The only people who wanted the Irish to raise their corporate tax levels were other countries who had, themselves, got higher rates of these taxes. It's a given that no country has the right to determine the tax rates in another country - short of invading them. The Irish know that as did these french^H^H^H^Horeign governments. What they were saying was purely for domestic consumption - since they would not have gained anything by an increase.
The companies affected would NOT have moved their operations to (say) france or germany, as those places still have higher CT rates than an increased irish rate would have been. Plus, they make it harder to employ people "flexibly", have higher costs of doing business and don't speak english.
The best way to avoid all that anxiety ...
on
Anxiety and IT?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Does the crushing worry of a businesses IT infrastructure... coming to a screeching halt make IT occupations prone to anxiety?"
.. is to do it so things work.
Things don't come "to a screeching halt" on their own. It requires talent to make the sorts of mistakes that aren't blindingly obvious and that remain hidden during the pre-prod testing (you *do* test before putting something live?). Having a resilient configuration, that is monitored properly and gives plenty of warning of a problem helps, too.
So far, in 12 years looking after this current setup, I've never had an unscheduled call outside working hours. The problem with that is that it makes me look invisible. It's hard to convince "management" that the systems don't look after themselves and will throw novel and exotic problems if not looked after properly. But that's why we take vacations.
Just add amendments to the laws of gravity, aerodynamics and celestial mechanics and the whole rocket design process will become much easier. Surely the utah legislature can manage that, can't they? (and while they're at it, sort out Pi, too?)
If we've now got to the point where Linux (and windows, too by the look of it) are really just in maintenance mode: with all the features pretty much in place and mere "tick-over" releases to fix a few bugs and support new hardware - where do we go from here?
Will our desktops look the same in 20 years time as they do now (and did, to a large extent 20 years ago - certainly for windows). Will we still be running x86-based hardware - albeit with solid-state mass storage instead of spinning stuff? If so, then it does sound to me like a rather boring environment for an IT enthusiast to be in. Even todays innovations: such as tablets are really just PCs sans keyboards: they still employ the same basic paradigm of applications occupying windows on a screen./
However, you never know - there could still be some development left to do. Who can say, by 2030 we might even have got up to kernel version 2.8
And people delegated their work to this guy. Obviously exhibiting management potential. The REALLY interesting discovery will be whether the people who did buy their coursework, rather than doing it themselves turn out to be more or less successful than the "honest" people who did it all themselves.
That sounds like a piece of research that's just begging to be done.
Being able to recall a bunch of facts is not the same thing as the ability to make logical deductions, work out the answers to problems or make the link between cause and effect. All this test does is check a persons memory - which is less important these days with search engines and knowledge bases. What would make a better test would be to present a problem and see how people deduce the answer, not just discover how much time they waste reading industry publications.
Re:the long tradition of bigging up criminals
on
The Great Cyberheist
·
· Score: 1
True, but in the case of cyber-criminals, finding themselves described as brilliant or genius or whatever is more of an encouragement than a criticism. For example, the question "Which is the bigger insult - being called ugly or being called stupid?" Most geeks would say that stupidity was the bigger insult, whereas most ordinary people would go with ugly.
By exaggerating the very trait that cyber-criminals value in themselves (i.e. their intelligence, cunning, abilities etc.) all thepolice are doing is rewarding them - the jail term notwithstanding. Personally I think a bigger deterrent for cyber-criminals would be if the police publicly ridiculed their efforts and humiliated them. For example: "This was a particularly inept attack that had FAIL written all over it. My 6 year-old writes better hacks than these people and their idea was just so lame I can't believe anyone with more intelligence than a tomato plant would ever think they could get away with it.". However, that then begs the question: "well why did it take yo so long to catch them?" --- But we all know the answer to that one.
this looks like prime content for the humans that would fail it, too.
the long tradition of bigging up criminals
on
The Great Cyberheist
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
All media reports of (caught) cyber-criminals (or just plain "criminals" as they actually are) stresses how talented, or brilliant or "mastermind" they were. None of them were simply petty crooks that just happened to use a comuter rather than a jemmy as their tool of trade.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the world of the cyber-criminal is wholly populated by geniuses who have "gone bad", or the sorts of people that James Bond regularly vanquishes. Where are all the averagely intelligent, nondescript, stupid-but-lucky criminals who stalk the world of online, as they do the ordinary underworld?
The answer, I suspect, is that they're the very same people who are described above, but who's skills are exaggerated by police forces all over the world in an attempt at self-aggrandisement. To make their own lucky breaks appear to be much more significant than they actually were. Just as anglers everywhere have stories about the "massive" catches they made when no-one else was around I reckon the police are pursuing the same policy to try and convince the public that they, too are masterminds. Hmmm.
Mankind evolved naked, so presumably wearing trousers also has an insulating effect on the scrotum and therefore increases testicle temperatures. How come we never hear about the "male health" dangers of getting dressed?
Compensate the owners for what they actually lose. So if a song brings in (say) $10k a year the total revenues, after actual costs, that the owners get should be a fair percentage of what they made - 50% would be a good place to start. However, that 50% should be the damages from ALL the filesharers together who were found guilty of sharing that one song during the year in question. Now I realise that would give the copyright owners no incentive to go after any more than one person, but that one person may then be able to argue that by not pursuing all the infringers, the owners were not defending their claims.
Over time, I could see the percentage claimed back from sharers rising, as copyright owners eschew traditional sales channels and rely more on infringemnt-prone web based channels, until all songs are distributed "virally" and (somehow) everyone pays the few pennies each that actually goes to the writers & performers - and the record companies become irrelevant and fade away.
Good SF has the reactions of the characters coming from the actions of the science. It means positing a situation (that arose from a discovery or breakthrough) and running it forwards to determine how it will affect the people, or how they will react to it. There was precious little of that in BSG - just a load of pseudo-religious/mystical old tosh that was more influential to the stories than any science (which was used merely as a prop) All we had was basically a soap-opera set in space with robots (that was the only SF part and a pretty weak one, too.The Cylons could easily have been commies and Galactica a knackered old battleship). They couldn't describe the science because they had no interest in it and hadn't actually connected it together. If they had they would have made so many plot holes and inconsistencies that it would have been (even more) laughable rubbish.
For example. Why can't the Cylons speak? We see in Caprica that the little, bitty, household robots can communicate with their masters, so why not the later, more advanced, bigger Cyclon versions, too? You can't explain the science in BSG because you'd go mad trying to rationalise it all and you'd have to assume that your readers were uncritical, credulous idiots who will believe something just because someone from the TV wrote it.
The problem is that if your site depends on advertising, and eyeballs being pushed to your site from the search engines to view that advertising, then google effectively owns you. If they decide to change their search ranking algorithm - which is famously opaque so you drop off page #1 you're screwed. it's happened to lots of companies in the past and it happens to lots more every day.
By having an income stream which is independent of advertising revenue, such as a subscription based business model your business automatically becomes much less vulnerable to the whims and mistakes of who/whatever decides where your entry will appear in search results. You don't need people searching for your stuff to make money: your readers pay you directly.
Whether there are other search engines is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if they all go away. You still have money coming in from your pay-to-view customers. Unlike your competition who are dependent on eyeballs looking at advertisements that they see because they were searching for something and got sent to your site. You don't need to have people searching for stuff, you have loyal customers who come anyway.
And that's why a subscription model stops you being dependent on google.
Every website is critically dependent on search results to push traffic to them. The day after google takes a dislike to you, you may as well shut the doors, fire all the staff and go home - you're dead, Jim.
By moving to a subscription model a lot of this dependency on the capriciousness of one single, search engine with less than transparent business practices has been removed - or at least hugely reduced. That in itself has got to be worth something in terms of hardening your company against unwelcome weaknesses. I guess the newspaper still has some dependency on search results to maintain its online marketing, but it must be in a less vulnerable position than its competition.
The only piece of knowledge that I can think of which was a result of the ISS is knowing that the scuttle was a really bad idea. Personally I doubt if that knowledge was worth the price paid.
Based on the low, low standards this guy seesm to be advocating, most individuals don't need to be able to read more than the back of a cereal packet, have any clue about any foreign languages, be able to write anything their spell-checkers won't fix or learn any manual skills: such as cooking (we've got microwaves), handyman (can drive to the home centre) or anything more than turning on the TV or the computer.
So what's the point in staying at school past age 10?
... you're probably close enough to image the disk(s) and futz around with the data your hack is trying to access remotely. This is only a hack that would work to target a specific machine, runnning a specific O/S. Presumably before the expansion ROM tries to alter kernels it does a quick check to make sure the box is actually running the O/S and architecture it's intended for. Otherwise you'll have an awful lot of Windows users buying this card and returning it when it scrashes their PCs.
I watched the first couple of episodes but it just drained my enthusiasm, just like BSG did only quicker (I managed up to halfway through series 2 of BSG - and a few "check if it's still the same" viewing after that: it was). The story wasn't that compelling and what the hell point was there making the Cylon mute - when other, smaller, older robots could talk? Apart from that, it suffered from all the drawbacks BSG had and added a few new ones, such as characters I felt no connection with.
While I mourn the loss of another sci-fi series, I can't say I'm sorry to see this effort cancelled.
Slashdot Mirror
The UK should buy Ireland,
Yeah, and China should buy the United States
The only people who wanted the Irish to raise their corporate tax levels were other countries who had, themselves, got higher rates of these taxes. It's a given that no country has the right to determine the tax rates in another country - short of invading them. The Irish know that as did these french^H^H^H^Horeign governments. What they were saying was purely for domestic consumption - since they would not have gained anything by an increase. The companies affected would NOT have moved their operations to (say) france or germany, as those places still have higher CT rates than an increased irish rate would have been. Plus, they make it harder to employ people "flexibly", have higher costs of doing business and don't speak english.
Does the crushing worry of a businesses IT infrastructure... coming to a screeching halt make IT occupations prone to anxiety?"
.. is to do it so things work.
Things don't come "to a screeching halt" on their own. It requires talent to make the sorts of mistakes that aren't blindingly obvious and that remain hidden during the pre-prod testing (you *do* test before putting something live?). Having a resilient configuration, that is monitored properly and gives plenty of warning of a problem helps, too.
So far, in 12 years looking after this current setup, I've never had an unscheduled call outside working hours. The problem with that is that it makes me look invisible. It's hard to convince "management" that the systems don't look after themselves and will throw novel and exotic problems if not looked after properly. But that's why we take vacations.
Just add amendments to the laws of gravity, aerodynamics and celestial mechanics and the whole rocket design process will become much easier. Surely the utah legislature can manage that, can't they? (and while they're at it, sort out Pi, too?)
some people will remain 15 for ever
Will our desktops look the same in 20 years time as they do now (and did, to a large extent 20 years ago - certainly for windows). Will we still be running x86-based hardware - albeit with solid-state mass storage instead of spinning stuff? If so, then it does sound to me like a rather boring environment for an IT enthusiast to be in. Even todays innovations: such as tablets are really just PCs sans keyboards: they still employ the same basic paradigm of applications occupying windows on a screen./
However, you never know - there could still be some development left to do. Who can say, by 2030 we might even have got up to kernel version 2.8
Hope you're encrypting your super secret stuff.
considering where it usually gets routed through.
That sounds like a piece of research that's just begging to be done.
Failed history, did we?
Err, no. I passed history (just as I passed all the subjects I took) - although there was quite a bit less of it then.
Being able to recall a bunch of facts is not the same thing as the ability to make logical deductions, work out the answers to problems or make the link between cause and effect. All this test does is check a persons memory - which is less important these days with search engines and knowledge bases. What would make a better test would be to present a problem and see how people deduce the answer, not just discover how much time they waste reading industry publications.
By exaggerating the very trait that cyber-criminals value in themselves (i.e. their intelligence, cunning, abilities etc.) all thepolice are doing is rewarding them - the jail term notwithstanding. Personally I think a bigger deterrent for cyber-criminals would be if the police publicly ridiculed their efforts and humiliated them. For example: "This was a particularly inept attack that had FAIL written all over it. My 6 year-old writes better hacks than these people and their idea was just so lame I can't believe anyone with more intelligence than a tomato plant would ever think they could get away with it.". However, that then begs the question: "well why did it take yo so long to catch them?" --- But we all know the answer to that one.
this looks like prime content for the humans that would fail it, too.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the world of the cyber-criminal is wholly populated by geniuses who have "gone bad", or the sorts of people that James Bond regularly vanquishes. Where are all the averagely intelligent, nondescript, stupid-but-lucky criminals who stalk the world of online, as they do the ordinary underworld?
The answer, I suspect, is that they're the very same people who are described above, but who's skills are exaggerated by police forces all over the world in an attempt at self-aggrandisement. To make their own lucky breaks appear to be much more significant than they actually were. Just as anglers everywhere have stories about the "massive" catches they made when no-one else was around I reckon the police are pursuing the same policy to try and convince the public that they, too are masterminds. Hmmm.
Mankind evolved naked, so presumably wearing trousers also has an insulating effect on the scrotum and therefore increases testicle temperatures. How come we never hear about the "male health" dangers of getting dressed?
It's cunningly disguised as a small island with a chimney on top
Over time, I could see the percentage claimed back from sharers rising, as copyright owners eschew traditional sales channels and rely more on infringemnt-prone web based channels, until all songs are distributed "virally" and (somehow) everyone pays the few pennies each that actually goes to the writers & performers - and the record companies become irrelevant and fade away.
For example. Why can't the Cylons speak? We see in Caprica that the little, bitty, household robots can communicate with their masters, so why not the later, more advanced, bigger Cyclon versions, too? You can't explain the science in BSG because you'd go mad trying to rationalise it all and you'd have to assume that your readers were uncritical, credulous idiots who will believe something just because someone from the TV wrote it.
The problem is that if your site depends on advertising, and eyeballs being pushed to your site from the search engines to view that advertising, then google effectively owns you. If they decide to change their search ranking algorithm - which is famously opaque so you drop off page #1 you're screwed. it's happened to lots of companies in the past and it happens to lots more every day.
By having an income stream which is independent of advertising revenue, such as a subscription based business model your business automatically becomes much less vulnerable to the whims and mistakes of who/whatever decides where your entry will appear in search results. You don't need people searching for your stuff to make money: your readers pay you directly.
Whether there are other search engines is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if they all go away. You still have money coming in from your pay-to-view customers. Unlike your competition who are dependent on eyeballs looking at advertisements that they see because they were searching for something and got sent to your site. You don't need to have people searching for stuff, you have loyal customers who come anyway.
And that's why a subscription model stops you being dependent on google.
By moving to a subscription model a lot of this dependency on the capriciousness of one single, search engine with less than transparent business practices has been removed - or at least hugely reduced. That in itself has got to be worth something in terms of hardening your company against unwelcome weaknesses. I guess the newspaper still has some dependency on search results to maintain its online marketing, but it must be in a less vulnerable position than its competition.
The only piece of knowledge that I can think of which was a result of the ISS is knowing that the scuttle was a really bad idea. Personally I doubt if that knowledge was worth the price paid.
Based on the low, low standards this guy seesm to be advocating, most individuals don't need to be able to read more than the back of a cereal packet, have any clue about any foreign languages, be able to write anything their spell-checkers won't fix or learn any manual skills: such as cooking (we've got microwaves), handyman (can drive to the home centre) or anything more than turning on the TV or the computer.
So what's the point in staying at school past age 10?
Administration: 12%
Mistakes: 9%
Useful work: 8%
Coverups: 11%
Pork:60%
... you're probably close enough to image the disk(s) and futz around with the data your hack is trying to access remotely. This is only a hack that would work to target a specific machine, runnning a specific O/S. Presumably before the expansion ROM tries to alter kernels it does a quick check to make sure the box is actually running the O/S and architecture it's intended for. Otherwise you'll have an awful lot of Windows users buying this card and returning it when it scrashes their PCs.
Did they manage to fill themselves up with petrol and pay the bills on their own as well?
While I mourn the loss of another sci-fi series, I can't say I'm sorry to see this effort cancelled.