was a good read.
Yet again
A company is stifling innovation in a market to protect its own position.
Posted in Evesham Technology confirmed dead
What a surprise...
The people who ran out of Time got 4.1 million, creditors and staff go unpaid.
Posted in Benjamin Button eyes 13 Oscars
Best picture.
Wall-E should have been nominated. I suspect EVE is going to be *pissed*.
Posted in Mandy flies flag for small biz bailout
Why aren't people listening to Vince Cable
I'm no Lib Dem party member, but the man has consistently been right all the way through this mess.
Posted in CPS denies support for überdatabase
Hmmm
That wouldn't be the New Labour tactic of spinning someones statements in the press to show support, when they actually mean nothing of the sort. See the recent spat on official statistics.
Posted in Swoopo - eBay's (more) evil twin
Hasn't this been around for a while?
I'm sure I've seen this before, possibly a German site. From memory, they were giving away stuff like 100 euro and people were bidding like crazy with their 50 cents.
You've got to admidre their audacity. And the contempt they hold their customers in.
