"Samsung wants him to come to work for them in Korea and this conflicts with Timmy boy's vision."
Cook has vision? The fact that Apple has done basically nothing since Jobs died gave me the impression that this was the exact problem, that without Jobs, there is no vision at Apple.
"Funny, however, that paying CEO's many millions of dollars is justified because it allows companies to better attract 'talent' from other companies, other industries and other countries."
No, that's stupid too.
"And whenever someone here in Australia bitches about politicians getting $200,000 - $400,000 per annum, the standard response is "but these people would be making many times that in private industry... we need to encourage them to work in public life". Then those people can fuck off to the private sector if they're not ready for public service."
Yep, that's stupid also.
"Let's find out."
No, let's not throw even more money after idiocy. Let's reduce politicians and CEO's wages.
I had the best thought ever the other day, why not tie politicians wages directly to the national average wage so that the only way politicians can become more wealthy is by increasing the wealth of the average citizen.
Here in the UK the problem with teachers is in fact that the job is too cushy relative to required levels of performance and skills. You can, with a bottom of the pile barely scraped a pass 3rd class degree earn £3k above the national average wage with fuck all real experience, and get 3 times the national average annual leave and a far better than average pension to boot as well as shorter average working hours. As such the profession attracts the most lazy inept graduates because they can get the job and enjoy a plethora of perks and have one of the best job securities to boot. In fact, in about 15 - 20 years no teacher has been struck off for incompetence despite the fact that the average across all industries is about 3% firing rate for incompetence. That means once you have the job you can't be gotten rid of.
Maybe the US and Australia has the same problems where the real issue is a desperate need for increased accountability starting from a requirement for much higher grades to weed out the lazy and more thorough performance reviews including the possibility of getting fired and in extreme cases even barred from teaching if you don't perform. Money just isn't the answer and the only effect of "trying it" would be incompetent teachers getting even more perks relative to their lack of performance. We shouldn't ever reward failure in this way, it's stupid.
"What I'm curious about is the correlation between gun-grabbers and people who want to Censor the internet."
What utter tosh.
After Newtown it was the NRA that was first to suggest internet censorship and censorship of violent video games claiming they were the problem that led to the shooting to try and move the discussion away from gun ownership law changes.
Gun toting tea partiers are also normally the first to suggest people like Assange and Snowden should be silenced via assassination.
You joke but I think it almost certainly will be blocked. I couldn't even access Flickr on my new mobile contract the other day before I got the filter removed, presumably because at some point in time something pornographic has been posted there.
I changed phone provider recently for the first time in 11 years and so the filter went on on my new provider by default.
Turns out I was blocked from looking at pictures of Lego sets on my phone.
God damn that abusive violent terrorist Lego.
But seriously, it then made me wonder - turns out a quick search on Google was all that was required to find real actual porn that wasn't blocked by the filter.
It's a complete and utter waste of time, money, and effort with no actual benefit and only detriment.
"The new cold war will be electronic and China has already proven that they are willing to do whatever is necessary to stay ahead there."
How is this the case? The only nations where we have had actual evidence of wrongdoing is the UK, US and France thanks to Snowden's leaks as well as the US and Israel for Stuxnet where we have had some official verification. For everywhere else it's just hearsay and speculation without any evidence.
We've heard a lot of bluster about China if that's what you mean, but thus far no actual evidence that it's anything more than protectionism - trying to boost trade of US tech products by discrediting China's.
That's not what a proxy war is. A proxy war is Iran/Syria funding Hezbollah attacks on Israel. If Iranians and Syrians started attacking Israel even if from Lebanon it would no longer be a proxy war.
I don't know why you keep mentioning the "English", what treatment were they bitter about exactly and from when and where in China? People in Hong Kong for example wanted to stay British when the British lease on the territory ended so I'm not sure what this English/Chinese conflict you're referring to is. Also, why was it just the English, is this mystical conflict something that the Scots/Welsh just kept out of?
Maybe you're "MakingShitUp" as you accused someone else of? Because as foreign relations go British-Chinese relations have been good for a very long time with the only exception being the few years of the Korean War in which Britain was a minor party with only 14,000 troops which is nothing, even Russia had 26,000 there, and China had 1,300,000. Britain was assisting China against Japan before America even figured out a war was going on so through that period were very close allies. The best I can guess you're gunning for are the 1800s with the Opium wars and so forth, but who knows, here, all through the 1900s to the present day you'll see Britain was pretty much an ally of China bar the Korean war despite the fact China as a country has changed in both boundaries and governing style many times over in this period:
Even now that's true, that's why we work with China, rather than against it. There's a good reason Britain has become the first foreign nation to be able to trade sizeable amounts of China's currency in the last year and why we've got such strategist partnerships with firms like Huawei rather than just outright banning their kit from all public sector contracts. I wont say I fully trust the Chinese, yet it's clear with Prism I also have no reason to fully trust the Americans either but it's nice to have good relations with major nations and groupings of nations across the globe.
There are numerous reasons for Chinese distaste of America but a few prominent ones related to your post are firstly that "but the US has generally fought against their enemies or only indirectly in proxy wars" is ignorant of the truth just a little bit. The fact is that the US was the main opposing force to North Korea in the Korean War but on Korea's side were the Chinese. Over 1 million of them in fact.
The North Koreans were smaller in number than China (they had about 1/6th the numbers), South Korea and the US. In other words the Korean war was more like a direct war between China and the US/South Korea. You had just under 1million Americans/South Koreans combined against 1.3 million Chinese and only about 250,000 North Koreans. Calling it an indirect proxy war is a bit stupid. There's nothing indirect about 300,000 Americans with 600,000 South Koreans facing off against 1.3 million Chinese and only 250,000 South Koreans.
Another reason for Chinese distaste of America is it's support for Japan. Chinese distaste for the Japanese is still relatively high in part because Japan never really managed to do away with the nationalist sentiment there after the war unlike German that genuinely turned a corner. The result to this day is a non-negligible number of Japanese who refuse to accept wrongdoing in World War II and the resultant lack of willingness from successive Japanese governments to do anything about this. That's why we saw massive protests in China that weren't mere communist party stunts but genuine expressions of anger over the rising tensions surrounding the islands they both dispute ownership of recently. The Chinese see this as an extension of that worst kind of nationalism that Japan never truly shook off.
There's then the Taiwan question, many mainlanders believe it should be a fully integrated part of China proper, but the US has vowed to protect the will of the Taiwanese people (which is IMO not a bad thing, but I'm explaining here where the Chinese distaste comes from). The fact it has stationed carriers there largely for this exact purpose is seen as somewhat of a provocation - that's kind of what happens when you station a battle group or two off a foreign nation's coast.
Of course, American hypocrisy in constantly complaining about Chinese hackers and Chinese firms peddling backdoored hardware doesn't do much for relations either, especially when it's now clear that America has been snooping on everyone's data and funding hacking of Chinese institutions to boot. The Chinese therefore see the US rhetoric over the supposed Chinese cyber security threat as mere protectionism, and that is precisely why the Chinese will be less likely to buy US electronic goods - why would they when the products they create, that give them their jobs have been smeared so brutally in the US?
So yes whilst your cutesy personal anecdote is all well and good that simply says that they're decent enough to be nice to you as an individual - they do that because they're mostly respectful hospitable people. It doesn't say anything about their feelings towards your country in general.
I also note you shifted focus to East/South East Asia in your final paragraph, why was that? are the feelings towards America in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and all the other 'stans in the area inconvenient to your point? What was that you criticised the GP over? Something about picking and choosing Asian nations to suit your "pet" theory? Even ignoring that you seem to have skipped countries like Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia and Laos, relations between then and the US are better, but it can hardly be said that the people of those nations are particularly fans of the US.
Doesn't matter what the article says if it's wrong. Listen to what Cameron said himself. He wants to role this out via legislation to every ISP in the UK.
Point is if you're in a job where you're dealing with that much data then you should also be competent enough to work round the limitation in one of a number of trivial ways.
If that limitation is a real actual problem for you then you shouldn't be dealing with such large data sets anyway because you obviously lack the pre-requisite knowledge to do so.
No the system is not opt-in, the filtering is opt-in, there's a difference.
The system is ALWAYS monitoring what sites you visit whether you opt-in or opt-out, it just depends on whether you want to be blocked from blacklisted sites as to whether it replaces the response to those web requests.
This means that even if I opt-out it's still monitoring every site I visit.
"The other neat thing that dogs can do is figure out what you mean when you point at something"
I think it depends on the dog, my Lab/Collie crosses have no problem with this, but my parents Jack Russel/Doberman cross (yes, really, and no we don't know) just walks up and sniffs and then licks your finger if you point at something.
I find dog intelligence does vary a lot from breed to breed.
It's not just that, as companies have been cutting staff they've also been looking for ways to do more with less staff and turns out that that's where computer automation comes in. The reality is there are some jobs out there whereby you can hire one developer and have him/her write software that will automate the job of 10 people or whatever. It's cheaper to hire a developer and automate, than to keep paying people to do an easily automated job.
That's why software has been fairly recession proof. There have been redundancies of course, but for each redundancy there's been plenty of other companies looking to hire to automate.
The mobile boom has helped as well of course as you say.
An industry average of unemployed people as would be expected pre-recession.
i.e. if under normal economic conditions the unemployment rate is 3%, then software development is at that level.
If you're expecting it to mean 100% employment for all software developers then no that's not the case, because in every industry there'll be a few percent of incompetents who are just always unemployable no matter how desperate that industry gets.
Right but the point is that he did achieve something and pardoning him highlights why it's wrong to look down on people because of their sexuality - because by writing anyone off whoever they are you risk losing the next genius from society that can contribute immense value.
If you just did it as a blanket pardon with no special mention then people would neither hear about it or care. By focussing on Turing you hold up and highlight one of the most perfect examples of the harm that homophobia can do to society and have a perfect figurehead for demonstrating why it is wrong, why it is a problem, and why it should be stamped out.
It's easy for all the gay haters to dismiss a blanket neutral pardon with no special mentions, but it's kinda hard for them to dismiss what happened to one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century who also played a major part in helping win the war but who suffered because of their sort of attitude.
No it doesn't make sense when you put it like that because around the same time they said that they pardoned a few hundred World War I soldiers posthumously who were executed for cowardice even though they were mentally traumatised (shellshocked).
Yet those World War I soldiers were also properly sentenced under the laws at the time and made sense in the historical context of the most bloody violent war that had ever happened where there was neither an understanding of or any facilities to treat mental health issues.
I'm glad the World War I soldiers were pardoned but it highlights the hypocrisy that they used the excuse they did when it came to pardoning people convincted of homosexuality.
Really, the bit you highlighted wasn't a good reason in that context but a mere excuse to appease the gay hating far right elements that make up a rather large and certainly the most vocal portion of the Conservative party. That's literally the only reason they didn't do it given that those same far right elements were alright with pardoning the World War I shellshock victims that were executed for the then crime of cowardice.
I agree the argument you highlighted would be a valid one if it was pursued consistently, but as it's not it's invalid because once you start picking and choosing what you do and don't pardon and ignore the historical context it makes no sense to use that argument.
Nothing, that's exactly what happened under Bush regarding the Iraq war. Some hard drives just went "missing".
As someone else said you can always hope that someone recognises something is missing or destroy but for many organisations it'll be a cost-benefit analysis. What's going to hurt the organisation more, the revelations themselves, or the data proving the revelations themselves being found to have disappeared?
Say Obama ordered the NSA to assassinate the Queen of England, say someone leaked this but there was no proof, what would hurt him more, evidence proving that fact he ordered it or a revelation that no evidence could be found but may or may not have existed at some point? The latter leaves room for doubt in the accusation so is always going to be a safer route than releasing the evidence.
Contrast this to a story of say, for example, Microsoft being engaged in financial irregularities, in this case they'd be better off releasing the data and implicating themselves and saying sorry and promising to do better because the excuse "Oh we kinda lost all our financial records" would probably hurt them more because investors would be scared shitless of investing in a company that just "loses" it's financial records. Especially if you weigh in the risk of whistleblowers.
Performance can be an issue outside of just bandwidth too, I worked somewhere that used Google docs once and as soon as they moved a decent size (but not exceptional by any means) spreadsheet from Excel to Google Docs it just killed the browser for minutes until Javascript could kick it into gear and it did this with any browser.
Yep, and it works vice versa too. What if your "cloud" data centre suffers downtime, what if your connection to it suffers downtime? Suddenly your staff can't do any work because you have nothing local anymore.
Article sounds like a cloud services sales pitch tbh.
Slashdot Mirror
"Samsung wants him to come to work for them in Korea and this conflicts with Timmy boy's vision."
Cook has vision? The fact that Apple has done basically nothing since Jobs died gave me the impression that this was the exact problem, that without Jobs, there is no vision at Apple.
"Funny, however, that paying CEO's many millions of dollars is justified because it allows companies to better attract 'talent' from other companies, other industries and other countries."
No, that's stupid too.
"And whenever someone here in Australia bitches about politicians getting $200,000 - $400,000 per annum, the standard response is "but these people would be making many times that in private industry ... we need to encourage them to work in public life". Then those people can fuck off to the private sector if they're not ready for public service."
Yep, that's stupid also.
"Let's find out."
No, let's not throw even more money after idiocy. Let's reduce politicians and CEO's wages.
I had the best thought ever the other day, why not tie politicians wages directly to the national average wage so that the only way politicians can become more wealthy is by increasing the wealth of the average citizen.
Here in the UK the problem with teachers is in fact that the job is too cushy relative to required levels of performance and skills. You can, with a bottom of the pile barely scraped a pass 3rd class degree earn £3k above the national average wage with fuck all real experience, and get 3 times the national average annual leave and a far better than average pension to boot as well as shorter average working hours. As such the profession attracts the most lazy inept graduates because they can get the job and enjoy a plethora of perks and have one of the best job securities to boot. In fact, in about 15 - 20 years no teacher has been struck off for incompetence despite the fact that the average across all industries is about 3% firing rate for incompetence. That means once you have the job you can't be gotten rid of.
Maybe the US and Australia has the same problems where the real issue is a desperate need for increased accountability starting from a requirement for much higher grades to weed out the lazy and more thorough performance reviews including the possibility of getting fired and in extreme cases even barred from teaching if you don't perform. Money just isn't the answer and the only effect of "trying it" would be incompetent teachers getting even more perks relative to their lack of performance. We shouldn't ever reward failure in this way, it's stupid.
In Alaska they also think they can see Russia from their bedroom windows.
"What I'm curious about is the correlation between gun-grabbers and people who want to Censor the internet."
What utter tosh.
After Newtown it was the NRA that was first to suggest internet censorship and censorship of violent video games claiming they were the problem that led to the shooting to try and move the discussion away from gun ownership law changes.
Gun toting tea partiers are also normally the first to suggest people like Assange and Snowden should be silenced via assassination.
You joke but I think it almost certainly will be blocked. I couldn't even access Flickr on my new mobile contract the other day before I got the filter removed, presumably because at some point in time something pornographic has been posted there.
I changed phone provider recently for the first time in 11 years and so the filter went on on my new provider by default.
Turns out I was blocked from looking at pictures of Lego sets on my phone.
God damn that abusive violent terrorist Lego.
But seriously, it then made me wonder - turns out a quick search on Google was all that was required to find real actual porn that wasn't blocked by the filter.
It's a complete and utter waste of time, money, and effort with no actual benefit and only detriment.
"The new cold war will be electronic and China has already proven that they are willing to do whatever is necessary to stay ahead there."
How is this the case? The only nations where we have had actual evidence of wrongdoing is the UK, US and France thanks to Snowden's leaks as well as the US and Israel for Stuxnet where we have had some official verification. For everywhere else it's just hearsay and speculation without any evidence.
We've heard a lot of bluster about China if that's what you mean, but thus far no actual evidence that it's anything more than protectionism - trying to boost trade of US tech products by discrediting China's.
That's not what a proxy war is. A proxy war is Iran/Syria funding Hezbollah attacks on Israel. If Iranians and Syrians started attacking Israel even if from Lebanon it would no longer be a proxy war.
I don't know why you keep mentioning the "English", what treatment were they bitter about exactly and from when and where in China? People in Hong Kong for example wanted to stay British when the British lease on the territory ended so I'm not sure what this English/Chinese conflict you're referring to is. Also, why was it just the English, is this mystical conflict something that the Scots/Welsh just kept out of?
Maybe you're "MakingShitUp" as you accused someone else of? Because as foreign relations go British-Chinese relations have been good for a very long time with the only exception being the few years of the Korean War in which Britain was a minor party with only 14,000 troops which is nothing, even Russia had 26,000 there, and China had 1,300,000. Britain was assisting China against Japan before America even figured out a war was going on so through that period were very close allies. The best I can guess you're gunning for are the 1800s with the Opium wars and so forth, but who knows, here, all through the 1900s to the present day you'll see Britain was pretty much an ally of China bar the Korean war despite the fact China as a country has changed in both boundaries and governing style many times over in this period:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_relations#Between_the_UK_and_the_People.27s_Republic_of_China_.281949_-_.29
Even now that's true, that's why we work with China, rather than against it. There's a good reason Britain has become the first foreign nation to be able to trade sizeable amounts of China's currency in the last year and why we've got such strategist partnerships with firms like Huawei rather than just outright banning their kit from all public sector contracts. I wont say I fully trust the Chinese, yet it's clear with Prism I also have no reason to fully trust the Americans either but it's nice to have good relations with major nations and groupings of nations across the globe.
There are numerous reasons for Chinese distaste of America but a few prominent ones related to your post are firstly that "but the US has generally fought against their enemies or only indirectly in proxy wars" is ignorant of the truth just a little bit. The fact is that the US was the main opposing force to North Korea in the Korean War but on Korea's side were the Chinese. Over 1 million of them in fact.
The North Koreans were smaller in number than China (they had about 1/6th the numbers), South Korea and the US. In other words the Korean war was more like a direct war between China and the US/South Korea. You had just under 1million Americans/South Koreans combined against 1.3 million Chinese and only about 250,000 North Koreans. Calling it an indirect proxy war is a bit stupid. There's nothing indirect about 300,000 Americans with 600,000 South Koreans facing off against 1.3 million Chinese and only 250,000 South Koreans.
Another reason for Chinese distaste of America is it's support for Japan. Chinese distaste for the Japanese is still relatively high in part because Japan never really managed to do away with the nationalist sentiment there after the war unlike German that genuinely turned a corner. The result to this day is a non-negligible number of Japanese who refuse to accept wrongdoing in World War II and the resultant lack of willingness from successive Japanese governments to do anything about this. That's why we saw massive protests in China that weren't mere communist party stunts but genuine expressions of anger over the rising tensions surrounding the islands they both dispute ownership of recently. The Chinese see this as an extension of that worst kind of nationalism that Japan never truly shook off.
There's then the Taiwan question, many mainlanders believe it should be a fully integrated part of China proper, but the US has vowed to protect the will of the Taiwanese people (which is IMO not a bad thing, but I'm explaining here where the Chinese distaste comes from). The fact it has stationed carriers there largely for this exact purpose is seen as somewhat of a provocation - that's kind of what happens when you station a battle group or two off a foreign nation's coast.
Of course, American hypocrisy in constantly complaining about Chinese hackers and Chinese firms peddling backdoored hardware doesn't do much for relations either, especially when it's now clear that America has been snooping on everyone's data and funding hacking of Chinese institutions to boot. The Chinese therefore see the US rhetoric over the supposed Chinese cyber security threat as mere protectionism, and that is precisely why the Chinese will be less likely to buy US electronic goods - why would they when the products they create, that give them their jobs have been smeared so brutally in the US?
So yes whilst your cutesy personal anecdote is all well and good that simply says that they're decent enough to be nice to you as an individual - they do that because they're mostly respectful hospitable people. It doesn't say anything about their feelings towards your country in general.
I also note you shifted focus to East/South East Asia in your final paragraph, why was that? are the feelings towards America in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and all the other 'stans in the area inconvenient to your point? What was that you criticised the GP over? Something about picking and choosing Asian nations to suit your "pet" theory? Even ignoring that you seem to have skipped countries like Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia and Laos, relations between then and the US are better, but it can hardly be said that the people of those nations are particularly fans of the US.
Many things in computing are stupid hangovers from bygone eras unfortunately.
Doesn't matter what the article says if it's wrong. Listen to what Cameron said himself. He wants to role this out via legislation to every ISP in the UK.
That's unfortunate given that Microsoft makes way more money as a company and for their investors and staff than Oracle does.
Point is if you're in a job where you're dealing with that much data then you should also be competent enough to work round the limitation in one of a number of trivial ways.
If that limitation is a real actual problem for you then you shouldn't be dealing with such large data sets anyway because you obviously lack the pre-requisite knowledge to do so.
No the system is not opt-in, the filtering is opt-in, there's a difference.
The system is ALWAYS monitoring what sites you visit whether you opt-in or opt-out, it just depends on whether you want to be blocked from blacklisted sites as to whether it replaces the response to those web requests.
This means that even if I opt-out it's still monitoring every site I visit.
Wrong. This system is the one Cameron wants rolled out to every ISP via legislation.
What? There's nothing about an add method that forces it to implement addition any more than there is for an overloaded operator.
Your argument makes absolutely zero sense.
"The other neat thing that dogs can do is figure out what you mean when you point at something"
I think it depends on the dog, my Lab/Collie crosses have no problem with this, but my parents Jack Russel/Doberman cross (yes, really, and no we don't know) just walks up and sniffs and then licks your finger if you point at something.
I find dog intelligence does vary a lot from breed to breed.
It's not just that, as companies have been cutting staff they've also been looking for ways to do more with less staff and turns out that that's where computer automation comes in. The reality is there are some jobs out there whereby you can hire one developer and have him/her write software that will automate the job of 10 people or whatever. It's cheaper to hire a developer and automate, than to keep paying people to do an easily automated job.
That's why software has been fairly recession proof. There have been redundancies of course, but for each redundancy there's been plenty of other companies looking to hire to automate.
The mobile boom has helped as well of course as you say.
An industry average of unemployed people as would be expected pre-recession.
i.e. if under normal economic conditions the unemployment rate is 3%, then software development is at that level.
If you're expecting it to mean 100% employment for all software developers then no that's not the case, because in every industry there'll be a few percent of incompetents who are just always unemployable no matter how desperate that industry gets.
Right but the point is that he did achieve something and pardoning him highlights why it's wrong to look down on people because of their sexuality - because by writing anyone off whoever they are you risk losing the next genius from society that can contribute immense value.
If you just did it as a blanket pardon with no special mention then people would neither hear about it or care. By focussing on Turing you hold up and highlight one of the most perfect examples of the harm that homophobia can do to society and have a perfect figurehead for demonstrating why it is wrong, why it is a problem, and why it should be stamped out.
It's easy for all the gay haters to dismiss a blanket neutral pardon with no special mentions, but it's kinda hard for them to dismiss what happened to one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century who also played a major part in helping win the war but who suffered because of their sort of attitude.
No it doesn't make sense when you put it like that because around the same time they said that they pardoned a few hundred World War I soldiers posthumously who were executed for cowardice even though they were mentally traumatised (shellshocked).
Yet those World War I soldiers were also properly sentenced under the laws at the time and made sense in the historical context of the most bloody violent war that had ever happened where there was neither an understanding of or any facilities to treat mental health issues.
I'm glad the World War I soldiers were pardoned but it highlights the hypocrisy that they used the excuse they did when it came to pardoning people convincted of homosexuality.
Really, the bit you highlighted wasn't a good reason in that context but a mere excuse to appease the gay hating far right elements that make up a rather large and certainly the most vocal portion of the Conservative party. That's literally the only reason they didn't do it given that those same far right elements were alright with pardoning the World War I shellshock victims that were executed for the then crime of cowardice.
I agree the argument you highlighted would be a valid one if it was pursued consistently, but as it's not it's invalid because once you start picking and choosing what you do and don't pardon and ignore the historical context it makes no sense to use that argument.
Or if you want to plant a bomb at an airport, take a minimum wage job as a valet and let the car owner get blamed when it detonates.
Nothing, that's exactly what happened under Bush regarding the Iraq war. Some hard drives just went "missing".
As someone else said you can always hope that someone recognises something is missing or destroy but for many organisations it'll be a cost-benefit analysis. What's going to hurt the organisation more, the revelations themselves, or the data proving the revelations themselves being found to have disappeared?
Say Obama ordered the NSA to assassinate the Queen of England, say someone leaked this but there was no proof, what would hurt him more, evidence proving that fact he ordered it or a revelation that no evidence could be found but may or may not have existed at some point? The latter leaves room for doubt in the accusation so is always going to be a safer route than releasing the evidence.
Contrast this to a story of say, for example, Microsoft being engaged in financial irregularities, in this case they'd be better off releasing the data and implicating themselves and saying sorry and promising to do better because the excuse "Oh we kinda lost all our financial records" would probably hurt them more because investors would be scared shitless of investing in a company that just "loses" it's financial records. Especially if you weigh in the risk of whistleblowers.
Performance can be an issue outside of just bandwidth too, I worked somewhere that used Google docs once and as soon as they moved a decent size (but not exceptional by any means) spreadsheet from Excel to Google Docs it just killed the browser for minutes until Javascript could kick it into gear and it did this with any browser.
Yep, and it works vice versa too. What if your "cloud" data centre suffers downtime, what if your connection to it suffers downtime? Suddenly your staff can't do any work because you have nothing local anymore.
Article sounds like a cloud services sales pitch tbh.