* Posts by Mark 65

3432 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

Trebles all round: The BBC's won this licence fee showdown

Mark 65

Re: 55% more?

Adjust those modern day volumes by some quality factor as there's far too much nauseating reality shite on TV.

Attention dunderheads: Taxpayers are NOT giving businesses £93bn

Mark 65

Re: @DaveDaveDave - The majority of UK Tax burden is not being paid by companies...

Amazon et al need a functioning legal/policing system and all its associated costs to keep people from just looting their warehouses and stealing whatever they feel like, breaching copyright etc etc. Best they contribute towards that at least.

Mark 65

So does that mean that the Tories capping benefits acts to reduce wages? Does that then necessitate that they will try raising the minimum wage to compensate, putting a higher floor under the unit cost of labour, and thus reducing the number of jobs at the bottom?

I'm guessing benefits cause wage increases as you need to pay more money to entice someone away from their Sky TV subscription.

Oz Defence Dept 'not punitive' with crypto export controls

Mark 65

So, what I'm getting from this is that: the World has moved on; everyone has access to crypto; and the act is in essence bloody pointless.

Unions call for strike action over 'unusable' Universal Credit IT

Mark 65

Unfortunately these jobs do not attract the smarter more useful members of society. I shudder to think just how unintelligent you would have to be in order to ask such questions in such circumstances. I'm surprised they can even make it to work they must be that shit-thick.

iiNet warns NBN circuits too expensive in the Netflix era

Mark 65

Re: Entirely their own fault

QoS it.

Mark 65

Re: Fast speeds or high quotas?

Whereas if the AVC is too high then people will simply opt for 4G.

Yeah, because 4G works really well for high speed data. Sure, on occasion you can get good speeds if you are near a tower with good backhaul and there aren't a lot of other devices connected to it. Raise the uptake and that soon goes to shit.

VPNs are so insecure you might as well wear a KICK ME sign

Mark 65

Re: Broken or badly configured

I read this:

Most importantly we find that the small amount of IPv6 traffic leaking outside of the VPN tunnel has the potential to actually expose the whole user browsing history even on IPv4 only websites," they wrote in the paper. Here's the paper's explanation of the IPv6 mess

and thought "what about if you've configured it at an openwrt router thereby stopping client software leakages"? Am I missing the point?

Apple gets around to fixing those 77 security holes in OS X Yosemite

Mark 65

Graphics driver

Perhaps they'd be so kind as to fix their fucked up graphics driver for the 5750 cards installed in iMacs. I've just rolled back to Mavericks as I just got so pissed off by the continual lock-ups and random visual barfing all over the monitor and could take it no more.

Supreme Court ignores Google's whinging in Java copyright suit

Mark 65

That's just stupid. Who's got the copyright on Math.Sin, Math.Cos, Math.Rand etc? See how dumb it is now. Creative work? Muppet.

The slow strangulation of telework in Australia

Mark 65

First, Labor runs roughshod over the free market - which arguably could have delivered higher bandwidth services to the nation’s homes by now - with their poorly-thought-out, poorly-sold, and even-more-poorly-implemented NBNCo.

Sorry dude but Telstra has never shown any indication of wanting to do anything and neither has anyone else in the market. When I got here there were still plenty of sub GB/mth plans at higher cost than anything in the UK. It was a deeply uncompetitive market with nowt but shite on offer. Why innovate when you can gouge on sunk capital? The regulatory environment seems a bit poxy also - no wholesale and retail divisions here. Why enforce separation when you're in the pocket of the corporation? The threat of the NBN is the only thing that has gotten these lazy shits to make a move.

RBS sticks it to customers once again as IT woes continue

Mark 65

Re: Regulator??

@YAAC: Unfortunately the market normally offers the solution long after some poor bastard has lost the shirt off of his back. I would argue that major shareholders (UK Gov etc) have an interest in forcing their hand from the port of diminishing shareholder value as does the regulator from the point of ensuring the continuance and stability of the retail banking sector. Having this bunch of arse-clowns regularly fuck up because of their pound shop IT setup is completely unacceptable.

You may also wish to note the article mentions that switch forms cannot be processed.

Mum fails to nuke killer spider nest from orbit

Mark 65

Re: She could always have taken the offending banana and throne it in the freezer....

I'd have just taken it back to Tesco. Let them deal with it.

Why is it that women are consistently paid less than men?

Mark 65

Re: He's got a point.

"Equal pay for the same work" is a great soundbite but unfortunately it falls short where the rubber meets the road. Sure, if you're both on a factory production line putting widgets X in boxes Y and operate at the same rate then it's reasonably straightforward. However, once you get out into the general workforce it becomes a lot harder to discern "the same". One person could meet the minimal standard, the other exceed it. One may go beyond the call of duty whereas the other may work to rule. So on and so forth.

I've also realised that, no matter what role you do, a lot comes down to how good a salesman you are - i.e. can you bullshit and self-congratulate or arse kiss yourself to a pay rise or do you say it like it is and invariably get whatever is deemed appropriate. Perhaps men are also better bullshitters.

'Snowden risked lives' fearfest story prompts sceptical sneers

Mark 65

Re: Too late was the cry

I'd say by shooting him 9 times there'd be a fair sized channel for subsequent rounds to travel through unimpeded and hence the choice of round would become largely irrelevant after about shot number 6 given they're unlikely to carefully distribute the shots.

Chancellor Merkel 'was patient zero' in German govt network hack

Mark 65

Re: Hooooooooooowl...

Makes you wonder why they don't make key people run a locked down distribution like a Government TAILS or similar.

Nude celeb iCloud hack: Feds seize Chicago man's computers

Mark 65

Re: Someone else?

Maybe he runs a Tor exit node.

Top Eurocop: People are OK with us snooping on their phone calls

Mark 65

Re: Until I find out how

Certainly can, he's likely scooped up that comment upon submission.

Config file wipe blunder caused deadly Airbus A400M crash – claim

Mark 65

Re: Shouldn't such a life-important software..

That would be a change to the initial spec and cause the project to greatly overrun in terms of time and cost. /sarc

Has marketing grabbed the IT reins at your company?

Mark 65

Media schmedia

I do wish this whole "you need to have a social media presence" bullshit would just up and die already. Sounds like siren calls from a department like HR that just seeks to support its own existence.

Undetectable NSA-linked hybrid malware hits Intel Security radar

Mark 65

Re: If it was truly firmware?

Until you find you have do repeat this job several thousand times or several thousand miles away, in which case the cure is worse than the disease.

No, it really isn't. If you value convenience then set all your switches to write enabled and foresake any security. The rest of us can sit there with them in write protect mode given few home users update firmware and we can have the security.

Life in prison not appealing to Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht – appeal filed

Mark 65

Re: He doesn't want life in prison? Shocker.

If he doesn't want to serve life in prison he should sack the useless twat representing him - it's getting more like a poor sitcom every week.

Force Touch tweak: Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display

Mark 65

Re: Where's capitalism when you need it?

@ gnasher729: Psystar advertised theirs as such a machine which was their mistake. I merely stated that Dell could make a fine XPS windows box that just oh so conveniently happened to play nicely with OSX. They don't even need to market or advertise it as such, which would leave them in the clear, and let user forums and word of mouth do the rest. That way a user can by a fine machine and use whichever operating system they desire on it. Dell are in the business of selling hardware aren't they?

Mark 65

Where's capitalism when you need it?

I'd have thought that if this is truly overpriced - I believe it is but am not entirely sure to what extent - then surely there is an opportunity for someone like Dell to make a nice XPS ultrabook that is configured so that it could operate easily as a Hackintosh should the purchaser so wish to walk that path. That is what is needed to keep the bastards honest.

Voyager 2 'stopped' last week, and not just for maintenance

Mark 65

Re: Wonderful pieces of engineering

The years when it seems things were really made to last. Can't help but think a modern one would have had it's batteries fail by now and bits starting falling off.

Co-op Bank's creaky IT should be flogged off, growls UK.gov

Mark 65

Hope so. They've reached such a level of cluelessness that they've brought in Big Blue to save the day - now that really is clueless.

Unmasking hidden Tor service users is too easy, say infosec bods

Mark 65

Curious

There are ways for site operators to protect against this, however. Hidden service providers are advised to be very wary of young HSDir nodes – or even better, to run their own HSDir nodes, which has the benefit of also providing a warning if other HSDir nodes try to attach themselves to the service.

I'm not sure I'd like the idea of Facebook running its own HSDIR nodes as, given their compliance in Prism, they'd likely just be NSA nodes anyhow. I couldn't give a shit about Facebook but it serves as a valid example. It's that age old trust issue surfacing again.

Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht to spend LIFE in PRISON without parole

Mark 65

Re: Not a Victim, He's a Volunteer

I believe he thought he was smart enough to not get caught and his complacency was his undoing. If you get away with something like that for several years I'd imagine you start to think quite highly of yourself.

Mark 65

Re: Death by Drugs

I think that one possible outcome that people aren't considering is that by legalising drugs you very definitely have to fund the medical treatment of the issues. After all you have explicitly sanctioned their use. Good thing or bad? Well, you could argue that we are doing so currently and that by legalising and taking a cut the Government could better fund the outcomes much like it can keep upping the tax on cigarettes. But, oh no, that leads to smuggling and we are almost back to square one.

I'm interested in knowing where all these cartels would go to? They cannot possibly compete with the pharmaceutical giants so does that mean they'd monopolise the supply of raw product to the them being the processors or what? Do they become Government tax avoiding smugglers given that is already part of their skill-set?

Mark 65

I'd say there's certainly an argument that if he didn't wish to sell illegal shit then why setup a hidden Tor site? If you want to be an eBay or Amazon alternative then surely you want to operate in the mass market? I'm pretty confident he knew exactly what he was doing at every stage, was not a complete bastard as evidenced by his setting up something to do with the welfare of participants, lost the plot when it came to the alleged hits, and is only really remorseful because he got caught. In my opinion anyone who sets up an online anything-goes bizarre as a hidden Tor site knows what they're doing and thinks they won't get caught. Further support of this comes from the actual setup of the site as referred to in previous articles. But, as they say, complacency breeds contempt and his op-sec got somewhat sloppy.

This aside I believe your assertion of 10-20 is on the money for the crimes considered. If you can destroy the financial system through utter greed and receive billions if not trillions in taxpayer bailouts whilst all the time keeping your job and a clean sheet and get fuck all in the way of punishment then I don't see a valid reason why you get a never to be seen again jail term for selling willing participants the shit they desire.

Google spins up 'FREE, unlimited' cloud photo storage 4 years before ad giant nixes it

Mark 65

Once the first 15GB of free Drive space is full, users must pay Google $10 a month for a terabyte of extra capacity.

So, in other words, you can have free unlimited storage space for photos and videos if they are compressed

Err, no you cannot have free unlimited storage as you've contradicted yourself in the space of two sentences.

Queen's Speech: Snoopers' Charter RETURNS amid 'modernisation' push

Mark 65

Re: Well...

As techies we need to educate (but not lecture or hector) the rest of our society on why this is such a bad idea, something we do badly currently - because we know it so instinctively that we dont provide good examples to that the general public care about.

Oh, you'd like to think that wouldn't you? However, I had an interesting conversation just after the start of the Snowden revelations with a Gen Y who shall remain nameless. They were and are your stereotypical Facebook centric Twitterati. When I tried to explain just how much data is being captured and stored forever and the level of invasiveness involved their answer was, and remained, that they didn't have anything to hide (a bold statement indeed) and didn't care. Unfortunately there is that level of stupidity indoctrination present in the masses that I can honestly believe the "think of the children" approach coupled with a laissez faire attitude would get a majority public support. There are those that are fully ignorant of entities like the Stazi, have no concept of the Orwellian nightmare we approach, or simply couldn't give less of a shit provided everyone gets their selfie at bar X update.

World loses John Nash, the 'Beautiful Mind'

Mark 65

Re: John Nash, Ladia Diana, when will it end.

Maybe, maybe not. In this case I think that the two chosen examples are valid in order to highlight a couple of points often lost by the everyday complacency of mankind:

1. Seatbelts are there for a very good reason.

2. No matter how great or above the law you feel you are, you are not above the laws of Physics.

Australia forces UberX drivers to become tax collectors

Mark 65

Re: Here comes the drill...

Thing is, you have to go around proving each person is an Uber driver in order to check they need to be registered and then work out what they've taken and it isn't like Uber will be giving you the details.

Cost of enforcement >>>> cash obtained.

Why Joe Hockey's Oz tax proposals only get five out of 10

Mark 65

Re: Not to mention

You answered your own question dude. You essentially threaten, or do, kick the shit out of them. Whether that be physically or by entirely removing them from the financial system and physical trade through sanctions.

Mark 65

Re: GST/VAT Rates for International Sales

The biggest issue is not the applicable rate but the enforcement. A company in the EU selling into the EU (France to UK etc) is easy for enforcement as there is overarching EU law. A non-resident company in say Hong Kong selling digital goods into Australia, what then? Hockey says "add GST". Company says "Get fucked fat boy, your move". What then? He's screwed. Although Tim might consider it an entirely logical thing to do that is only from the theory of application side. The practical part in the real world tends to be a right bitch. I would argue that GST on digital goods is one of the easiest thing in the world to avoid. I buy my Adobe licenses from wherever gives me the best price. I see no reason why Australia should clip that particular ticket. It is a lazy tax.

Backwaters in rural England getting non-BT gigabit broadband

Mark 65

Re: Not totally free of the big guys

Speaking of which the following line popped out...

Links from the Gigaclear cabinets to the backbone are 10Gb

I may be missing something but there'd presumably be a fair few customer lines headed into a cabinet hence I get the distinct impression they'd be desperately hoping people "buy but don't use" when it comes to those gigabit connections.

According to Netflix, Australia's slowest ISP owns half of Foxtel

Mark 65

Although it's the slowest they are all still pissy rates in general given peering/appliance boosts. Might be interesting to slice and dice the data differently i.e. average speed by telco and technology (ADSL, Cable etc).

Chances are you'll find that Telstra is still running most of the ADSL that nobody else is interested in. It would also be interesting to see it compared to link speed i.e. if a user can normally connect/utilise at 8Mb/s and they get Netflix at 2Mb/s then there would seem to be a peering or "acting a shit" problem. Likely Netflix may not have access to this. Telstra's Netflix speed on their Cable Broadband network would be interesting.

So what would the economic effect of leaving the EU be?

Mark 65

Re: "how stupid will British economic policy be if it does leave the EU?"

Not sure I agree with your assertion that the Government are profiting from RBS having bought low and sold high given recent stories highlighting George Osbourne sounding out the prospect of selling the holding at a loss. I'm not even sure that you could call either RBS or Northern Rock viable businesses - I believe they were swimming naked the whole time and got caught short when the tide suddenly went out. Banks that lend over 100% of a property value are destined to fail at some point.

Mark 65

Re: The UK can leave

And imposing controls at the City, which were always opposed by the UK

If we're no longer in the EU you'll find it bloody hard to rein in the City buddy. When the US put controls around certain instruments in the 70's (I believe) it lead directly to a creation of a market in the UK which thrived. Only the Govt. can control that beast.

Australian Bureau of Statistics to get AU$250m tech boost

Mark 65

Cue Oracle sniffing around in 3..2..1

Apple MacBook 2015: Twelve inches of slim and shiny fanboi joy

Mark 65

The design of the new MacBook is world class.

With one solitary port primarily used for charging, the necessity of buying an adaptor that the cheap fucks can't be arsed throwing in for free less it dampen the 40% margin, and having 1/10 repairability I think I can safely say this is not World class design. Shiny yes, World class? Certainly not.

Accused Aussie game hacker flees to Europe ahead of trial

Mark 65

Re: Moron...

Northern Cyprus?

Why OH WHY is economics so bleedin' awful, then?

Mark 65

Re: Sitting Ducks

To be perfectly honest, if I were up shit creek and having to rely on Government handouts I'd want a bloody drink. I don't begrudge them that and I'd hope the ones that piss all their benefits up the wall are, as I suspect, an absolute minority.

Australia cracks tech giants' tax dodge code

Mark 65

In most companies the largest bill, after cost of goods, is wages. Those come with a massive tax take.

...

Third is often pensions. You got it - taxed!

Apple does most of the manufacturing in China as stated in the article. Often under contract. These people may or may not be paid well compared to other companies but by Western standards it will be fuck all. That is what makes the margin so large. Employing countless knowledgeless meat-sacks poncing around stores asking if they can help you then knowing jack-shit about the product line is not likely to produce a massive tax take. Going by what I have seen plenty will be students and hence pay little or no tax based on income and thresholds. There will be some payroll taxes but nothing compared to what gets avoided.

Most corporations - like most individuals - pay a third to a half of their income in tax.

Companies like Apple and Google make huge profits compared with their staffing levels and have averaged/harmonised corporation tax rates below 15%. I sincerely doubt that payroll tax is going to take them up to 33% let alone 50%. That statement is simply nonsense. Small businesses and those unable to profit shift certainly do pay higher rates and get properly screwed.

Mark 65

Re: Taxing the wrong thing

All taxes are paid by the buyer...am I the only person who understands this?

And the shareholders no? I mean, how much you can pass on to the buyer depends on the competitiveness of the market in which you operate. If it is highly competitive then more "cost" is born by the shareholders.

Mark 65

Re: Taxing the wrong thing

Turnover cannot work as it'll just fuck over low margin businesses. It always seems like a good quick fix but it just doesn't work. You need to tax profits. It's just that, at the present time, we have a rather large problem with their definition.

My issue is that for all this transfer pricing to be legal it has to be arms-length does it not? It sure doesn't seem arms length but a major planned and smoothly run operation to me.

Mark 65

Ahhh, so the corporation tax should be paid at the address of their head tax accountant? I assume he/she lives in the Caymans then.

Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer found guilty of code theft … again

Mark 65

Re: *Whose* code?

It's also only enforceable in the US. In the EU any work you did in your own time not using employer resources certainly could not fall under their ownership. Not that they wouldn't still write it in your contract but it wouldn't pass muster in a court.

Comments considered harmful: WordPress web hijack bug revealed

Mark 65

Re: About time

Wordpress seems to be the Bloggers' variant of flash - full of holes and patched every week.