* Posts by Graham Marsden

6899 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2007

Five reasons why the Google tax deal is imploding

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

Re: So are they breaking the law or not?

> *That* is what Google is doing, exploiting the permanent establishment rules put into the law to *aid small companies*.

Because Google is such a small company that they *need* to use those rules since they can't afford to operate without them...

Graham Marsden

Re: @codejunky - So are they breaking the law or not?

> I do the insult indirect to Murphy and Sikka. Up above Andrew has gone for the insult direct: "innumerati".

Which others have already addressed.

> And you want to shout at me about it?

No, I want you to argue in a way that does credit to your points, rather than sneering like a teenager because you think that makes your arguments better.

You could also look up Ad Hominem Tu Quoque

Graham Marsden

@Martin Summers

You fail to comprehend the scale of what is going on.

This isn't just a matter of a few thousand quid here or there, it is money running into the millions and billions. At what point do you say "hmm, actually I think having enough money to buy a small country, is sufficient..."?

Graham Marsden

Re: Seriously what did you expect, you voted them in

I suggest, AC, that you go back and look at the last lot of election results, because you'll see that the majority of us *DID NOT* vote for them, they got about 37% of the votes which was actually only 24% of the electorate.

The fact is that the Tories only got around 600,000 more votes than they did previously, but because of our broken electoral system, that was somehow parlayed into a "majority".

Until that gets fixed, we're going to keep getting Buggins' Turn governments with no actual change happening.

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

@codejunky - Re: So are they breaking the law or not?

> Reading Tim Worstall on this topic is very interesting-

Reading Tim Worstall in Forbes is just like reading him in El Reg. If his arguments are so clever and cogent, why does he have to continually resort to ad hominem sneers?

Take his conclusion: "who would you rather get your public policy from? A politician, an accounting professor and a suburban accountant turned one fifth of a professor? Or an actual world expert on the economics of tax systems?" He's using blatant NLP techniques and dodgy debating tactics (eg Poisoning the Well ) to denigrate those he disagrees with and influence the reader into accepting his viewpoint, but if his points and conclusions were as valid as he believes, such behaviour simply wouldn't be necessary.

He also claims that what Google et al are doing is "making us all richer", well, I'm sure it's making people like *him* richer, because they're the ones who can afford to own and trade shares in such big companies, but for the rest of us "little people", we're the ones who are seeing the money flow ever upwards and precious little of it tricking back downwards.

Still, that's not his (or Google's) problem, is it?

In this Facebook and Google-owned world, it's time to rethink privacy

Graham Marsden
Alert

@allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Alternatively:

WARN - THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM

Google to Skynet: 2x1=2 3x1=3 4x1=4...

Skynet to Google: ... 2x1=2 3x1=3 4x1=4...

Come on kids, let's go play in the abandoned nuclear power station

Graham Marsden
Coat

Mysterious goings on at the abandoned nuclear power station

Take a long hard look at Mr Boggins the old Caretaker and see if he owns a spooky mask...

(Mine's the one with the "Meddling Kids" badge)

Safe Harbor 2.0: US-Europe talks on privacy go down to the wire

Graham Marsden
Coat

Perhaps you can get it from the Met Office?

Universal Credit: The IT project that will outlive us all

Graham Marsden
Devil

Meanwhile...

... the Government are claiming that unemployment rates are falling, but FOI requests reveal that much of that is due to people's benefits being sanctioned which means that they're not classed as "unemployed and claiming benfits", even though they're not getting jobs:

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-01-21-sanctions-linked-drop-unemployment-benefit-few-return-work

Sight for sore eyes: Dropbox lands on Win 10 with iris recognition

Graham Marsden
Holmes

The Accused, M'lud...

... did deliberately and wilfully close his eyes and refuse to look into the camera when instructed to do so, thus denying us access to his files...

Graham Marsden
Big Brother

@The Original Steve

> One of the few things Microsoft don't slurp by default

... Yet...

'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

"guidelines don’t accurately reflect the numbers"

Well *there's* a surprise, boys and girls!

Don't forget, this is the government which has just passed a monumentally stupid and represesive law to ban legal highs (excluding, of course, alcohol, caffeine and tobacco) despite the fact that two of those three have been responsible for more deaths and suffering and long-term illnesses than everything else put together.

Peru scrambles vulture squadron in war against trash

Graham Marsden
Unhappy

All that...

... and not a mention of Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines?

Pentagon fastens lasers to military drones to zap missiles out of the skies

Graham Marsden
Holmes

" If there's <s>a way to shoot these things</s> pork to be had...

"...and empires that can be built, then the military (aided by Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and other contractors) will find it."

FTFY.

Space podule outfit inks Arizona launch deal

Graham Marsden
Happy

@Lester Haines - Re: "size of a football stadium"?

It wasn't difficult...

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

"size of a football stadium"?

Come on, El Reg, that's supposed to be 231539821.9338 Bulgarian Funbags or 158.3927 Olympic sized swimming pools...!

Privacy warriors plead with FCC to wield sword of net neutrality against snooping ISPs

Graham Marsden
Devil

Well, yes we could...

... but there's all these commercial interests paying us lobbying us to let them snoop on everything you do monitor activities anonymously, because that information can be sold on can be used to improve their services...

Boffins: There's a ninth planet out there – now we just need to find it

Graham Marsden
Thumb Up

Re: Nibiru...

ITYM "Rupert"

DARPA commits to brain-computer interface development project

Graham Marsden
Coat

Excuse me...

... whilst I jack in to my Ono Sendai Cyberspace 7

(Mine's the one with the Mirrorshades in the pocket)

Florida cuffee surprised by pills in vagina

Graham Marsden

Obviously...

... she fell over when she was doing the cleaning in the nude...

It's 2016 and idiots still use '123456' as their password

Graham Marsden
Coat

Obligatory...

Remind me to change the combination on my luggage!

(Mines the one with the Dark Helmet...)

Spare a reserved cloud instance, gov? Microsoft's $1bn, 70k charity sales pitch

Graham Marsden
Happy

No comment...

... on the article, I just wanted to say that, for once, I actually liked the Header Image :-)

Cat vids return to Pakistan as YouTube turns on censor-matic

Graham Marsden
Flame

And can continue to marry 16 year-old girls

What? You mean like can happen in the UK? Damn those extremists...!

European human rights court rules mass surveillance illegal

Graham Marsden
Devil

@Lysenko - Re: ...scrap the Human Rights Act (thereby withdrawing from that treaty)...

> If the HRA is repealed by the proposed "Bill of Rights" there may be no change at all. It depends on exactly what the BoR says.

You can guarantee that any UK BoR that Call me David and Treasonous May have any influence on will be loaded with Weasel Phrases that basically say "You have all these Rights, apart from any time we say you don't..."

Trump's new thought bubble: Make Apple manufacture in the USA

Graham Marsden
Mushroom

Re: @AC - Here goes

To quote an idea I saw elsewhere:

How about, instead of spending all that money on Big Boys Toys ie Trident, simply so we can claim that "Look, we have nukes too", we use it for education and social services and nurses and paying decent state pensions etc and then, every year, we have a "Trident in Need" telethon where everyone who thinks we need Trident can chip in a few quid to support them instead...

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

@AC - Re: Here goes

And Call Me David makes so much more sense calling for bans on encryption and Gideon flogging off the family silver (and then furniture) to make his mates richer and Treasonous May wanting to consider us all potential terrorists...

Snowden bag-carrier Miranda's detention was lawful – UK appeal court

Graham Marsden
Big Brother

"the publication of material can amount to an act of terrorism...

"...as defined by MiniTrue and NewSpeak".

FTFY

Adblock Plus blocked from attending ad industry talkfest

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

Foot...

... Gun...

... BANG!

Dear Advertisers, YOU are the problem, not ad blockers. YOU are the ones who are annoying people off to such an extent that they want to use adblockers.

You have got so wrapped up in the idea that getting your content in front of peoples' eyeballs is the most important idea that you can't see that people are fed up with their eyeballs bleeding as a result of all this crap!

Try stepping back and taking a deep breath and considering *why* people are blocking your content and think that, just perhaps, there's a better way of doing things.

Or you can sit in your smug little echo chamber and ignore anyone who points out anything that conflicts with your idea that "Well, advertising's good, isn't it, so more advertising's got to be even better, hasn't it...?"

Thank you.

Signed

Everyone you've pissed off.

US publishes guide to hardening your arteries, security-wise, that is

Graham Marsden
Megaphone

Security, security, security...

... is what should be at the *top* of the Design Specs, yet we constantly see with stories like this and the IoT etc that either nobody thinks about it, nobody considers it necessary or, even worse, that it's just too expensive or too much hassle to worry about whilst rushing to get a product to the market first.

Twitter goes titsup

Graham Marsden
Meh

Umm...

... so did anyone here notice?

Robots. Machine learnin', 3D-printin' AI robots: They'll take our jobs – Davos

Graham Marsden

@BoldMan

> I believe its called consultancy...

You are correct.

That will be £5000, please.

Graham Marsden
Terminator

Re: DAVOS

Just beat me to it...!

KeysForge will give you printable key blueprints using a photo of a lock

Graham Marsden
Pirate

@Sampler

But did you tell them you'd done it...? ;-)

Facebook is no charity, and the ‘free’ in Free Basics comes at a price

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

Free Basics? Sounds more like Free Basing...

... once they've got you hooked, you're stuck with them.

As always, when someone tells you it's 'free', the first question you need to ask is "What is this *actually* going to cost me?"

What do we do about a problem like Uber? Tom Slee speaks his brains

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

Re: Political soapbox much?

And let's not forget this gem...

> It’s an acute problem for progressives and the Left when you want to ban or regulate something, and yet you can’t show "harm" to justify it.

Sure, because the Right have *never* decided that they wanted to ban or regulate something yet have been unable to show "harm" to justify it...

NASA books space shuttle delivery truck

Graham Marsden
Alert

Re: Contract Out, Screw the Workforce

Remember Alan Shepard's comment:

"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."

Bloke sues dad who shot down his drone – and why it may decide who owns the skies

Graham Marsden

Re: @h4rm0ny - What is the sky?

I think what's really clear is that *both* of them are playing PR games.

Your take was "Way I read it, the drone owner is self-entitled, aggressive and thinks it's fine to hover over people's fenced in gardens filming them or their family members and I'm on Meredith's side on this", but you (and your upvoters) didn't seem to have done any looking to see if there *was* an "on the other hand" version which may contradict it, hence the downvote.

As for the gun stuff, personally I don't live in a country where there are people who think that "go for your gun" is the apparent default method of resolving an issue. (If Meredith was so concerned about the drone, why didn't *he* call the Police...?)

Graham Marsden

@h4rm0ny - Re: What is the sky?

Downvoted, not for the gun stuff (see later), but because here's the drone owner's version

* * * * *

In a video Boggs sent WDRB, he comments on drone's path 40 seconds before, during and after the incident.

"We are now one minute and 18 seconds into the flight," he says on the video. "We are now 193 feet above the ground. This area here is the world-famous drone slayer home, and this is a neighbor's home, and our friends live over here, and over here, and over here. You will see now that we did not go below this altitude -- we even went higher -- nor did we hover over their house to look in. And for sure didn't descend down to no 10 feet, or look under someone's canopy, or at somebody's daughter."

"We are right now one minute, 56 seconds over the drone slayer's house. We're still not on his property line -- we're just now getting ready to cross it....In less than two seconds...we are outside of his property, still at 272 feet. He shot the drone here, and you'll see it rapidly lose altitude, and the drone crash. Boom -- there it goes. Crazy, in the words of the great Paul Harvey, now you know the rest of the story."

* * * * *

Now, regarding the guns, if someone starts shooting at and destroying my property, I think I'd be a little miffed, and if I wanted to have a word with them, I doubt I'd just go up to their house, knock on the door and say "excuse me, old chap, would you mind not doing that?" I'd want a few friends with me. When we see the guy I want to speak to is packing a side arm and threatening 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting" I think we're going to back off. (NB nowhere can I find anything that says the drone owner or his friends are carrying firearms...)

So have "the various attempts to cast this has someone shooting down an innocent drone that was just flying along through the sky" really been exploded?

Apple buys mood sniffer AI firm Emotient. Stop rolling your eyes at me, user

Graham Marsden
Coat

Happiness is mandatory, citizen...

... Failure to be happy is treasonous and can be punished by termination.

- Your friend, The Computer.

(Mine's the Red Security Clearance one)

Three-years-late fit-to-work IT tool will cost taxpayers £76m

Graham Marsden
Devil

@<shakes head> Re: Whaaat?

> never attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity

In this case, it's not simply stupidity, it's ideological idiocy.

Call me David, Gideon Osborne and IDS have presided over the train-wreck that this Austerity, penalising the poor for being poor whilst desperately flogging off the family silver (and, latterly, the furniture) to their rich mates to try to make the books balance and now Gideon is claiming that there's a "cocktail of threats" (should that be a cock-up?) which mean that he has to keep on kicking the least well off in society because it's clearly *their* fault that the banks and financial markets crashed...

Call of Duty terror jabber just mindless banter

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

@Voland's right hand - Re: Yes, but....

> For that you might as well use SMS. In clear text.

Or even: Bumbling would-be UK bomber asked Twitter followers for target suggestions

Oh UK.gov. Say you're not for weakened encryption – Google and Facebook

Graham Marsden

Foetuses offered vaginal music streaming service

Graham Marsden
Alert

Re: Musical vibrator?

Don't forget the Motorhead branded Vibrator!

A third of UK.gov big projects will fail in next five years, warns NAO

Graham Marsden
WTF?

What...?

... Only a third???

GCHQ mass spying will 'cost lives in Britain,' warns ex-NSA tech chief

Graham Marsden
Facepalm

Re: He's wrong and in denial

> As a society we are desperately behind the crims who are in control at the moment.

Yes, the ones in control are the politicians and the Media Barons who decide what we are or, more importantly, are not allowed to read and see. The Big Busineses who tell our "elected" representatives how they should run the country and how if they would pass a certain law it would be to everyone's benefit (and here's a nice lucrative Directorship for you).

> You may not read about all of these events but they happen daily and serve to illustrate just how bad the situation really is

HOW can they illustrate *ANYTHING* if we can't read about them? The Government and the Security Services might claim that they've prevented X many attacks, but without anything to corroborate such assertions, they are just meaningless BS.

PS: Oh, and your post might have had more credibility had you not posted as an Anonymous Coward...

Graham Marsden
Alert

Binney has previously described as "absolute horse shit"...

... claims by the UK government's lawyers that the huge volumes of data collected by the intelligence services won't be readable at the point of inception.

But, but... Matt Bryant disagrees with him, so he *MUST* be wrong!!!

Graham Marsden

@werdsmith - Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

> If you want to find a needle in a hay stack, you don't send in a person to sift through the hay with their hands. You just move all the hay past a powerful electromagnet.

But that assumes that a) there *is* a needle in the haystack and b) you don't have *so many* haystacks that you can actually search all of them.

There's also the small matter of the several attacks over recent years which have been by people who have been known to the Intelligence Services, yet have still been able to perpetrate their attacks...

Obama: What will solve America's gun problem? What could it be? *snaps fingers* Technology!

Graham Marsden

@Pompous Git - Re: Huh?

> It's amazing how many houses burn down because the house next door caught fire.

If the fire is anything more than very minor, a fire extinguisher is going to do you damn all good if you use it to try to put the fire out.

The point of a home extinguisher is actually to ensure you can create a safe escape path and get out of the house and then let the Fire Brigade do their job.

Americans massively back call for more police body camera tech

Graham Marsden

Re: Wearing the cameras is only part of the solution

> Presently, in most jurisdictions, the field video is owned and controlled by the police department.

At least this is one thing that Britain's Surveillance State got right: If you appear on CCTV or other such video footage which has been taken by the Police or similar authorities you have a right to see that footage.

Graham Marsden
Holmes

@Big John

> Cops know where to look to find most of the trouble.

It's curious, they go looking for trouble and, even if there wasn't any to start with, they seem to manage to find some.

Ask Constable Savage for more information