Yeah, I saw that too. Samsumg *may* have something twice as good as Tesla do today, but in 5 years time. Tesla *will* have something better than they do today in 5 years time. Tesla's will also have actual usage facts.
I think Samsung either need to do something useful for today, or else start aiming a bit higher. Twice as good as today in 5 years isn't going to be particularly compelling by the time they try to sell it.
...and in fact Google too. Google's search results are still better than anyone else, but they're getting worse because they're too busy pushing their own agenda instead of just doing what people want.
Ironic that possibly the only company who could reasonably compete with Google's search is dying just as Google is making enough space for someone else to make a viable search business.
When I worked at Yahoo, someone noted that in the US many employees were often filing patents for stuff, but that the company hadn't 'engaged' the Europeans as well because we'd filed maybe one or two in the whole history of the company.
I did point out that any EU country's patent system has a higher entry requirement than a bit of cartoon strip and some fiction writing. As such, we were genuinely finding it hard to think of anything patent-worthy that we did in our brick-in-the-wall work lives.
...and in fairness to them, they launched the API in 2011 (https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/google-launches-hangouts-api-for-developers/) - so they've given it about 6 years. There aren't many assets you can rely on for 6 years without having to do some sort of rewrite/patchup or whatever.
I think the real issue here is for people who've only just decided to integrate with it. They've just spent however much time/money engineering it in, and now they've only got until April (a proper bummer if you just implemented in the last couple of months).
If there's any real criticism to be leveled at Google here then, it's to give people a lot more notice of taking things down. I'd say giving people a year of 'EOL' time during which they'll accept no new entrants, but continue to support the old ones would demonstrate some good citizenship. That would put their costs up a bit, but I doubt by much and it'd more or less debunk the reputation they're getting of pulling services people that rely on too easily. Until they start to commit to doing something like this though, integrate with Google at your own risk.
If your networked product gets hacked and participates in a botnet, data leak, data ransom, etc, then you must provide mitigating solutions at your own expense to the owner for a period of 2* years after the date of purchase, or expect lawsuits from those customers or their representatives for non-compliance. In return for doing all this, we'll grant you a special marque you can put on your product and supporting materials to indicate your good internet citizenship to your customers. We'll be operating an on-line database of all the products which have the qualifying marque so consumers can verify manufacturers claims and have the means to report any non-compliance.
* I realise 2 years isn't actually that long for something like a fridge or even a TV, so maybe it needs longer for for more 'permanent' products. I figure 2 years is already way more than a lot of manufacturers actually provide on things like routers and webcams that asking for this would already be a huge improvement in a lot of cases.
Either way, just pop my $25,000 in the post please;-)
I'm not American, but I'm wondering what sort of University is this? Does it not have any students that need jobs to pay for their excessive drinking? Do none of them want a few hours a week working on the support desk or fixing up desktops? It may just be something that happens in other countries, but learning some related-but-not-exactly-what-you-want-to-do-with-your-life skills can be useful (and probably more useful than learning how to flip burgers or tend a bar), even if you're not getting paid what you would when you graduate.
As for everything else, I realise Unis aren't charities, but as they get some/all of their money from the government, they should probably be following the intent of the government. As I understand it, your new government is trying to stop outsourcing being quite so cheap/easy, so I wonder if this decision will be reversed in the coming weeks after some PR work by the uni involved...?
Apple generally make good hardware and good software experiences to go with it. We can argue about unwelcome changes, but I'd say most people generally accept Apple are good at hardware and software.
Samsung, on the other hand are good at hardware (phones are a great example, as are TVs as it happens). Software though is awful. Look no further than the Android 'samsung push service', or the Samsung Games Hub, the Samsung Reading Hub, etc etc. All truly terrible apps, awful UX and whatever reason they were created to address has been entirely forgotten due to lack of updates, lack of any sort of attempt at engaging users and a vast array of competitors doing a far superior job.
Honestly, if Google hadn't have 'given' Samsung Android, Samsung wouldn't be in the phone market at all. Until someone gives them a TV OS, their TVs are going to suck for anything other than "Select HDMI1, and leave it alone forever". You're still paying for all that unnecessary software that's so terrible you can't/won't use it though, so think about that when comparing brands/models in the shop.
We also don't know what the healthcare organisation used it for. It could just be an admin's experimental project, and contain literally nothing of interest to anyone. Less likely is that it contains any actual medical information for identifiable people.
I can't confirm if this is true, as I have a Mongodb with no password (and so upgrades didn't remove anything). My difference is that (a) it's only accessible through localhost, and (b) if any remote clients ever want to use it, they'll do so through an stunnel, which will only accept connections from the known IPs of the clients that should be connecting. In my book, even opening up a properly secured database to the Internet is unnecessary - just open it up to the IPs that need it.
If you're wondering, we use it for Errbit - if we ever did get p0wned, I'd just blow it away and re-install (hence my somewhat rough-shod approach to security in this case).
...well, actually, maybe not. Maybe they got it right.
Lets say I write a fake news story about how Trump actually had a brief affair with Hilary 10 years ago. My site gets loads of hits because:
1) I'm 'first', and I've got an army of facebook friends all clicking and sharing my link 2) If you google for the story, the BBC, the New York Times, CNN and all the rest don't come anywhere near as high in the rankings as I do - because they haven't written a story about it, and so their SEO is lower than mine on this particular topic
If (say) the Washington Post ran an article for every story that anyone was talking about, then they'd soak up the google hits instead of me. They could put a big banner at the top of the page saying "this is all unverified, and could be fake, or maybe it could be real - we don't know". Now they're actually the responsible organisation, using their size and influence to cast a bit of doubt over the fake news stories until such time as they're investigated properly and found to be true or false. Truthfully though, the logistics of doing something like this would be a considerable challenge, which I guess is why no one seems to be doing it.
Just think - if they'd stayed in California, they'd have lost $700,000,150. Shareholders don't like that sort of thing;-)
I agree they just want to do this in secret and are making as much of a song-and-dance about it as possible for the headlinez. Meanwhile, others seem to be doing just fine in California and have considerably more successes to their names.
Since we seem to be going around in circles a bit here, I'll reply to my own post...
Making it the retailers problem until it reaches *your* hands means retailers are motivated to provide ways to get the parcel delivered and via good couriers who aren't likely to do stupid things (like leave parcels in plain site in bad neighbourhoods). It seems the US is somewhat alone in this regards - most European (and maybe elsewhere) countries seem to do something like this. To demonstrate how the invisible hand of the market works, here are most of the ways I could receive a parcel:
1) Left on the doorstep by the courier (if in a suitably safe neighbourhood - and yes, the courier makes that choice reasonably correctly) 2) Left with a neighbour 3) Left in a 'safe place' of my choosing (eg. over the side gate, behind the bins or whatever) 4) Free redelivery the next day (or day of my choosing) 5) Pick up from the courier's depot (usually a bit of a distance from my house though, unless it's Royal Mail in which case it's the local post office) 6) Pick up from a local vendor-neutral 'locker' service, often in small corner shops, or Amazon have their own in a few locations 7) Delivered to 'click and collect' location (eg. concession in a station, or another property somewhere) 8) Delivered to work 9) Saturday delivery 10) Timed delivery during the week (1 hour timeslot) 11) Work from home and wait for it to be delivered at whatever time it may show up
Some of these cost more (eg. saturday or timed deliveries), but the rest are all part of the delivery cost, and things like redelivery are offered by (as far as I know) all couriers.
So "leave it on the doorstep" really isn't the only option - and isn't much of an option if you live in inner-city areas, or some higher crime areas. Thankfully, there are loads of other ways to get the exact same parcel, and usually at no extra cost. You get these when the retailer and courier are correctly motivated. Talk to your law makers if they're not.
Your first point is the crux of the issue - fix that, and the rest really is easy. I can receive a parcel in about a dozen different ways, none of which involve leaving it on the doorstep (although we have low crime here, so I'm happy for them to do that with most deliveries).
As for your neighbours - I can sympathise, as it's much the same in London. I used to live in Brixton (not known for it's safety and low crime!) but knew a few of the neighbours by site - I wasn't going to invite them over for a drink, but would happily take parcels for them, as indeed they did for us. The best tip someone gave me was to (occasionally) just hang around outside your house - maybe just drink a cuppa, have a smoke or whatever. In about 30 minutes you'll see all sorts of comings and goings, and best of all, your neighbours will notice you too.
Agreed - but if the delivery remains the retailers responsibility until the parcel is in your hands, then the retailer will (eventually) pick better couriers.
FWIW, we've had some really lovely couriers delivering our stuff. I've had my share of numpties and possibly-stealing-my-parcels types too, but senders catch on to losses pretty quickly, so they get rooted out reasonably quickly (or else buy your stuff from someone else!).
It all hangs on this: if the retailer is responsible for the sale all way until it reaches *your* hands, then it's simple. If the problem is yours as soon as the retailer hands it to the courier then you're out of luck - talk to your law makers.
The market will invent all kinds of ways for you to get your stuff if correctly motivated. It really isn't that hard.
UPS do exactly this here (as do some others, actually) - they signed up a bunch of small corner-shop type places and you can go there to pick up your parcel.
So as I read this, you get busted for *using* a botnet, not just renting one. If you fancy renting a botnet to dos yourself to collect the IPs so you contact all the participants to help them fix their stuff, I think you'd be okay;-)
I built a 4x3M 'log cabin' in the garden of our last house - I did most of the labouring, so excluding that it cost me about £5K all-in. I trenched 4x cat5 from the house, plus a thick power cable that I had the spark verify and connect up. Both my wife and I used to use that space - it heat up in no time (via an electric oil-filled radiator), and stayed mostly okay in summer (definitely better when the doors/windows were open, but sometimes that was a bit noisy on conf. calls and whatnot). Being able to sit back in your chair and see some nature was great - not often you get that at work. Having to trot up the garden to the house for a cuppa and biscuit was actually quite an advantage because it meant a few minutes of no work at all a few times a day.
In terms of technology, all I did was ran a small hub and wireless access point down there - just enough to plug the computers and a printer in, and a bit of wifi for the phones. I used to keep my backup NAS down there too actually - it only got encrypted blobs of data on it, so if it got stolen it wasn't the end of the world for us. We had a monitor each, and a couple of sonos speakers, and I used to keep my 3d printer down there too (but mostly so I could run it overnight and it not annoy anyone in the house).
I'd agree - spend the money elsewhere (maybe on cloud hosted servers?), and do your office more reasonably. Whatever seems like a good idea now probably won't in a few months. Just get a good chair, desk, monitor and reasonably adjustable lighting - the rest of it is all negotiable later on, and you'll probably find is somewhat superfluous.
Easy: don't let distance retailers leave parcels on your doorstep!
Here in the UK, if a parcel is on your doorstep and gets stolen, it's still the retailers responsibility. Also, many large employers will let you receive parcels at your place of work, so they're received by a human into a secure building. Your neighbours can do the same thing for you if you have some you talk to (and are home when you're not). Larger apartment blocks have a conceirge. Most places I've ever worked at least have let me work at home for a day to receive deliveries. Amazon have 'Amazon Lockers' (as do a few others), and some other retailers have small shop fronts at stations and whatnot where you can 'click and collect'. I'm not sure if it died off due to disuse, but there used to be a chain called 'doddle' (funded by our rail companies of all things) that did collection and delivery services. Then my least favourite, but occasionally used option: saturday delivery. If all else fails, most couriers here will take the parcel back to their base (which is invariably a bit of a distance away) so you can pick it up from there.
I realise this is about the US, but in most (all?) of Europe and maybe elsewhere, when you pay an employee money, you have to pay some/all of their tax liability for it, and then pay some tax of your own too, and then pay more tax at the end of the year.
That is, if you want to pay 100 groats, then physically pay 70 groats to the employee's account, pay the remaining 30 to the government on their behalf. Then pay another 30 direct to the government for the pleasure of paying the employee. Oh, and at the end of the year pay an annual tax based on your resulting profit (the percentage varies, maybe 20%).
So in short - paying employees bonuses has a higher tax burden than making charitable donations 'on their behalf', and most definitely looks very different on your annual accounts report.
Exactly - TalkTalk are right down the bottom of the list. They spend their money on X Factor advertising rather than considering to maybe offer decent service.
We have a lot of choice of providers here in the UK. The biggest providers are almost always the least good ones, and switching is pretty easy (not quite easy enough, but it's not too hard). TalkTalk doesn't even have 'other offerings' that might get you to stay If you're a BT, Sky or VirginMedia customer you might think twice about switching because it might affect your TV service, but that's not an issue with TalkTalk. There's literally no reason to be their customer if they've pissed you off more than once.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I saw that too. Samsumg *may* have something twice as good as Tesla do today, but in 5 years time. Tesla *will* have something better than they do today in 5 years time. Tesla's will also have actual usage facts.
I think Samsung either need to do something useful for today, or else start aiming a bit higher. Twice as good as today in 5 years isn't going to be particularly compelling by the time they try to sell it.
...and in fact Google too. Google's search results are still better than anyone else, but they're getting worse because they're too busy pushing their own agenda instead of just doing what people want.
Ironic that possibly the only company who could reasonably compete with Google's search is dying just as Google is making enough space for someone else to make a viable search business.
When I worked at Yahoo, someone noted that in the US many employees were often filing patents for stuff, but that the company hadn't 'engaged' the Europeans as well because we'd filed maybe one or two in the whole history of the company.
I did point out that any EU country's patent system has a higher entry requirement than a bit of cartoon strip and some fiction writing. As such, we were genuinely finding it hard to think of anything patent-worthy that we did in our brick-in-the-wall work lives.
...and in fairness to them, they launched the API in 2011 (https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/google-launches-hangouts-api-for-developers/) - so they've given it about 6 years. There aren't many assets you can rely on for 6 years without having to do some sort of rewrite/patchup or whatever.
I think the real issue here is for people who've only just decided to integrate with it. They've just spent however much time/money engineering it in, and now they've only got until April (a proper bummer if you just implemented in the last couple of months).
If there's any real criticism to be leveled at Google here then, it's to give people a lot more notice of taking things down. I'd say giving people a year of 'EOL' time during which they'll accept no new entrants, but continue to support the old ones would demonstrate some good citizenship. That would put their costs up a bit, but I doubt by much and it'd more or less debunk the reputation they're getting of pulling services people that rely on too easily. Until they start to commit to doing something like this though, integrate with Google at your own risk.
Do they have a digital assistant too? Oh I wish they would...
Me: "Alibaba! I'm at the front door - open sesame!"
Me: "Alibaba! How do you get red wine out of a carpet?"
Alibaba: "...Soak in white wine, then fly for at least half an hour to try it out"
Me: "Alibaba! I think I've been robbed, call the police!"
Alibaba: "Er... no, sorry, you left the place this messy when you left this morning"
Translation:
"Scottish person found eating vegetables"
+1
If your networked product gets hacked and participates in a botnet, data leak, data ransom, etc, then you must provide mitigating solutions at your own expense to the owner for a period of 2* years after the date of purchase, or expect lawsuits from those customers or their representatives for non-compliance. In return for doing all this, we'll grant you a special marque you can put on your product and supporting materials to indicate your good internet citizenship to your customers. We'll be operating an on-line database of all the products which have the qualifying marque so consumers can verify manufacturers claims and have the means to report any non-compliance.
* I realise 2 years isn't actually that long for something like a fridge or even a TV, so maybe it needs longer for for more 'permanent' products. I figure 2 years is already way more than a lot of manufacturers actually provide on things like routers and webcams that asking for this would already be a huge improvement in a lot of cases.
Either way, just pop my $25,000 in the post please ;-)
I am surprised by this, actually.
I'm not American, but I'm wondering what sort of University is this? Does it not have any students that need jobs to pay for their excessive drinking? Do none of them want a few hours a week working on the support desk or fixing up desktops? It may just be something that happens in other countries, but learning some related-but-not-exactly-what-you-want-to-do-with-your-life skills can be useful (and probably more useful than learning how to flip burgers or tend a bar), even if you're not getting paid what you would when you graduate.
As for everything else, I realise Unis aren't charities, but as they get some/all of their money from the government, they should probably be following the intent of the government. As I understand it, your new government is trying to stop outsourcing being quite so cheap/easy, so I wonder if this decision will be reversed in the coming weeks after some PR work by the uni involved...?
Click to fill fields you want maybe?
...because Donald Trump is too charismatic?
Apple generally make good hardware and good software experiences to go with it. We can argue about unwelcome changes, but I'd say most people generally accept Apple are good at hardware and software.
Samsung, on the other hand are good at hardware (phones are a great example, as are TVs as it happens). Software though is awful. Look no further than the Android 'samsung push service', or the Samsung Games Hub, the Samsung Reading Hub, etc etc. All truly terrible apps, awful UX and whatever reason they were created to address has been entirely forgotten due to lack of updates, lack of any sort of attempt at engaging users and a vast array of competitors doing a far superior job.
Honestly, if Google hadn't have 'given' Samsung Android, Samsung wouldn't be in the phone market at all. Until someone gives them a TV OS, their TVs are going to suck for anything other than "Select HDMI1, and leave it alone forever". You're still paying for all that unnecessary software that's so terrible you can't/won't use it though, so think about that when comparing brands/models in the shop.
We also don't know what the healthcare organisation used it for. It could just be an admin's experimental project, and contain literally nothing of interest to anyone. Less likely is that it contains any actual medical information for identifiable people.
I can't confirm if this is true, as I have a Mongodb with no password (and so upgrades didn't remove anything). My difference is that (a) it's only accessible through localhost, and (b) if any remote clients ever want to use it, they'll do so through an stunnel, which will only accept connections from the known IPs of the clients that should be connecting. In my book, even opening up a properly secured database to the Internet is unnecessary - just open it up to the IPs that need it.
If you're wondering, we use it for Errbit - if we ever did get p0wned, I'd just blow it away and re-install (hence my somewhat rough-shod approach to security in this case).
...well, actually, maybe not. Maybe they got it right.
Lets say I write a fake news story about how Trump actually had a brief affair with Hilary 10 years ago. My site gets loads of hits because:
1) I'm 'first', and I've got an army of facebook friends all clicking and sharing my link
2) If you google for the story, the BBC, the New York Times, CNN and all the rest don't come anywhere near as high in the rankings as I do - because they haven't written a story about it, and so their SEO is lower than mine on this particular topic
If (say) the Washington Post ran an article for every story that anyone was talking about, then they'd soak up the google hits instead of me. They could put a big banner at the top of the page saying "this is all unverified, and could be fake, or maybe it could be real - we don't know". Now they're actually the responsible organisation, using their size and influence to cast a bit of doubt over the fake news stories until such time as they're investigated properly and found to be true or false. Truthfully though, the logistics of doing something like this would be a considerable challenge, which I guess is why no one seems to be doing it.
Just think - if they'd stayed in California, they'd have lost $700,000,150. Shareholders don't like that sort of thing ;-)
I agree they just want to do this in secret and are making as much of a song-and-dance about it as possible for the headlinez. Meanwhile, others seem to be doing just fine in California and have considerably more successes to their names.
Since we seem to be going around in circles a bit here, I'll reply to my own post...
Making it the retailers problem until it reaches *your* hands means retailers are motivated to provide ways to get the parcel delivered and via good couriers who aren't likely to do stupid things (like leave parcels in plain site in bad neighbourhoods). It seems the US is somewhat alone in this regards - most European (and maybe elsewhere) countries seem to do something like this. To demonstrate how the invisible hand of the market works, here are most of the ways I could receive a parcel:
1) Left on the doorstep by the courier (if in a suitably safe neighbourhood - and yes, the courier makes that choice reasonably correctly)
2) Left with a neighbour
3) Left in a 'safe place' of my choosing (eg. over the side gate, behind the bins or whatever)
4) Free redelivery the next day (or day of my choosing)
5) Pick up from the courier's depot (usually a bit of a distance from my house though, unless it's Royal Mail in which case it's the local post office)
6) Pick up from a local vendor-neutral 'locker' service, often in small corner shops, or Amazon have their own in a few locations
7) Delivered to 'click and collect' location (eg. concession in a station, or another property somewhere)
8) Delivered to work
9) Saturday delivery
10) Timed delivery during the week (1 hour timeslot)
11) Work from home and wait for it to be delivered at whatever time it may show up
Some of these cost more (eg. saturday or timed deliveries), but the rest are all part of the delivery cost, and things like redelivery are offered by (as far as I know) all couriers.
So "leave it on the doorstep" really isn't the only option - and isn't much of an option if you live in inner-city areas, or some higher crime areas. Thankfully, there are loads of other ways to get the exact same parcel, and usually at no extra cost. You get these when the retailer and courier are correctly motivated. Talk to your law makers if they're not.
Your first point is the crux of the issue - fix that, and the rest really is easy. I can receive a parcel in about a dozen different ways, none of which involve leaving it on the doorstep (although we have low crime here, so I'm happy for them to do that with most deliveries).
As for your neighbours - I can sympathise, as it's much the same in London. I used to live in Brixton (not known for it's safety and low crime!) but knew a few of the neighbours by site - I wasn't going to invite them over for a drink, but would happily take parcels for them, as indeed they did for us. The best tip someone gave me was to (occasionally) just hang around outside your house - maybe just drink a cuppa, have a smoke or whatever. In about 30 minutes you'll see all sorts of comings and goings, and best of all, your neighbours will notice you too.
Agreed - but if the delivery remains the retailers responsibility until the parcel is in your hands, then the retailer will (eventually) pick better couriers.
FWIW, we've had some really lovely couriers delivering our stuff. I've had my share of numpties and possibly-stealing-my-parcels types too, but senders catch on to losses pretty quickly, so they get rooted out reasonably quickly (or else buy your stuff from someone else!).
It all hangs on this: if the retailer is responsible for the sale all way until it reaches *your* hands, then it's simple. If the problem is yours as soon as the retailer hands it to the courier then you're out of luck - talk to your law makers.
The market will invent all kinds of ways for you to get your stuff if correctly motivated. It really isn't that hard.
UPS do exactly this here (as do some others, actually) - they signed up a bunch of small corner-shop type places and you can go there to pick up your parcel.
So as I read this, you get busted for *using* a botnet, not just renting one. If you fancy renting a botnet to dos yourself to collect the IPs so you contact all the participants to help them fix their stuff, I think you'd be okay ;-)
I built a 4x3M 'log cabin' in the garden of our last house - I did most of the labouring, so excluding that it cost me about £5K all-in. I trenched 4x cat5 from the house, plus a thick power cable that I had the spark verify and connect up. Both my wife and I used to use that space - it heat up in no time (via an electric oil-filled radiator), and stayed mostly okay in summer (definitely better when the doors/windows were open, but sometimes that was a bit noisy on conf. calls and whatnot). Being able to sit back in your chair and see some nature was great - not often you get that at work. Having to trot up the garden to the house for a cuppa and biscuit was actually quite an advantage because it meant a few minutes of no work at all a few times a day.
In terms of technology, all I did was ran a small hub and wireless access point down there - just enough to plug the computers and a printer in, and a bit of wifi for the phones. I used to keep my backup NAS down there too actually - it only got encrypted blobs of data on it, so if it got stolen it wasn't the end of the world for us. We had a monitor each, and a couple of sonos speakers, and I used to keep my 3d printer down there too (but mostly so I could run it overnight and it not annoy anyone in the house).
I'd agree - spend the money elsewhere (maybe on cloud hosted servers?), and do your office more reasonably. Whatever seems like a good idea now probably won't in a few months. Just get a good chair, desk, monitor and reasonably adjustable lighting - the rest of it is all negotiable later on, and you'll probably find is somewhat superfluous.
Easy: don't let distance retailers leave parcels on your doorstep!
Here in the UK, if a parcel is on your doorstep and gets stolen, it's still the retailers responsibility. Also, many large employers will let you receive parcels at your place of work, so they're received by a human into a secure building. Your neighbours can do the same thing for you if you have some you talk to (and are home when you're not). Larger apartment blocks have a conceirge. Most places I've ever worked at least have let me work at home for a day to receive deliveries. Amazon have 'Amazon Lockers' (as do a few others), and some other retailers have small shop fronts at stations and whatnot where you can 'click and collect'. I'm not sure if it died off due to disuse, but there used to be a chain called 'doddle' (funded by our rail companies of all things) that did collection and delivery services. Then my least favourite, but occasionally used option: saturday delivery. If all else fails, most couriers here will take the parcel back to their base (which is invariably a bit of a distance away) so you can pick it up from there.
Honestly, this isn't that hard.
I realise this is about the US, but in most (all?) of Europe and maybe elsewhere, when you pay an employee money, you have to pay some/all of their tax liability for it, and then pay some tax of your own too, and then pay more tax at the end of the year.
That is, if you want to pay 100 groats, then physically pay 70 groats to the employee's account, pay the remaining 30 to the government on their behalf. Then pay another 30 direct to the government for the pleasure of paying the employee. Oh, and at the end of the year pay an annual tax based on your resulting profit (the percentage varies, maybe 20%).
So in short - paying employees bonuses has a higher tax burden than making charitable donations 'on their behalf', and most definitely looks very different on your annual accounts report.
Exactly - TalkTalk are right down the bottom of the list. They spend their money on X Factor advertising rather than considering to maybe offer decent service.
We have a lot of choice of providers here in the UK. The biggest providers are almost always the least good ones, and switching is pretty easy (not quite easy enough, but it's not too hard). TalkTalk doesn't even have 'other offerings' that might get you to stay If you're a BT, Sky or VirginMedia customer you might think twice about switching because it might affect your TV service, but that's not an issue with TalkTalk. There's literally no reason to be their customer if they've pissed you off more than once.