Posts by Dr. Mouse

Re: Scotland/Wales want increased powers locally

Barnier is pretty much forcing a no deal "crash out" anyway.

I respectfully disagree: IMHO TM is 'pretty much forcing a no deal "crash out" anyway' by ignoring Parliament and sticking to her own "Red Lines".

The way forward from here is (again IMHO):

- Form a cross party working group to take control of Brexit negotiations

- Request a long extension to A50

- Renegotiate from scratch, using criteria which are supported by a majority of MPs

I think there's a good chance the EU would accept this. We would have to take part in the elections and would remain full members of the EU for now, but it's got a much better chance of working than TM's "When I say Brexit, it means just what I choose it to mean".

I found a Solaris "quirk" which ended up requiring a restore of several key directories on a main production server.

My plan was to take a backup of some stuff and restore it it in a different directory to examine the contents. So, a simple tar cvf backup.tar /path/to/important/directory gained me the backup. My problem came when I tried to restore it, on another server, for examination.

cd ~

tar xvf backup.tar

"Why is the production server throwing errors?"

"Erm..."

Turns out that, while in Linux the tar command will strip off the leading /, Solaris' version doesn't. So, when I thought I was restoring in my home directory, it was in fact restoring it in its "original" position, overwriting many important files in the process. D'Oh!

Luckily, this place had a fantastic backup procedure in place, no work was lost and, importantly, the guy who discovered the problem was the backup guy and was discrete...

Lesson learned: Just because you know something similar to what you are working on does not mean you know the thing you are working on!

Re: Downvoters, get ready ....

"No they won't, you pay no NI on the dividend this means no ERS or EES will be paid. The dividend is also taxed lower than the equivalent income tax."

I agree, no NI will be paid and the tax rate will be lower. However, dividends are taxed after CT, hence tax levels come pretty close to income tax + employee NI. As stated above, if HMRC are saying we should be taxed as employees, then it is the engager who is avoiding employer's NI, so it is incorrect to include this in the calculation (for these purposes).

From your request, £100k paid as:

100% salary from engager:

-> £7,197.12 Employees NI

-> £28,360.00 PAYE Income tax

==> £35,557.12 Total tax paid (36%)

(+£12,637.49 Employers NI paid by engager)

50/50 Salary (from engager) and dividends:

-> £1,197.12 Employees NI

-> £8,360.00 PAYE Income Tax

-> £9,500.00 Corporation Tax on profits

-> £15,400.00 Dividend Income Tax

==> £34,457.12 Total Tax Paid (34%)

(+£5,737.49 Employers NI paid by engager)

100% Dividends

-> £19,000.00 Corporation Tax

-> £13,060.00 Dividend Income Tax

==> £32,060.00 Total Tax Paid (32%)

Note that I have taken Corporation Tax into account as I am looking at the total tax returned to the govt. While there is a tax advantage to it, it's not that much and would barely be worth the accountancy fees and paperwork involved.

Re: As luck would have it, a friend saw the accident

"a friend saw the incident, as friends do, roaming poorly lit backstreets at 11 p.m"

The friend was probably following him. Bikers often ride in groups 'coz its more fun that way.

Re: What about power delivery?

If the spec only allowed 2 power points, and the device only accepted USB PD as a charger/PSU, then the charger/PSU would have to be a 100W "max" charger. This would be more expensive to produce than one which would supply what the device actually needed (or close to it).

Re: Cheer up, what's the worst that could happen?

"apart from seasonal agricultural workers obviously.

And of course NHS and care home staff and local staff for engineering staff (is there any left in the E Midlands), and teachers and....."

But apart from that, what have the EU FOM rules ever done for us?

Re: what borderline things will you be claiming for this year?

I would expect that, if said music subscription was only available on work devices, in the "office" (home office may be dodgy), one could claim it was "wholly and exclusively" for business use. It's flying close to the wind, though, and HMRC would probably come back with "even though you only use it for work, you could use it outside for personal use, so jog on".

Re: This is what we voted for!

"the UK... has a very generous immigration system compared to other western EU countries"

Which is why it's so ridiculous that the EU gets blamed for immigration in this country. The UK government has refused to implement any of the controls it is allowed to over EU citizens, and then shouts "It's the nasty EU, they won't let us do anything". No wonder half the population have such a bad opinion of the EU when even EU supporting politicians have been spreading these lies for years!

Re: Nope

I've Been Moved is run by PHBs who fail to realize you need a mix of people with varying levels of experience. The idea is the more experienced mentor often informally the young'ens. When the greyhairs do leave, the young'ens are now well trained and can take over without missing a beat.

Also, as a general rule, the young'ens bring a level of enthusiasm (or lack of cynicism) to the role, along with a willingness to ask questions and innovate. The greyhairs can temper than enthusiasm, encourage an appropriate level of cynicism, answer the questions and filter and refine the innovations. A young/old (experienced/inexperienced) mix can result in a powerful team.

Simply replacing all the BOFHs with PFYs if as much a recipe for disaster as not taking on any PFYs, just keeping the BOFHs...

Re: Interesting idea

The fast way to convince Greens is to ask them to calculate how much electricity is needed vs how much "renewables" can produce

Most will come back with "We need to use less electricity, then the renewables will work"...

Re: another iteration

a candidate's IQs should be visible on the ballot paper

Given the public's disdain for "experts", that would likely lead to even dumber politicians than the current batch (if that's even possible...)

Re: @DavCrav

That was the first link I clicked on that found legislation tackling these schemes in 2010

Well, in that case, go back to 2010 when dealing with this. However, HMRC are going a loooong way further than this (I've heard of people being pursued for taxes going back to the early 2000s), and going after the individuals while taking no action against the providers of the schemes, the advisors, the QCs who said they were all above board etc (which many continued to do even after 2010).

Dr Shifro, a Russian-language organisation presenting itself online as a ransomware decryption agency, claims that it's "the only company that specializes in decrypting files", urging users: "Call – we will help!"

While I admit that I've not seen the full claims directly, from this quote it doesn't appear that he is making any false claims. He is not saying that he cracks the encryption, but that he decrypts the files. This is what he does: he buys the keys from the ransomware creator and decrypts the files for his client.

What he is doing is still sort of unethical (he's not very clear about what he does, and it would be understandable for the client to assume he was cracking the encryption), but he is basically acting as a consultant. The client pays him to procure the keys and decrypt their data with them, just as a person may pay someone to buy the components and build a PC for them. It's dodgy only because he's not up front about how he decrypts the data.

Re: At least in the UK...

I'm not expecting miracles, I'm expecting the people we vote for to do what we want them to do.

Unfortunately it's not even as simple as that. Many of the voting public are afraid enough of terrorism etc that they are willing to allow these massive invasions of privacy. They'll speak of protecting us, say "if you have nothing to hide...", speak of protecting children from paedophiles. Basically they will buy all the bull the government use to sell this ****.

So, they are doing what the voting public want, but only because they have tricked the voting public into wanting what the politicians wanted to do in the first place.

If you can't look after a dog, and that includes picking up after it then you really shouldn't have a dog.

I agree.

You do need to look at the larger picture, of course. For instance, if the diabetes was causing depression, which then caused him to be unable to clean up, taking the dog away is counterproductive and would probably make him even more depressed.

I'm far more concerned that KPMG felt entitled to an entire copy of the company's payroll, without any form of obfuscation, and that their request went apparently unchallenged.

Ditto. Did they need the payroll in it's entirety? I doubt it, but it is easier to ask for that than it is to ask for only certain parts, with obfuscated/anonymised fields, and request specific additional data later if needed.

Re: latency down to a blazing 3ms

"I imagine what's fired down the network is effectively a video stream downstream and key presses upstream!"

That's precisely what it is.

I used it on my Shield tablet, and it was pretty good. My main issues were the limitted number of games available at the time and the fact I had to use a game pad (no keyboard/mouse for FPS or wheel for driving games).

However, the games feel as playable, if not more so, than on a console. IIRC the latency (given a good internet connection) is lower than that experienced in a console. Ignoring the 5G aspect, using decent fixed-line broadband, it's a very viable alternative to spending thousands on a high-end gaming rig (or even spending hundreds on the latest console every time a new one is released), and the hardware is kept up to date for you.

"A contractor is not their company. their company provides sick pay, holiday pay etc. You are why IR35 exists."

You miss the a major part of IR35: If you are found inside, you must take all of the money your company receives as salary. There is nothing left to provide sick/holiday pay etc, and the client doesn't have to provide it, either. AFAIK, you can't even deduct the company running costs (accountancy, insurances etc), so you have to pay for all of these, essentially, out of your post-tax income.

So, no, your company cannot pay holiday/sick pay, and on top of your tax you still have to have all the relevant insurances, still have to file company accounts etc. It really is the worst of all worlds.

Re: Code

I'm not defending the port scanning but every web page that has Javascript is running code in your machine without your explicit consent.

Most of that is to operate the site itself: To handle interactions, make things pretty, create a better user experience. Some is about adverts, but we have to accept that as part of the site, too. The parts which are part of the site have implicit consent in that you are wanting to view the page, and I think that's good enough for that. Some is about tracking etc., but that's more controlled than it once was and requires a greater level of consent.

This is a scan of private resources without consent. I think that's a very different thing.

Currently SSDs are eight to ten times more expensive per GB than harddrives, so the cost of making an SSD is going to have to drop by more than half.

Not necessarily.

The lower the price of SSDs go, the more people will use them instead of a HDD. This should lead to better economies of scale, reducing the price of SSDs further (unless we hit a problem with supply, real or manufactured).

Conversely, as demand for SSDs increases, demand for HDDs drops. Initially this would result in reduced prices, but it will lead to fewer and fewer people making them, and the price eventually rising.

So, we are likely to hit a critical point where SDDs wipe out HDD sales before they hit the crossover point, and even that crossover point could well be at a higher price than we currently pay for HDDs.

Re: Just say No to Amazon

"As a former small business owner, HMRC seem to take a perverse delight in putting you under their rectal exam spotlight"

This is one thing which, I think, pisses everyone off.

Individuals, except those with massive resources, and small businesses have little choice but to pay exactly what they are told in tax. Try to hedge just a little, push the rules just a tiny amount past what HMRC deems reasonable, and you are whalloped with a bill and must find a large amount to pay for lawyers and accountants to prove you are acting within the law (i.e. innocent).

Large corporations, however, get away with murder (as do the extremely wealthy, in many cases). Yes, they are acting within the law, but they take it all to extremes and pay a pittance, never seeming to be questioned by HMRC who are just happy they pay even that trifling amount.

It's quite obvious that, although the payout would be greater, HMRC would much rather challenge the little guy who can't afford an army of lawyers and accountants. IR35 is a great example of this, although HMRC's dismal record with tribunals (9 of the last 10 lost, IIRC) suggests that you may not even need an army of lawyers to defeat their incompetent arses...

"I find my facial recognition ability quite useful, and as far as I know it hasn't caused any harm - yet"

Depends on how many of those facials ended up in someone's eye, I've heard that can be quite painful...

Re: i've been waiting for this since the first experimental Dimm loaded scsi SSDs

We could have a little hole on the side of the device to poke a small pen into. Naturally, the first product will be from Apple who will claim to have invented the idea.

But you won't be able to just use any pen, it will have to be an Apple iPen with security keys, costing £000s. There also won't be a hole, the iPen will operate wirelessly, and not work with anything but Apple products.

I agree 2FA should be implemented by organisations, but getting the bean-counters to understand why it's so important is another matter.

The biggest push back I have seen to new security measures has always been from upper management.

I remember enforcing password strength, expiry and lockout rules in a previous job. While this had been clearly communicated (and had approval all the way from the top) I had to roll it back within a week because one of the directors kept getting locked out. As she was the wife of the MD, he got an ear full and graciously allowed the excrement to flow downhill to me.

That said, the same company had no antivirus when I started (in the late 2000s) and it took an infection to get them to take me seriously about implementing one...

Re: Not wanting to state the obvious

Almost everyone told BT that this is what they should do 10 years ago. Instead, they've flogged the dead horse (copper/aluminium) as far as it will go, and will continue to resist a full FTTP rollout as long as they can.

Re: Should have been pretty obvious

The only place I see AR having much of a future is in warehouse fulfillment and roles of that nature.

I see it being of more use in non-consumer environments, too, once it is smooth and detailed enough.

Warehouse roles, as you say, are an obvious fit even with current technology. However, engineering roles could benefit, viewing details of internal structures and even controlling machinery. Once the tech is up to scratch, it could have huge benefits for medical purposes, too. Augmenting reality to assist in real-life work would be a great bonus in many fields.

However, for gaming most people want to escape reality and I believe that VR will be more successful. A fully immersive world where you can shoot bad guys, or drive like a nutter, or fly through space is much more attractive than overlaying a few sprites on the real world. Other than something akin to Pokemon Go (eurgh!) I don't see a huge consumer market...

The usual threshold of serious crime is one where the case is heard in the crown court in front of a judge rather than a magistrates.

I would accept that as the minimum bar for a serous crime. If a crime would normally be heard in front of a magistrate, without a jury, then I would say it's not that serious.

However, I think we could deal with this by judges discretion. If the crime goes to court and the judge thinks it's not a serious enough crime to have warranted the intrusion (and that's looking at the original reason for the intercept, not anything uncovered since, as well as whether they had a reasonable enough suspicion in the first place) then they should apply something similar to the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine the US have: ALL evidence gathered off the back of that "invalid" intercept is chucked out. This would certainly make the cops think long and hard (teehee) about using the powers!

Re: where does MOO fit in?

It's a shame that HMRC don't relise the slightly better paid contractor pays more tax than being employed on a lower salary. There are ways to clamp down on some of the shenanigans that some contractors perform that doesn't require everyone paying even more.

This.

If all contractors (or a large proportion of them) suddenly decided they were fed up of the HMRC's crappy treatment of them and decided to go perm, the tax take would plummet. (Also, businesses would suffer and the economy would take a hit).

Some contractors play fast and loose with the rules. Some even break the rules. Most, however, play within the rules in a fair manner and pay huge amounts of tax compared to an equivalent employee. Every contractor who decides he's had enough of this bullpoo cuts the exchequer's take by a fair whack.