Posts by The Nameless Mist 96 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2010
My iPhone has a pincode
My home server has a password
My home workstation has a password
My other half does NOT know them.
Yes there's a letter in the safe should it come down to "emergency circumstances" but the envelope is one of the "sealed - rip to open" type so its peek-proof.
My other half would be just as narked off with me peeking at his accounts as I would be if I caught him peeking at mine.
I fail to see why people are arguing about paying taxes.
If you sell something and the state says there is a sales tax then you pay the tax.
Its the STATE's duty to enforce the failure to pay the tax.
What California is trying to do is get AMAZON to handle the processing of the taxation when they are acting as a "shopfront" for other retailers (their associates).
As any company is under a duty of care to maximise profits (legally) then if California says "you must do the tax gathering work for our state" then Amazon has to look at this and say:
"a) we shoulder the cost of this extra processing in people & computer time / power & equipment costs)"
OR
"b) we get out of the market where we are going to be forced to expend cost for no financial benefit"
The duty of care clearly points to option B) as being the valid method to follow.
No company is going to do work for another organisation without a benefit in some form.
And no I'm not talking about the policies of the politicians, I'm talking about Palin's insane need to distribute the records only in paper format. several thousand pages of paper.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/question16.htm
Gives about 80,000 pages of paper / tree
The dump of records is just over 24,000 pages. So every 3.333 copies eats a tree.
NOW THATS ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY.
If they press on with this California will shortly learn the truth of the adage "cutting of one's nose to spite your face".
Amazon (like many other large corporate bodies) will quite easily pickup and move, or disassociate itself from local agents/affilliates/resellers rather than pay what it perceives as unjust taxes.
Its happened in the UK with organisations moving to Ireland or Switzerland and then shunting revenue abroad under various tax exemption methods.
.. travelling on foot / riding / sailing from the Vatican to the UK.
then travelling through the UK on foot /riding and standing in a large field and preaching to the masses without the aid of any sound systems.
THEN he can start bitching about techology.
Until then can the god-squad leader in chief please STFU.
What gets me is why the banks don't just issue two factor authentication devices ?
Relatively (given the volume) cheap, and (OK given RSA's current problems not perfect) reasonably secure; this would heavily improve the online banking security.
They get one free when first wanting to use OL banking and after that get a new 2FAD every three years, or free if they can show the current one is dead (taking it into their bank).
If all the UK banks co-operate then even purely virtual banks can offer the exchange method.
... that we should actually remember / learn how to read a map.
I've seen people walking down streets in London, Blackberry in hand with the GPS doing the "you are X and moving in -> that direction" trick, and then wrap themselves round signposts.
Actually its quite enjoyable watching them do that.
{Paris - because she's got some flunky to GPS for her}
Apparently the UK Gov are planning to make ciggie manufacturers "plan packet" their wares also, so there will be no colourful images to lure the ankle-biters into smoking.
When a few years ago they forced manufacturers to add "elf and safety warnings" to the packets , some bright sparks made a fortune out of selling "covers" that slipped over the packets to hide the details.
Wonder if they'll start producing the covers again?
@jake
UKGOV makes about £11billion in taxes a year from tobacco sales.
1) Which Border plod let Assange into the UK in the first place.
2) Which Sweedish plod didn't arrest him at their border on the oubound flight.
Yes I know all about free movement in the EU, but Assange hold AUSTRALIAN (OZ) citizenship which the last time I looked doesn't get him free entry here.
He should have been flagged up by the Sweedish plods as "wanted for questioning" and been shoved back on a plane to Ikea-land.
Oh come on people, everyone knows that the "Belgium" is the standard comparative area.
Taking the area of
China at 9,596,961 km^2
Belgium at 30,528 km^2
we get a ratio of 314.365
Therefore if the layer of books is 13 deep across China it would be 4086.75 deep over Belgium.
Now the next question is how many standard trade paperbacks does it take to fill
a) the London Double Decker Bus
b) an Olympic Sized Swimming Pool
For instance, I use the TRIPADVISOR Cities I've Visited app. Its a useful way of sharing your travel.
Now it wants (as "required" items of data)
- access my basic information
OK - I can live with it knowing my name, profile pic, and data I've shared with everyone (not that I do share with 'everyone') and list of friends.
- send me email
OK - not a problem
- access my profile application
NOT OK _ why does it need to know my faviourite TV show?
- access my familiy and relationships
NOT OK_ why does it need to know my relationships ?
- access my photos & videos
PART OK - but only the ones I WANT to give it to use.
- Access my friends' information
NOT OK - why should my friends surrender data on the basis on MY travel details?
What we can see here is a GOOD APP that is being OVER GRABBY with its information requests.
The END USER needs to be able to SELECTIVELY say NO to data requests, and if that hamstrings the application then the application can say "oops - can't do that because".
It all boils down to terminology.
GB = Scotland England and Wales
The main island landmass as a geographic and political entity.
UK = GB + Northern Ireland
The main island plus northern island, so its a POLITICAL entity.
The BRITISH ISLANDS = UK + Isle of Man and the Channel islands
The BRITISH ISLES = GB + the islands + the entire IRISH Island (Eire and Northern ireland)
Thats a Geographic Entity.
Paris - because ..well just because
To company responsible for placing a cookie on my PC that reconstructs itself in multiple locations following an attempted deletion.
This constitutes an abuse of my computer equipment.
You are using my disk space and my processor time.
Please find attached an invoice to cover the disk and processor usage.
Plus my time billed in 30 minute intervals while I remove it from my computer.
{Paris - because she doesn't eat cookies}
Uhura, Rand and Chapel singing Three Little Maids (Mikado)
Klingon Ensemble (lead by Worf) singing Pour, Oh Pour the Pirate Sherry "Bloodwine" (Pirates of Penzance)
General/Chancellor Martok singing "I am the very model of a modern Major General" (PoP).
(which I would desperately love to see sung in tlhIngon.
Bridge Crew Enterprise singing "We Sail the Ocean Blue" (HMS Pinafore)
with a rebuttal by the engineering/security teams of Enterprise NX01 of singing
A British Tar (HMS Pinafore again).
So the Sun goes out there and says "we want to pay you lots of Roubles for the Parasailling dongkey".
Now .. call me a it sceptical, but don't you wonder if someone just dragged them along and went .. there .. thats the donkey .. pay up.
{Paris .. because the Donkey is her Best Friend Forever ?}
The problem is that with the whole SCO / Novell / Unix case, the dead horse is SCO.
They may as well rewrite their company charter to "Our reason for being is to launch legal cases to gain control of some copyrights so we can launch more legal cases to gain revenues."
Isn't there something in the USA Law that enables the government to "put down" a company that is acting in this manner ?
{Paris - because she's crying for the poor judge}
The basis of a Chemical Element is the number of PROTONS in the NUCLEUS.
The number of protons is commonly called the ATOMIC NUMBER and should be unique to all isotopes of that element.
For example HYDROGEN (in its most common isotope) has 1-P 0-N 1-E
One proton, zero neutrons and one electron.
Oxygen, Atomic Number 8.
therefore it has .. count 'em, 8 Protons and the isotopes have varying numbers of neutrons.
There are 8 electrons in two shells (shell 1=2, and shell 2=6).
The common isotope is Oxygen16 and has 8-P, 8-N, 8-E
Shove one of them together with two hydrogen and you have a substance which is found to exist to a high degree all over the world, it promotes decay in ferrous metals and can cause death by asphyixiation, its called Dihydro Monoxide.
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