Posts by Sirius Lee 580 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Dec 2009
I think you need to do some more credibility testing especially over the VAT filing. As a small business owner my experience is that submissions for the last three quarters have been seemless. Maybe the single person used as an example is one of those that gripe when any change is made. Do you remember the whining when online businesses had to start paying VAT back at the beginning of 2015? Where are they now?
Why not provide some more and specific details. Perhaps chase up other business owners reporting issues rather than relying on one example. Surely Sage and other volume processors would have some stories if the issue is real. They have no advantage keeping quiet if the problem is with HMRC. The "we've been trying for two weeks" line seems unlikely unless the user has made a mistake or is using software that does not work.
Good comment. I was going to comment that on the BBC lunchtime news (yesterday now) the reporter was clear that the EE kit being used was sourced from Huawei.
It is unfortunate for EE, the BBC and Huawei that video of the much trumpeted article, which was being broadcast using the 5G network became corrupted after just a few seconds (audio was OK so not a data cap issue).
Given you an up vote. Marketing and activism in the social media age is to put some label together with a small handful of like minded people who share some characteristic (in this case being an Amazon shareholder) then make a claim that sounds like all people with the same characteristic have the same point of view. Which is ridiculous. But it gets picked up by mindless blog drones and amplified without any further qualification. Always disappointing.
From Nixon and until Trump, the US policy on China has been about engagement. US universities are awash with Chinese students - have you reviewed the doctoral science programs at CalTech? The current Chinese president was educated in the mid-west and got his mercantile experience selling agricultural hardware there.
In that time, thanks largely due to the US accommodating massively lop sided trade with China, the middle kingdom has begun to lift itself out of self-inflicted poverty. Good for them. But not so good for US citizens. Sure, they get cheaper products but have lost or have never invested industries that employ millions. Great for those living in cities and greater metro areas. Not so good for the vast numbers living in actual poverty in rural USA. And US voting patterns bear this out.
There is no easy solution. But just spouting sentiments like let's go easy on the Chinese is not a solution either. It's virtue signalling to like minded people who also live in big cities.
I recommend you read "From third world to first" by Lee Kuan Yew, one of the founders of modern Singapore. Although written nearly 20 years ago its still worth the effort. Ethnically chinese (Fujian province) he recounts many meetings with Chinese leaders over his four decades as prime minister and from these explains why it is that he believes China cannot be trusted to be a good international citizen. Again, this is not some western academic. It is someone who grew up in south east asia and who watched China implode under Mao Zedong then begin to claw its way back. He repeatedly points to the cultural Confusianism of the Chinese and the likely effect of that culture on the way China will develop.
So far, his predictions have been on the money. If they continue to be correct, they don't describe a pretty outcome for the US or the west in general or south east asia in particular.
You earn £50K but have a mortgage of £400K (debt) on a house. Why is that you are not a basket case? Because the house is an asset that you hope (and lenders believe) will gain in value. Even if it doesn't, the mortgage payments will be similar to or less than the rental you would pay on a similar property. People with money lend you the £400K on the basis that you pay interest on that loan.
Similarly, the $50bn of debt has been used to purchase assets - VMWare for example - that may gain in value (if someone wants to buy them). However, unlike your mortgage which is 8 x your revenues, the Dell debt is far less than their revenues. In the meantime those assets will be expected to earn their keep by generating revenue. And it seems they are if, as claimed, their positive cash flow is able to generate $14bn this year. Dell is probably charged 5% for the privilege of borrowing $50bn but it seem the assets acquired are generating cash at a greater rate.
He probably wants to go public to convert some or all of that debt (which *has* to be repaid and could be called in) into equity from new shareholders (which doesn't have to be repaid and can't be called in). Much better from a manager's point of view but not necessarily so good from a shareholder's perspective. Moreover, that debt will have been borrowed on the basis that it is used for specific purposes. Equity funds can be used more flexibly so long as the company keeps to the business model outlined in the prospectus. Again, much better for the managers.
So the battle is to show prospective investors that their money is safe in Dell. That they will more than get their money back. That they are generating $14bn in profit on $97bn in revenue and that is could be better if they were not paying interest. That there is room to make more acquisitions using shareholder money to make even more profit.
£400 is not cheap. That's £400 not £399 - let's not play that game. A Porche looks cheap when you compare it to a Rolls Royce but not so cheap when you compare it with a Kia Rio. Again, £400 is not cheap and its disingenuous to suggest that spending that much on a phone is a value deal. In no universe is that true just because Samsung and Apple have found people who are willing to pay a huge idiot tax. It's a shame that journalists can be lead to support the notion that £400 is good value just because there are even more hideously expensive phones a person could purchase. The saying "A fool and their money are easily parted" seems apt.
If people want to spend that much money, why not buy a genuinely cheap phone and give the difference to a charity where it will do some good instead of giving it to wealthy shareholders?
Seems like a fair point but if you applied that logic to the first computers or mobile phones (who else is going to pay for those satellites and masts but rich people) then you will ever get any innovation.
My biggest concern about the design as shown is those uncovered fan blades. Sure, they are *supposed* to switched off while passengers get in and out but, oops.
<authors> ... "have recreated pyrene, a hydrocarbon commonly formed during the combustion processes in car engines, in a lab"
Miracle of miracles. Researchers have created in a lab a molecule that is commonly created by cars. Whoa!
Come on, the story as written is full of logical holes. How about:
"A pressurised mixture of 4-phenanthrenyl - a hydrocarbon with one unpaired electron - another hydrocarbon compound acetylene were injected into a microreactor from a nozzle at supersonic speeds."
According to the title the article is about creating molecules in space where there is no pressure and where there are no reactors.
I am sure these apparent inconsistencies are because details about the research have been have been omitted and maybe it just shows it is possible to edit articles a little too far.
Are you really sure of your facts? I am no lover of Virgin Media but I live in London (one of the alleged hot spots) am a VM subscriber and work from home spending most of my day on a remote machine. If there were a problem affecting connectivity, surely I would have experienced it but I did not. Even if I'd fallen asleep at the times it is claimed the the outage occurred, as my connection to the remote machine is on all the time, I would have noticed a problem because it would have disconnected while asleep. But it didn't.
All of the Windows servers I am using on AWS EC2 use AMD64 processors. AWS and Azure can swap out Intel hardware for AMD hardware with just a virtual machine restart so this may be a preferred option for them.
AWS went through an exercise over the summer to force reboot some servers. We were told it was for essential maintenance of the host hardware. It affected two of my servers. Perhaps the real reason for this exercise was move us onto AMD processors (I wish now I knew the CPUs used before the reboot).
"it's clear that the quality of content would plummet without the BBC"
The BBC is the 800lb gorilla the the UK sitting room. Other UK terrestrial TV companies have to find ways to entice advertisers while the BBC is stealing their ideas. Was the BBC the first to have a nightly soap opera? No. Was it the firs to have a dancing competition? No. But the BBC barges in and takes away viewers from commercial TV providers using our money to do so.
Is it any wonder the offerings of commercial TV providers is lack-lustre when they have to find a way to profitability with a state funded (we *are* the state) broadcaster in the sitting room? If they had more revenues they probably would provide a wider range and better quality of content.
Is it any wonder that the free view channels are stuffed with US content providers who do not need to compete with a state funded content provider.
Sure, have a public service broadcaster but have one that fills niches not occupied by commercial companies, such as Sky at Night or University Challenge, rather than steal other's good ideas. May be then we will have a wider choice of excellent content.
Andrew O reports a ruling as it affects individual privacy. Companies are not individuals and so do not enjoy the benefits of human right legislation. Therefore, as I understand it, the ECJ ruling has no effect in this case. Other commenters have speculated on the reasons for Google's decision to remove the links.
There may be an association between the rise in the number of self-employed and UK productivity being stagnant. But economists ascribe this malaise to UK businesses not investing in productivity boosting tools and technologies. That is, making existing staff more productive.
The productivity issue has been hanging around the UK economy for well over a decade and for this reason alone, attributing it to the rise of the gig economy seems a bit of a stretch. Maybe even a little desperate.
"Reportedly" from where? More questionable news? Even if accurate, the people overseeing the integration sub-contractor who only noticed the problem recently probably needed to be shown the door even if previous reviews were good. Hiding problems can make you seem good until you can't hide the problems any longer.
No wonder you posted anonymously. Twitter may be a toilet but this sort of comment is no better.
As the article points out, and you acknowledge, the offence was including a telephone number in a post (presumably not her own). It's not difficult to imagine who's telephone number she included. It's also not difficult for software to workout if a post contains a telephone number. No human moderators are required to identify a telephone number and send a note of it to a human to check.
How about a little less of the mindless conspiracy theory stuff.
What planet do you live on? Some Utopian world where nothing goes wrong? Or maybe you are one of those people who thinks they do nothing wrong. Of course its not that simple.
Your son or daughter is away at university and loses their credit card on a Friday evening and needs to pay a bill on Saturday morning or be evicted. If you have kids you will realize that kids don't plan. So you have your credit card couriered to them and tell them the PIN so they can withdraw cash to pay the bill. By your reckoning this is obvious breach of rules is punishable.
There are many, many scenarios when sharing details between close members is sometimes necessary.
In the specific case documented in the article it is clearly a crime since the person was stealing intellectual property so it is bewildering why the person was not prosecuted for this crime. This case is no different to a giving your front door key to a neighbor so they can feed to your cat only to find they've cleared out your house. What's the crime here? Giving the key or clearing out the house. The answer is obvious.
It's a sign of the times that the justice system cannot apply appropriate laws. In this case presumably because the prosecutors believed the possibility of a conviction for a computer crime is more likely than proving damages as a result of the theft of data.
Also for VAT processing records must be retained for 10 years. A tax authority of any EU member state can request transaction details of any sales in that time frame. Those details must include the two non-conflicting pieces of evidence used to justify the rate of VAT applied to each sale. One is the person's billing address. For on-line sales another can be there IP address. These pieces of evidence cannot be deleted if a business is to comply with the EU VAT Directive (2005).
What the are you folks on about? Does it get you off to conflate concepts? Do you think it advances the cause? It's 'Eurofighter' not 'EUfighter'. Britain, whether it is in the EU or not, will continue to be in Europe. And NATO.
Spain and Germany can choose to build their own fighter aircraft but what's the point? Germany has world leading businesses making cars not jets. Spain needs to find a way to provide millions of youth jobs not a few thousand jobs for skilled workers. France would love to build a jet for it's vision of an EU military force but it also needs to focus on creating jobs. Macron's suggestion of building an EU military force has not been welcomed with rapturous enthusiasm in other capitals especially in Berlin which knows its people would be picking up the bill and, as I mentioned, Germany builds cars.
2007 is the year the original iPhone was launched. So the deal was signed before Apple became the rich organization it is today and certainly negotiated long before unless the contention is that Ireland's tax authorities are so good they can whip out a complex tax deal overnight.
An institution like the one run by AM Slaughter needs money and just because of this surely the leader needs to be be more subtle in their handling of matters like these; be much more aware of what the institution's position looks like from the outside.
Whatever are the objective facts of the case, they don't matter because it has been made too easy to position the institution and Google as an interfering bully. It didn't need to be this way. Google did not need to be so thin-skinned. Slaughter did not need to react in such a pejorative way. For example, the institution could have commissioned another article presenting a different side (assuming there is one). Mr Lynn might have objected and chosen to leave anyway.
It's hard for me to imagine that AM Slaughter will be in position in, say, 12 months from now because it seems to me her actions have put the institution in the position that it's integrity can be brought into doubt. Not that it's integrity *is* in doubt only that it can be construed that way.
One of the challenges of leadership is being willing to sacrifice, or at least refashion, past friendships when those friendships could compromise the leaders ability to represent the best interest of the organization they lead. Unless there is something the constitution of the institution that requires all it's output to be reviewed and is a transparent principle which funders can reasonably expect to be able to rely, it seems to me AM Slaughter has failed in a core responsibility of the role of CEO.
I've heard this bollocks so often. So the proposal is not to promote the guy who has invested his time and effort becoming the expert an instead promote the person who spent their time in the bar socializing. No, No, No. That breeds mediocrity.
Of course if someone has no social skills whatever, putting them in a position where they are responsible for others is not going to work. But the idea that promoting the person with social skills IS the right solution contains its own fallacy. Managers are not just responsible for getting a competent performance out of the staff for which they have responsibility but also for allocating those resources. And you want the best IT smarts doing the allocation. The person who spent their time in the bar practising social skills instead of learning the business is not going to be best placed to make those calls.
So you might argue that a social manager will use their social skills to create a committee of their best staff to decide upon that allocation. Done, right? No. Because that manager then has to advocate their managers a position it is likely they are not intellectually capable of representing.
Big IT organisations have tackled this dilemma for decades and the right solution has never been to side step the expert unless that person wants to be side stepped. That is, get the person's buy in that they do not want a management career and instead offer them a fellowship career path.
Please, let's have none of this trite pseudo-management nonsense summarised in a few paragraphs when the real world solutions require years long courses of study - which the socialisers will not complete because they are in the bar 'practising' their social skills.
The consequences of this lawsuit succeeding could be terrible. The internet and platforms like Twitter are haunted by obsessives with, it seems, nothing better to do than trash talk anyone.
Presumably if blocking users on Twitter applies to the POTUS then is has to apply to everyone. At that point Twitter users are unable to block stalkers. Imagine any vulnerable group: women, kids, old folks, minorities not being able to block the views of those vehemently opposed to them or seeking to exploit them.
So which is worse? Some obsessives vehemently opposed to the current POTUS being blocked or allowing obsessive and potentially dangerous people to stalk and harass members of any vulnerable group. I know I'd opt to let the POTUS block whom ever he (or she) wants and, so, upset a few media savvy luvvies who will, anyway, be able to make themselves heard.
Of course some will say the solution is to only prevent the POTUS from blocking but that option brings with it a whole host of other constitutional problems.
Oh, dear. The Linux desktop fantasists are out in force today. In this case the fantasised solution to not applying updates to Windows is to replace it with something that doesn't need forced updates.
There are many organizations in the world that have has years long efforts to displace Windows. El Reg has reported on the city of Munich which after trying to use Linux for years has reverted back to Windows.
If Linux were a silver bullet we would have been using it for years already. Its not. It has many significant problem when used in any context but especially in a desktop context. Linux kernel updates often require that applications are recompiled and Linus Torvalds has explicitly stated that backwards compatibility of the kernel is not ever on the card for Linux.
For a the relatively small number of servers managed by a dedicated group of support specialists this may be acceptable and required re-testing and re-certification of apps an acceptable cost. But for a large fleet of end user computing devices it certainly is not.
Plus it presumes that some group of hackers in Leeds has even the vaguest clue about the range of applications that are used across the NHS. The difficulties of implementing GP systems across the NHS should surely throw up some warning flags.
But, I suppose, the managers who will ultimately sanction the notion of replacing Windows with some relatively untried Linux-based solution are the ones who also permitted the use of un-patched Windows in the first place.
It's easy to apply the 'no jerks' rule once your business is up and running and jerks have created the technology you need to conduct business. Once the business is up and running you need the team players to keep the business rolling.
But when the business hits competition and the consensual culture supporting the current business model no longer works, as eventually it surely will, lets see if the consensual culture can adapt. History suggests that such a culture will not be able to change because there will be no consensus on the change required.
So an interpretation of this position by the management of Netflix is a statement to potential competitors that they are not in a position to meet radically new market challenges should such challenges arise.
You are having a pop at Microsoft for not releasing a fix for a product that reached end-of-life over 3 years ago after a decade-long warning period? Really? You are so desperate to sh?t on Microsoft you want to cane them for not fixing a product that users should have stopped using in April 2014 and that should have been preparing for that change since 2005.
Surely its much better focusing your misguided ire on the lunacy of IT managers that disable Windows update or company bosses that are inflating profits by not investing enough on the maintenance of their IT infrastructure.
I'm not a joining or social type so I never did join Facebook. I don't have a profile. But that also means no knows me. Fortunately, I don't care. I'm not anti-social - that has connotations of being pathological. I'm asocial. I don't feel the need to be social so not having constant contact with friends and acquaintances is not an issue for me.
However, I do recognize that I am unusual. I suspect that few others, especially those in technical jobs where solitude even in a crowded office is a daily reality, could do without the instant contact Facebook offers. I think for many to know there are friends out there, people you can reach out to any time is a great comfort and not one most people can do away with.
Before Facebook I would receive the occasional email inviting me to some social event or another. Now events are only organized through Facebook so I'm not included. I don't mind as I find social situations stressful but most people are social creatures who need contact with other humans.
Withdrawing from Facebook means you will be out of the loop. Your withdrawal from Facebook will make you the awkward one. The one that does not listen. The one that makes it inconvenient for others. You will be the one causing the rubbing sore. Gradually you will not be invited because you left the club (and people really are tribal).
I agree with the author that Facebook is dangerous but for normal, social people leaving will cause as many problems as it solve.
Take a vote as I think you make the most relevant assessment. Yes, the Google article made it very clear that operations per watt is their benchmark. That and the ability to scale out. I did not get the impression they cared if it was more operations at the same power level or the same number of operations for less power. By putting out an implementation in silicon they have created a target Intel and nVidea can aim at. I'm sure the Google team is delighted early indications are that Intel and nVidea want to play their game.
So you update your Linux kernel and now you have to update (recompile) all your software. How is this a good thing? Or you don't update your kernel and you find your software is no longer supported on that *aged* Linux server because it's two years old and the software vendors don't want the cost of support such an old kernel.
Linux is great in some scenarios. It's great if you do a limited number of things and you can remember all the command line incantations for them. It is probably true that hard-core administrators do remember all the incantations. But for the rest of us, those with other responsibilities as well, Windows Server is great because in addition to the command line we can use visual interfaces so we do not have to be word perfect on every single command.
I know hard-core Linux types don't get it. When you know some thing or some task very well it's hard to remember how difficult you used to find it and then there is a tendency to think everyone must be or could be as fluent as you. I know I have had that experience (sadly not with the Linux command line yet).
Our storage is on S3 in the US East and we've not experienced problems or losses. Maybe there is some other problem some users have which manifests itself as an S3 problem.
On the back of this story we've wasted time checking our store on the S3 service and have not found any issues.
As I read this article I remembered the article published in The Register *just last week* which reviewed the should's and should not's with respect to data security when travelling to the US. It was clear in the article that demanding passwords is not a new thing. That TSA staff have been able to require access to phones for years and, if password to social and other accounts are on the phone then their contents are fair game. And if you do not offer up your phone then staff are within their rights to confiscate the device and send it away for forensic investigation.
Since this is not a new thing or even a new practice why is a fuss being kicked up now. I have no love for President Trump but I have even less love self-serving hypocrisy. This hypocrisy feeds Trump's narrative of fake news when this 'news' should have been brought to light while Barry was in charge.
Surely these examples only illustrate that appropriate incentives are important. If in in the gathering game the incentive included not hurting an opponent it's unlikely there would be any tagging. If the Wolf pack game included the incentive to kill other wolves there is likely to have been wolf-on-wolf attacks. Given the simplistic incentives, there is no surprise at the outcomes.
Correct incentives are important in the workplace because getting them wrong can lead to anti-social and expensive outcomes. The incentives in the workplace also include government regulation.
The lack of surprise at the outcomes of these experiments is because many of us would act in the same way given the incentives available. Surely better use of AI is to workout what the incentives should be to make it more likely that socially acceptable outcomes are obtained.
Of course it can be detected. At the very least the messages will contain headers that describe the kind of encryption used. Virus checkers will flag encrypted content as not checkable and add headers to the message to indicate that failure. If it's anything like our system admins will receive warnings about potential infringements of policy.
Every effing quarter there is some clown putting out nonsense articles about Amazon's economic performance. You will be disappointed to learn that most of the down turn you report in after hours trading has been regained by the time I wrote this. But more than that, the modest downturn in share price you report only left the stock where it was at the beginning of the day.
Remarkably, Amazon posted a profit. For years Amazon has had a policy of making zero profit instead investing that in the business - mainly cloud infrastructure. Sometimes Amazon makes a bit of a loss, sometimes its a bit of a profit. Why make profit that you have to share it with Uncle Sam? You can see the cash being used as investments by Amazon by reviewing the cash flow section of the 10-K (the annual financial report submitted to the US Securities and Exchange commission.
In the meantime the share price has risen from $681 on Jun 27th 2016 to $817 as I write. What *exactly* is wrong with that? How can a small (and now disappeared) blip be set against that huge gain in less than a year. Get some perspective.
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