1-An audit firm is the sum of it's constituent audit partners...blaming the whole firm is effectively meaningless.
2-An audit is as effective as the engaging audit partner is willing it to be.
3-Although ICAS will have us believe that audit rotations have no *benefit*, even it's President (Sir David Tweedie) can't ignore the fact that auditors are getting...*too cosy* with the clients.
(3) You won't find many accountants on slashdot since they tend not to be among the intellectually/technologically curious types in my experience.
HEY! I exist, darn it!:D
But never mind me, I once found a Chartered Accountant (British Variety, ICAEW I reckon) who actually gave me some very insightful pointers on the working of the british tax system, and he was masquerading as an AC! So we do prowl on Slashdot;p
----
I won't comment on the relative merits of various accountancy qualifications, partly because that's a pissing match on the level of vi vs emacs (nano rules, bitches!) and partly because I have already done so in the past, it's back there somewhere in my comment history (I recall using cake as analogy...)
However, for the slashdotteurs who have little understanding of the terminology, I *will* provide some detailed info on the reasonable assurance bit, to help clarify and placate those who might assume auditing to be mere quackery (rest assured we are no ducks, though I give no assurance we are *not* geese...)
Basically (and to grossly simplify) Audit is merely one of many *Assurance engagement*. An assurance engagement is, again to simplify, where a professional gives his opinion (the "assurance") on something.
Professionals are people who *ought to know better* about a certain item; this is not just your uncle Joe who came along on your hunt to buy a jalopy, this is mechanic X who deals with cars, and knows (or at least, *ought* to know) a lemon when he sees one.
Thus a mechanic might give you assurance that the car you are buying is road-worthy, a property inspector might give assurance that the house is structurally sound etc...
Similarly, auditors assure shareholders that the financial statements are *true and fair*. (Yes, *true* and *fair* are two separate qualities.)
But here is the deal; most of the folks here are likely to be computer programmers, right? You know that programs run for thousands of lines of code, and that, especially with a collaboration work, you can't be sure that *every single line* of code is both correct and necessary. But as long as shit works, it gives 1+1=2, and doesn't fry the computer whenever it runs, you ship, right?
Same is the deal here. You can't be 100% sure in any sort of assurance engagement, but as long as it's *mostly* correct, and falls within an acceptable error range, no one minds the occasional odd or end.
This is called "reasonable assurance". Auditors do NOT provide "absolute assurance", because they cannot possibly insure that 100% of accounts are true and fair (can you imagine counting every single screw to ensure the count is correct?); rather they provide "assurance that statements are *reasonably* fair", meaning things work, and the company will at least run for another 12 months(which is what's meant by "going concern"), after which we will conduct another audit.
(side note, there is another one, called "limited assurance", where auditors only give assurance on a limited scale, a bit like the mechanic only insuring that the engine and transmission work, and that the brakes and body is not his responsibility...)
Our standard, our error of margin, is called "materiality". Materiality is the difference between loosing a 12-pack of pencils and a jumbo jet; one is a minor annoyance, the other could sink a company. There are guidelines for how to set materiality levels, something like a certain small percentage of revenue or assets.
As long as the errors on the financial statements are *not* material (i.e. errors amount to something three notepads, half a CD spindle and a stapler missing), we will issue a "reasonable assurance" that statements are "true and fair", even though they are not, because in the grand scheme of things, a lost stapler is not exactly likely to sink the company, nor will the shareholders be amused to learn that we delayed approving statements (and their dividends!) by three months simply to hunt down some bits of stationery.
As a Pakistani, I can only find this hilarious, albeit morbidly so.
You see, all they have succeeded in making sure that *every* one knows how to use proxies.
You see, as long as people got their damn facebook and youtube, no one gave a flying hoot about anything else. We (including I myself) didn't know there was even a way to access websites banned by the PTA, and since we were *good* boys and girls, we didn't care about *bad* websites being closed, so we didn't bother finding out how we could access them.
Now, they can't access youtube, well guess what, people started asking, how can we access restricted websites? Answer: Proxies etc.
We are not bad people, right? We just want to access youtube to watch University lectures (pakistan's virtual university has a youtube channel with all their lectures online), how to stitch clothes (my mom's favourite, she learnt many a good cloth making designs on youtube) etc...
And while we are doing this to only access youtube now, well, a proxy opens the way to *all* websites.
Now even the websites they would *genuinely* want people to stop visiting (porn etc) are open to all. Guess what, my dear local mullah, you have only succeeded in making sure people now have the tools to visit the same evil websites you wanted to stop.
Not that the govt cares either way, they are busy making sure the bhutto dynasty can continue on... these are all attention diversion tactics, to hide the fact that I can't find gas for a week (btw, Gas means CNG in local context, Petrol is hardly ever used, though even *that* has run out! yeah our govt is awesome)
And it's not like *anyone* is pretending they are *not* using youtube; for example, TV channels often put their programs on youtube for people to view, and obviously they must be using proxies, since they haven't switched to other websites. They bald-faced-ly give links to the youtube version on their facebook page, for example.
But no one can dare admit that the youtube ban is a farce, or they will be part of the *blasphemous* campaign. Also, apparently, by Pakistan banning youtube, we have brought down Google to it's knees (I have seen actual *statistics* to that effect, don't ask me where they got their figures from), we are winning! We can't give up a step away from victory!
Um, just to clarify, this is south asia we are talking about, not europe or us or other place with strict slaughter control. We have already have trouble catching meat that came from bloated animals (they pump water in the arteries to fatten up the meat...) and meat that comes from already deceased carcasses. Things are bad, here.
So let's revisit the issue. Govt orders a cull. Typically, that means it won't do it itself, just orders one to be conducted by the stock owners. People naturally get afraid, demand drops, chicken prices hit rock bottom.
Cue crazy people taking advantage of falling chicken prices to organise massive weddings. No body knows where the chicken is coming from, is it from the affected stock, is it safe blah blah.
Please don't presume, I have nothing against cheap chicken and weddings. But I know my country, I know just how *diligently* they work. If all the infected chicken had been disposed off in a proper way, then it wouldn't have mattered, because that would have ensured the other chicken was safe, it's only the stigma keeping the prices low. But given our less than amicable control system, you can't be sure of that here.
If people can cheat by bloating and dead-carcassing, you think they wouldn't stoop to a bit of bribery to ensure *their* stock is passed without checks?
Exactly! like the neighbours I mention, they were *definitely* not poor, they were upper middle class, they could afford the same number of chicken even at normal prices, then why would they risk a wedding like that?
No, that's not the point, the point is, I heard *a lot* of people say that such events were on the up rise, I ignored them as typical gossip... until I got that wedding card.
Asking them why the sudden change in date, (the engagement had happened only a month or so ago, and the wedding wasn't due for another six months or so...) I was *floored* by them being totally honest and describing *this* as a reason!
Then I started wondering, if one gossip is true, then how many more?
Then I start hearing about some *other* people getting married early... and my mind started spinning.
We pretty much stayed away from weddings for quite a while...
Hence my advice to others; If you start hearing gossip about early weddings, STAY THE HELL AWAY.
I mean, why the fuck would you risk a wedding turning into a tragedy simply because of rock-bottom prices of chicken? I still wonder what possessed my neighbours, I mean it was not like they were poor or anything! The father of the groom worked in the Gulf and earned a boatload of money...
I know you are going WTF? at my header but read on...
Some years ago there was a large scale out break of Bird Flu in my country. Naturally the government called for a massive cull...
And while most (all normal people?) avoided all chicken and eggs, *some* people decided to take advantage of the sudden plummet in chicken prices.
I shit you not, when I heard that a family in the neighbourhood sped up their son's wedding date significantly to take advantage of all that cheap, cheap chicken...
Oh sure, apparently if you cook the chicken thoroughly the chances of catching the virus a minimum, but still... we decide to give that invitation a pass...
So my dear Bangladeshi friends, take it from a fellow South Asian: If you get a sudden invite to a party or wedding, give it a pass...
How could you possibly forget Tower of God, man? Or Trace?
Those Manhwa are AWESOME.
For all of you who are wondering WTF we are talking about, (Manhwa)Korean Webtoon is the new and upcoming thing, It's supposed to be the answer to Japanese Manga, but with a different format, and without all the "tentacle porn" baggage that all manga sadly carry, even if they are squeaky clean.
Go to Batoto.com and give them a try. (or korean websites like Naver and Daum, if you like the original Korean)
That's why my Kubuntu 12.10 has prevented the Fn keys or the brightness slider in the power option from *actually* performing any action. It's for our own benefit! The fact the they function in Lubuntu is clearly to our disadvantage, KDE is looking after our long term interest, unlike those pesky LXDE guys.
Vive le Linux!
----
Sarcasm side, I have nothing against learning bash commands or getting to know the depth of the the system,. I mean, who can argue that sudo apt-get whatever is faster and neater than going into synaptic or muon or whatever... But for humanity's sake, let us learn on *our* pace, don't force it down our throats, check if the god damn GUI works, even if *you* will never use it.
Let them decide, to use an example, if they want to sudo apt-get install && sudo apt-get update or want to click the system update button on the muon popup. See, I am a friggin' accountant, I am not even supposed to understand the word linux and yet here I am discussing some simple commands, but albeit those which I learnt on my *own* pace, I don't appreciate that for simple functions I have bring out the Konsole, and it's not one of those "we don't have the drivers" type excuses, acpi_video0 is a generic folder, not specific to any particular video card or screen (AFAIK), surely they could check to see if the damn slider works?
I am sorry for the rant, it's just that I had to remove an otherwise working Kubuntu install because of this and other minor niggles, let's see if the latest LM has these minor issues fixed...
You know what will be the year of Linux on desktop? When they make a distro that forgets to contain a console, and no one notices...
There was actually a very good reason why I posted that; 99% sans citation would have sounded like typical hyperbole, and glossed over; With citation, it really does drive home the point that Australia is *really* FRIGGIN' big. And not just *big* big, it's 95% of the continental US big.
I just check, and apparently Darwin is closer to Singapore than it is to it's own capital (3350 km vs 3969 km). That's right, a city two *countries* away is closer.
Slashdot Mirror
But Lego is Danish, Minecraft is Swedish, guess who they are going to support?
Hear Hear!
I can swipe and click all the while with a mouse; allow me pinpoint stylus use for PDF Annotation on the fly, or the odd doodling.
And wow, my display looks really pink right now, thanks redshift! I thought for a second Slashdot had received a My Little Pony-inspired retheme.
What colour temp have you set it at? try around 4000K if you want it less...salmon-ey.
Well...
1-An audit firm is the sum of it's constituent audit partners...blaming the whole firm is effectively meaningless.
2-An audit is as effective as the engaging audit partner is willing it to be.
3-Although ICAS will have us believe that audit rotations have no *benefit*, even it's President (Sir David Tweedie) can't ignore the fact that auditors are getting...*too cosy* with the clients.
(3) You won't find many accountants on slashdot since they tend not to be among the intellectually/technologically curious types in my experience.
HEY! I exist, darn it! :D
But never mind me, I once found a Chartered Accountant (British Variety, ICAEW I reckon) who actually gave me some very insightful pointers on the working of the british tax system, and he was masquerading as an AC! So we do prowl on Slashdot ;p
----
I won't comment on the relative merits of various accountancy qualifications, partly because that's a pissing match on the level of vi vs emacs (nano rules, bitches!) and partly because I have already done so in the past, it's back there somewhere in my comment history (I recall using cake as analogy...)
However, for the slashdotteurs who have little understanding of the terminology, I *will* provide some detailed info on the reasonable assurance bit, to help clarify and placate those who might assume auditing to be mere quackery (rest assured we are no ducks, though I give no assurance we are *not* geese...)
Basically (and to grossly simplify) Audit is merely one of many *Assurance engagement*. An assurance engagement is, again to simplify, where a professional gives his opinion (the "assurance") on something.
Professionals are people who *ought to know better* about a certain item; this is not just your uncle Joe who came along on your hunt to buy a jalopy, this is mechanic X who deals with cars, and knows (or at least, *ought* to know) a lemon when he sees one.
Thus a mechanic might give you assurance that the car you are buying is road-worthy, a property inspector might give assurance that the house is structurally sound etc...
Similarly, auditors assure shareholders that the financial statements are *true and fair*. (Yes, *true* and *fair* are two separate qualities.)
But here is the deal; most of the folks here are likely to be computer programmers, right? You know that programs run for thousands of lines of code, and that, especially with a collaboration work, you can't be sure that *every single line* of code is both correct and necessary. But as long as shit works, it gives 1+1=2, and doesn't fry the computer whenever it runs, you ship, right?
Same is the deal here. You can't be 100% sure in any sort of assurance engagement, but as long as it's *mostly* correct, and falls within an acceptable error range, no one minds the occasional odd or end.
This is called "reasonable assurance". Auditors do NOT provide "absolute assurance", because they cannot possibly insure that 100% of accounts are true and fair (can you imagine counting every single screw to ensure the count is correct?); rather they provide "assurance that statements are *reasonably* fair", meaning things work, and the company will at least run for another 12 months(which is what's meant by "going concern"), after which we will conduct another audit.
(side note, there is another one, called "limited assurance", where auditors only give assurance on a limited scale, a bit like the mechanic only insuring that the engine and transmission work, and that the brakes and body is not his responsibility...)
Our standard, our error of margin, is called "materiality". Materiality is the difference between loosing a 12-pack of pencils and a jumbo jet; one is a minor annoyance, the other could sink a company. There are guidelines for how to set materiality levels, something like a certain small percentage of revenue or assets.
As long as the errors on the financial statements are *not* material (i.e. errors amount to something three notepads, half a CD spindle and a stapler missing), we will issue a "reasonable assurance" that statements are "true and fair", even though they are not, because in the grand scheme of things, a lost stapler is not exactly likely to sink the company, nor will the shareholders be amused to learn that we delayed approving statements (and their dividends!) by three months simply to hunt down some bits of stationery.
And now you know.
This is hilarious:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/pakistan-lifts-then-reinstates-youtube-ban/
As a Pakistani, I can only find this hilarious, albeit morbidly so.
You see, all they have succeeded in making sure that *every* one knows how to use proxies.
You see, as long as people got their damn facebook and youtube, no one gave a flying hoot about anything else. We (including I myself) didn't know there was even a way to access websites banned by the PTA, and since we were *good* boys and girls, we didn't care about *bad* websites being closed, so we didn't bother finding out how we could access them.
Now, they can't access youtube, well guess what, people started asking, how can we access restricted websites? Answer: Proxies etc.
We are not bad people, right? We just want to access youtube to watch University lectures (pakistan's virtual university has a youtube channel with all their lectures online), how to stitch clothes (my mom's favourite, she learnt many a good cloth making designs on youtube) etc...
And while we are doing this to only access youtube now, well, a proxy opens the way to *all* websites.
Now even the websites they would *genuinely* want people to stop visiting (porn etc) are open to all. Guess what, my dear local mullah, you have only succeeded in making sure people now have the tools to visit the same evil websites you wanted to stop.
Yeah, all that, um, *effort*, that 15 year old kid did to find and collate a list of 780,000 porn websites for the govt to ban? The internet routes around obstructions, b'ch!
Not that the govt cares either way, they are busy making sure the bhutto dynasty can continue on... these are all attention diversion tactics, to hide the fact that I can't find gas for a week (btw, Gas means CNG in local context, Petrol is hardly ever used, though even *that* has run out! yeah our govt is awesome)
And it's not like *anyone* is pretending they are *not* using youtube; for example, TV channels often put their programs on youtube for people to view, and obviously they must be using proxies, since they haven't switched to other websites. They bald-faced-ly give links to the youtube version on their facebook page, for example.
But no one can dare admit that the youtube ban is a farce, or they will be part of the *blasphemous* campaign. Also, apparently, by Pakistan banning youtube, we have brought down Google to it's knees (I have seen actual *statistics* to that effect, don't ask me where they got their figures from), we are winning! We can't give up a step away from victory!
Vive la révolution islamique!
I whole heartedly second his first two recommendation, especially the one about Korean comics.
As for the third, thanks for the recommend!
Um, just to clarify, this is south asia we are talking about, not europe or us or other place with strict slaughter control. We have already have trouble catching meat that came from bloated animals (they pump water in the arteries to fatten up the meat...) and meat that comes from already deceased carcasses. Things are bad, here.
So let's revisit the issue. Govt orders a cull. Typically, that means it won't do it itself, just orders one to be conducted by the stock owners. People naturally get afraid, demand drops, chicken prices hit rock bottom.
Cue crazy people taking advantage of falling chicken prices to organise massive weddings. No body knows where the chicken is coming from, is it from the affected stock, is it safe blah blah.
Please don't presume, I have nothing against cheap chicken and weddings. But I know my country, I know just how *diligently* they work. If all the infected chicken had been disposed off in a proper way, then it wouldn't have mattered, because that would have ensured the other chicken was safe, it's only the stigma keeping the prices low. But given our less than amicable control system, you can't be sure of that here.
If people can cheat by bloating and dead-carcassing, you think they wouldn't stoop to a bit of bribery to ensure *their* stock is passed without checks?
Aww shucks, thanks! You are just too generous with your compliments!
I am sure you are just the same, if not more so, my good sir/madam :D
Exactly! like the neighbours I mention, they were *definitely* not poor, they were upper middle class, they could afford the same number of chicken even at normal prices, then why would they risk a wedding like that?
No, that's not the point, the point is, I heard *a lot* of people say that such events were on the up rise, I ignored them as typical gossip... until I got that wedding card.
Asking them why the sudden change in date, (the engagement had happened only a month or so ago, and the wedding wasn't due for another six months or so...) I was *floored* by them being totally honest and describing *this* as a reason!
Then I started wondering, if one gossip is true, then how many more?
Then I start hearing about some *other* people getting married early... and my mind started spinning.
We pretty much stayed away from weddings for quite a while...
Hence my advice to others; If you start hearing gossip about early weddings, STAY THE HELL AWAY.
I mean, why the fuck would you risk a wedding turning into a tragedy simply because of rock-bottom prices of chicken? I still wonder what possessed my neighbours, I mean it was not like they were poor or anything! The father of the groom worked in the Gulf and earned a boatload of money...
I know you are going WTF? at my header but read on...
Some years ago there was a large scale out break of Bird Flu in my country. Naturally the government called for a massive cull...
And while most (all normal people?) avoided all chicken and eggs, *some* people decided to take advantage of the sudden plummet in chicken prices.
I shit you not, when I heard that a family in the neighbourhood sped up their son's wedding date significantly to take advantage of all that cheap, cheap chicken...
Oh sure, apparently if you cook the chicken thoroughly the chances of catching the virus a minimum, but still... we decide to give that invitation a pass...
So my dear Bangladeshi friends, take it from a fellow South Asian: If you get a sudden invite to a party or wedding, give it a pass...
How could you possibly forget Tower of God, man? Or Trace?
Those Manhwa are AWESOME.
For all of you who are wondering WTF we are talking about, (Manhwa)Korean Webtoon is the new and upcoming thing, It's supposed to be the answer to Japanese Manga, but with a different format, and without all the "tentacle porn" baggage that all manga sadly carry, even if they are squeaky clean.
Go to Batoto.com and give them a try. (or korean websites like Naver and Daum, if you like the original Korean)
Interestingly enough, I had already known about this, thanks to...Jolla.
I have them subscribed on Facebook, and they offered this news plus a healthy dose of *Nudge Nudge Wink Wink*
I wonder what you guys make of it...
https://www.facebook.com/JollaMobile/posts/452558308140997
Long rant aside, On topic, I am liking this guide, and will follow through the 30 lessons.
I mean the hard was *is* the better way, I mean why use those pesky function keys or use the GUI slider, when you can
echo 7 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
That's why my Kubuntu 12.10 has prevented the Fn keys or the brightness slider in the power option from *actually* performing any action. It's for our own benefit! The fact the they function in Lubuntu is clearly to our disadvantage, KDE is looking after our long term interest, unlike those pesky LXDE guys.
Vive le Linux!
----
Sarcasm side, I have nothing against learning bash commands or getting to know the depth of the the system,. I mean, who can argue that sudo apt-get whatever is faster and neater than going into synaptic or muon or whatever... But for humanity's sake, let us learn on *our* pace, don't force it down our throats, check if the god damn GUI works, even if *you* will never use it.
Let them decide, to use an example, if they want to sudo apt-get install && sudo apt-get update or want to click the system update button on the muon popup. See, I am a friggin' accountant, I am not even supposed to understand the word linux and yet here I am discussing some simple commands, but albeit those which I learnt on my *own* pace, I don't appreciate that for simple functions I have bring out the Konsole, and it's not one of those "we don't have the drivers" type excuses, acpi_video0 is a generic folder, not specific to any particular video card or screen (AFAIK), surely they could check to see if the damn slider works?
I am sorry for the rant, it's just that I had to remove an otherwise working Kubuntu install because of this and other minor niggles, let's see if the latest LM has these minor issues fixed...
You know what will be the year of Linux on desktop? When they make a distro that forgets to contain a console, and no one notices...
sorry slashdot ate my link:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_cof_con-food-coffee-consumption
... How many Norwegians have oral cancer.
Or all the other people on this list of heavy coffee consumers.
There was actually a very good reason why I posted that; 99% sans citation would have sounded like typical hyperbole, and glossed over; With citation, it really does drive home the point that Australia is *really* FRIGGIN' big. And not just *big* big, it's 95% of the continental US big.
Also, since when were numbers bad on slashdot? :D
More like 95%
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+Australia+as+a+ratio+of+the+area+of+continental+USA
But yes, I get your point :D
I just check, and apparently Darwin is closer to Singapore than it is to it's own capital (3350 km vs 3969 km). That's right, a city two *countries* away is closer.
Damn, Australia is big. :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin,_Northern_Territory
Shouldn't they be looking for the Road Runner? Since he is the one who actually owns Acme...
But you would be willing to vote for someone with less integrity, albeit one wearing a sharp suit?
How will scientists detect microwaves now?