Posts by Andy The Hat

"... windows ME (yeah I'm old)"

Some people are such barstewards ...

I think you'll find it doesn't matter how crap they are, fat cats always land feet first. Nothing to do with friends, family, money or, God forbid, competency ...

One small step ...

My defamation is your truth ...

The press was on this publishing merry-go-round some years ago and it's a dangerous 'freedom of speech' tightrope to walk ...

One great problem is the lack of attribution to or acceptance of responibility by an individual or the company.

Perhaps if Facebook (for instance) split into carrier and publisher, the responsibility for individual posts could fall back onto defined individuals (where it should be), and extraeous 'published' material would be the responsibility of FB. Any untruths posted could be sorted out in court targetting the correct source. If nothing else decisions of law should be made by the court, not decided by a media company.

Loyd Grossman accent <on> ... Who would run a company like this ?

A question I ask myself a lot is, given Zuck is now worth a bit more than £3.50, why is he still there? Either

a) he can never have enough money

b) he can never have enough power

c) he's an android developed purely to make money and power for it's mysterious operator

or

d) all the above.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Subsidies ...

I thought direct Government subsidies were illegal under EU (and possibly WTO) competition law which is why "advantageous tax environments" were originally developed?

Whatever the legal situation, asking upfront for 8bn Euros is taking the urine when, after initial construction is complete, relatively few people will be employed, "trading excess" will inevitably be syphoned off to a tax haven as 'contracted IP payments' and consequently little return on "investment" will be forthcoming for the tax payer from (on paper) a very expensive but small profit fab plant ...

exciting!

Can't wait for the inevitable live video feed of Kirk is an horrendously drawn out fight sequence followed by shagging of yet another crew member ... :-)

Just repeal all the bloody tax laws and replace with a simpler set of new ones without the (deliberate) loopholes. Draughting more taxes or increasing the tax that is being avoided does not make it better, it often makes it easier for matey-millionaire obfuscate their accounts to use loopholes.

If you sell it you pay the tax. If you charge to sell it you pay the tax on the charge. Everyone in the "real world" does this are are beaten with an HMRC stick when they don't, why can't the mega internet corporations be treated the same? I think I want to by a nice new broom from Amazon and use it across Government finance controllers ...

How does this work?

I always wonder in such cases how the purpotrator's bank account is set up as it's such a royal pain to find all the paperwork to get one normally as I can never remember who makes my underwear or what my great grandmother's dogs had for tea on a Thursday ... Then there'd be the little case of the direct bank transfer of £30k which surely should be questioned?

Explanations are due ...

"Capita's 2017 decision to implement bespoke IT systems led to nearly 25,000 fewer applications to join the military in the following year."

Why should an application system result in an immediate drop in applicants? Was it because the MOD decided to digitise recruitment and people didn't want to apply online? Was it because the advertising was rubbish? Was it because kids could no longer "see the world" because there were no ships left? Was it because people were being routinely killed and maimed in Afghanistan so being a soldier was no longer the fun, heroic job it had been portrayed as? Was it because the Government shut down the job centres? Or was it because the online application system didn't work?

Be interesting to see the analysis of why Capita is solely blamed for this (rightly or wrongly).

If a single entity in the banking system was dealing with multi-million pound illicit transactions it would be shut down as complicit (there are examples of this).

Yet this extortion system extends to hundreds of millions of pounds across multiple "institutions" and there seems to be little push-back against it.

Unfortunately this is the dark side of the crypto system and the one the public sees. I'm sure "currency" flies around the world purely with the aim of being laundered rapidly yet the authorities appear either powerless or unwilling to act against this activity - the criminals are in full control. Something (eg banning cypto) has got to happen before the system melts down into a sea of extortion, drug money and payment for pizzas.

It almost seems to me that this is an almost annual affair ... :-(

Next it'll be Dame M-H complaining Amazon don't pay enough.

Then Amazon saying "yes we do because we're lovely"

Then HMRC saying "give us some money (if that's ok with you Mr Bezos)"

The Government will explain how they're actively looking into appointing a top Civil Servant (only named as Sir H.) to form a committee with the remit of looking into the feasability of setting up an investigative committee into looking at corporate tax avoidance ...

And Bezos will continue to line his pockets.

I have no objection to companies only paying tax on the basis of a level playing field. But the mine field of the tax system has mud, hills, holes, tenches, bunkers, vaults and complete subterranean tunnel networks which can be used by the super-wealthy in ways not available to smaller companies.

If the system continues to be deliberately skewed in favour of the super-wealthy, that is a system sailing dangerously close to state sponsored corruption.

Jobs!

"All of these projects are said to be creating 50 new jobs and keeping a further 250 people employed."

Wouldn't they be better employed digging canals, filling them with very expensive bottled water, pulling the plug and watching it drain away? At least we'd end up with a nice canal tow-path to walk along whereas "all these projects" so far have resulted in nothing useful except some very greasy palms ...

What goes around ...

First there were applications and data and they were small to fit the space available

Then there was too much data so compression was invented

Then there was more storage and bloatware was developed to fit the space available

Then there was slow internet and compression was reinvented

Then there was broadband and bloatware development was enhanced to fit the bandwidth available

Then there was too much data and compression was reinvented invented ...

Cynics!

So many cynical conspiracy theory based comments.

The actual reason for these is that the Council refuse collection is so expensive the RAF bases are looking to dispose of their waste by literally fly tipping ...

Open brown bin? "Dump Leylandii clippings!"

Open Green bin? "Go with the officer's empty whisky bottles!"

Or was that the airspace of a council where the black bin is green and the green bin is black ...? Oh bugger, should have actually been the blue bin next to the orange bin with the dark green glass tray inside. "Prepare to jettison the apology note ... "

"Can anyone smell burning ...?"

"Yes I can!"

"So can I!"

"Well, as people floating around in space and totally dependant on the integrity of the tin can we are in, we have two options. One, investigate the source of the excess heat or fire producing the smell. Extinguish it and/or take remedial action to secure the environment and ensure our safety. Or two, open the windows and get rid of the nasty smell ..."

That report of an incident, immediate safety protocols enacted and remedial action taken is probably the most scary thing I've heard from the ISS. Even "a bulb blew in a lamp fitting and stunk a bit" would satisfactorily explain things.

Is Spacex a "megacorp"?

On the basis that it does one thing (launch rockets) from one place (the US) and has lots of launch competition both in the US and abroad, how does that make it a "megacorp"? I would regard that word to fit a world-wide company with fingers in lots of pies with loads of subsidiaries (like Amazon, P&G, Boeing, FaceAche, most of the big banking corporations etc). SpaceX *may* become a world player if it's sat comms system actually works out and everyone jumps onboard but, as yet, that's just pie in the sky ...

Irrespective of the contents, if data is illegally purloined from a source by person A and posted in the public domain, is it legal for person B to copy and/or repost that data in any form? As the data was already in the "public domain" and was not protected in any way, does that make any difference?

Nice money

£1100 per day ... so much for the poor sods at the sharp end on £1200 a month! :-(

I wonder how much nitrogen thruster you would get installed for 15Kg?

Seems a big weight penalty for very little initial drag (bearing in mind that the drag of the craft itself will become significant at slightly lower altitudes and negate the requirement for the extra drag anyway)