Posts by Aqua Marina

Re: Now That We Know About It

Surely it’s time to start unplugging the lan cable from anything that is critical. If it’s good enough for Battlestar Galactica, it’s good enough for me!

Re: 5 of those with one BFR

“The could have rolled out 5 saturn 5 rockets, and used those to launch the entire thing....”

Better still they could just roll out 5 of the Saturn 5s, send them up, dock them altogether and make a huge giant Skylab!

*for you young ones, the Saturn 5 was so powerful it was able to reach orbit without needing fully fuelling. So they converted part of the rocket unused fuel tank into a space station, that effectively launched itself into orbit becoming Skylab. Suggest you google the videos of it. It was so big they could fly around the inside with jet packs!

Re: From Window Tax to Windows Tax

"No need for an OS rant - this could be web-based"

It already is web based, you log in online and fill in 7 boxes. This is no longer good enough for HMRC, who want per-transaction-line auditing available through the API. I.e. you say you made £20,000 of sales, HMRC want the ability to scan all the transactions to verify you actually did make £20,000 of sales. Hold on a minute, your stock purchases don't tally up with your sales for the last 6 months, and the amount of income you are making doesn't match your personal tax returns, something must be fishy here, inspection time!.

Re: Make a subject access request....

"t's real.

They are not reporting to the ICO."

Time for some nice helpful people to assist with the reporting process methinks.

Re: What about Windows 10 that Office is sitting on?

All we need is everyone from European countries here to report MS to their equivalent of the UK's ICO over this, then sit back and watch as 28 simultaneous charges of breaching the GDPR occur at once. It would be most excellent if each country could fine MS 4% of annual turnover in turn.

Then follow it up with Apple and Google.

Re: IIRC

Yes, with VAT carousel, it could be either one 2 companies who bought and sold the goods onwards before you who committed the fraud, or one of the 2 companies who bought and sold the goods on after you sold them that could have committed the fraud.

Analogy, I could sell a crow bar today to a wholesaler, who a week later sells it to a building firm, who a week later gives it to one of their employees who uses it to break into a house. By HMRCs reasoning I didn't perform due-diligence that the end user wasn't going to be a criminal, and as proof they point to the use of the crow bar by a criminal ergo due-diligence couldn't have been performed. HMRC tend to use the same carousel reasoning when they decide who is guilty of carousel fraud.

All is not lost. The purpose of the tax tribunal is to always find in favour of HMRC so no real shock there. Real court however, where this will now appeal to, has a much higher bar when it comes to the burden of proof of intent. It's real court where the majority of carousel fraud cases fall down simply because the prosecution have rarely been able to prove that you can know what is going to happen to goods, once they are out of your possession, two or more transactions down the line, and sometimes the criminals just need a third party to buy and sell the goods on legitimately to complete the loop.

So what happens if...

A Morrison’s cleaner decides one day to take his mop, and bludgeon shoppers to death with it in store. Has the outcome for Morrison’s changed because of the degree of criminal behaviour.

Re: chemical plant?

I was thinking either ICL or Astra Zeneca from the given year.

Re: Sage 50!

It's correct. Sage 50 was for the small business, 200 was for the enterprise. However, I'm now thinking I meant Sage 100. It's been about a decade now and all I can remember is it was black and green and beeped like crazy.

Re: Mission Creep

And yet everyone forgets, Frodo ended up simply walking into Mordor!

Re: Incommunicado!

I’m thinking maybe they should just pay someone anonymous to start a fire at the rear entrance while the CCTV is conspicuously down, that forces all the building occupants to be evacuated.

If assange still refuses to leave, then I’m sure that “firemen” are more than willing to administer a knockout gas mask, I mean an oxygen gas mask when they find his lifeless body inside, while they perform their fire fighting duties.

Come on, surely someone else has already thought of this? MI5? MI6? Special Branch? My old dinner ladies maybe?

"how are the ICO going to enforce the GDPR against a Canadian company?"

This is going to be a very unpopular answer, but, first of all I'll do what no other commentard on this topic has ever done, and post chapter and verse of the actual law rather than say, spout bollocks about how EU law applies abroad, or that to do business in the EU you must adhere to the GDPR:-

Enforcement Outside EU: Chapter 5 of the GDPR relates to handling of data by non-member countries or organizations. The relevant text relating to enforcement of fines is from Article 50, titled "International cooperation for the protection of personal data":

(1) In relation to third countries and international organisations, the Commission and supervisory authorities shall take appropriate steps to:

a) develop international cooperation mechanisms to facilitate the effective enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data;

b) provide international mutual assistance in the enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data, including through notification, complaint referral, investigative assistance and information exchange, subject to appropriate safeguards for the protection of personal data and other fundamental rights and freedoms;

c) engage relevant stakeholders in discussion and activities aimed at furthering international cooperation in the enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data;

d) promote the exchange and documentation of personal data protection legislation and practice, including on jurisdictional conflicts with third countries.

So, to answer your question, they haven't a hope in hell.

Section 1a) says they will need to negotiate new agreements with other countries, so we can prosecute their citizens.

b) We'll offer to help other countries let us prosecute their citizens.

c) Ask nicely if we can prosecute their citizens,

and d) if all else fails, keep telling everyone involved what a great idea it would be if other countries would let us prosecute their citizens.

“I Presume that it is the fact that Ireland is playing he long game”

I presume it’s more likely that Ireland was participating in a long con!

Given the effective rate of tax for Apple prior to the investigation was 0.005%, I think that for Ireland to receive an equivalent 14 billion euros in tax revenue, they would have had to wait decades if not never.

Has any official source compared the current windfall to projected income had the state of affairs not changed. Including the cost of brown envelopes of course!

Repealing stuff

The same goes for Brexit. There seems to be a myth that because the UK voted to brexit, we have to go ahead with it end of discussion. Even if the referendum was legally binding (which it wasn't, but that's another story) it can be overturned simply by holding another referendum. A democracy can overturn any previous decision, simply by following the democratic process. Some of the people I hear on the news that state "the people have spoken, the government must carry their wishes out" are forgetting that in a democracy, the people can change their minds, otherwise we would have political parties that once in power, couldn't be voted out.

If another referendum was held now (lets just say it's a legally binding one to keep it simple) and the result of that referendum was to remain, then the previous decision to leave has no legal standing.

I think our government may just decide to hold another referendum if things are looking messy so business can carry on as normal. Better the devil you know than the one you don't.

Re: Penny pinching boss

I bought a Minolta CF900 around that time for about £19K with Fiery and A4 + A3 tray.

Re: Not the root problem

“Exposing your source code shouldn't be an issue, because your code should survive inspection”

I do recall a long time ago the architects of a large military base making the same assumption, the sheer power and technological supremacy of the base would render any weakness inconsequential.

Shortly after construction of the base, but before it became fully operational, a copy of the plans leaked, and a small group of non-conformists examined the blueprints discovered an exploit. Before they new it some farmer kid who had spent his teenage years bulls-eyeing womp rats came along and dropped a missile into an exhaust pipe that was only 2 meters wide, destroying the base in its entirety.

If only the architects had followed best practice in securing the design of the base, things would have turned out quite differently!

Re: Phones too

We have a period of several years where all our sales dept kept breaking their phones, and getting new ones on the insurance we were paying a premium for. Eventually we said enough is enough and sent round an email saying we were cancelling the insurance, everyone was responsible for keeping their hardware in good working order, and that we would be deducting from their wages the cost to replace them. We also provided Otterbox cases throughout, so there was no likelyhood of accidental breakage by dropping.

No-one believed it and many phones were removed from the cases because they didn't look good.... until the first breakage occurred, and sure enough he got a brand new latest model phone, and the cost deducted from his wage. Suddenly all the phones were back in their cases and we never had another breakage. Saved a fortune in yearly insurance.

Re: No Benchmarks

Within the UK that has already happened. A court ruled that the right to review outweighed the contractual clause forbidding it. I’m struggling to find it at the moment, but I’ll persist.

Can we please have the same for Google and Apple? Pretty please!

Re: I'm unexpectedly impressed

I pretty much came to the same conclusion, the pre and over hype hasn't done it any favours, but to someone born in the 70s when Robbie the Robot and Twiki was amazing, it's a lot of neat real tech in a pair of goggles.

Re: My carefully curated online presence

“Or if the BBC deleted the Dr. Who tapes because they wanted to reuse them?”

Or if Warner Brothers lost the Babylon 5 HD master tapes because they just didn’t care!

Re: No-one will ever...

“ long transparent crystals. That would be cool.”

I had a thought the other day, suppose a civilisation advanced enough that it could store data in stone tablets rather than crystals. Stone tablets always seem to survive the civilisations that created them and are always being unearthed in archaeological digs thousands of years later. I feel a sci-if story coming on.

Re: I don't understand why they need it

“Million to one”.

Yes but as any fule know, million to one chances happen 9 times out of 10!

Re: I've got a bad feeling about this.

I’m still holding out for the original Duke Nukem Forever. I’ll pretend that the hastily-cobbled-together-replacement never happened.

So good they commented it twice!

“Re: Seamless???”

Who made this comment? Stu Wilson or Anonymous Coward? :p

Re: Can you live/work in Holland just using English?

I worked there for a few years and never needed to learn the language. Everyone I met spoke perfect English. There is 2 types of English accent over there. American and Manchester. Which accent you have depends on the TV programmes you watch. If you have an American accent then it’s because you watch US sitcoms. If you have a Manchester accent, it’s because you watch Coronation Street. The Northwest “Granada” ITV channel was shown over there.

Re: Anybody who says their sapphire watch face scratched

“Tungsten carbide is a ceramic, not a metal”

Genuine question. Why is Iron alloyed with Carbon a metal (carbon steel) but Tungsten alloyed with Carbon a ceramic?

Re: Big red ball?

I'm actually surprised that the 2 week long fire on Winter Hill didn't knock out any communications. Here's a pic showing how close the fire got to the transmission tower goo.gl/ajskPr

For those not from Manchester, an area of about 4sq miles of parched moorland was burning for a couple of weeks until it rained last week resulting in the hill disappearing in a cloud of smokey mist. I drove up as close as the road blocks when it started raining, it smelt like a damp barbeque!

Re: At least...

Ad-i-das

Where the i sounds as it does in “is”

At lease it was at my school. And Nike was pronounced like “Mike”, none of this Nik-ee rubbish.

Re: Really small systems

“I do have a casual use system in the bedroom ”

Along with some baby oil and a box of tissues?

How do I find out if i’ve been pwned?

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Only if it’s reported and investigated!

If you are a business, yes it does, otherwise it’s fair use.

Re: why an extra 2 week extension...

That's just someone trying to get their product to show up when someone searches for Vega.

Re: It'll Never Happen

“For modern mega containerships and tankers, they already have the crew at bare minimum and it's mostly to check on the cargo.“

Suggest you watch the documentary about Emma Maersk. It was brand new yet something was and still is always breaking down almost daily. The maintenance crews are constantly needed.

Re: This will go nowhere in court...

I do believe this will be the purpose of the court case. Until a law has it's day in court, everything anyone says (including reg commentards) is opinion and speculation.