Nah, that's just my general obtuseness in dealing with Slashdot's interface. I resubmitted the article three times. It kept getting stuck. The third time, my clip board lost the html tagged version and I got lazy.
My apologies, but it would be nice if Slashdot came out of the stone age and update their interface a bit. Why force people to write up those tags if its not necessary?
In the meantime, I did think of something that makes working with DNS more difficult. . ..
Its tough to eat Cheetos and use DNS at the same time. Plus, when my dogs bark at home and I am composing an email, the dog bark triggers the send command and the email gets sent prematurely.
I'm using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 right now. I've been using it for several months, and I have written a dozen articles on it. I think it works fantastic, but you definitely have to learn how to write all over again.
Out of the box it trains extremely quickly, if you do not want to train it at all you can just start talking and it will eventually catch up with you. (Note it caught catch up and not ketchup)
I started using it as a preventative means of avoiding repetitive stress injuries. I cannot use it to code, however I can definitely use it for my writing. Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I can easily push out five to 15,000 words a day. (notice it used the word five and then a number)
Ultimately it provides you very accurate writing. It's almost impossible to have a spelling error, however word substitution errors are still very common. If you attempt to compare your typing accuracy versus your dictation accuracy, you will often see spelling errors in the typing and word substitution errors in the dictation.
That means that when you go back and edit your own work you have to spend a good deal more time editing because you're not used to editing the type of dictation errors that you make because you have years of experience editing the normal types of spelling errors that you made.
You also have to learn how to compose sentences by speaking as opposed to composing to your fingertips. This definitely exercises a different area of your brain and I'm sure you will find that you are not as good of a writer when you speak as you all are when you type. However with practice you can get up to speed dictating and you will then definitely benefit from the ability to type at 150 words a minute without breaking a sweat, stressing out your wrists, or even suffering from eyestrain.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking definitely helps people to avoid eyestrain because you don't have to stay focused on the computer monitor while you're typing you can look around the room, or outside or anywhere. Touch diapers (s/b touch typers!) can do this also however good ergonomics dictates that you sit in positions that align your body correctly to avoid repetitive stress injuries and this includes pointing your face for words (forwards!) towards the computer screen.
With Dragon NaturallySpeaking I can face in any direction I like in the program will keep up.
Downside
it does substitute words and on occasion it skips words entirely. I run at least a gigabyte of RAM in my computer and I was would suggest double that amount. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a bit of a resource hog, however it's worth it and it's not as bad as Firefox.
I should have purchased it years ago and definitely do not regret the purchase nor my new attempts to learn how to write all over again. I had to learn to write with pencil and paper, and then with pen and paper and then with a manual typewriter and then with an electric typewriter and then with my trs 80 and then a laptop and my treo and yada yada yada
I can sure learn to do it with my voice.
Zak,
You are correct. Should be $4.5m per month not $45m per month.
My son doesn't listen to me either the first time that I tell him his math work has an error. Apparently, the condition is genetic. - brett
The penalty and interest mechanism at the IRS is stacked in favor of the IRS and set up to severely intimidate people to pay their taxes in full and on time
Its very very easy for the penalties and interest to double the tax liability when someone owes back taxes
The more time that passes the more this arithmetic growth displays itself(keep in mind I did not compound the interest nor the penalties in the simple example
As my Reality Check indicates, this usually gets negotiated away, hence the lack of publicity on the topic. It does the IRS no good to publish the fact that they will negotiate it away, and it does the company no good to publish a potentially larger bill.
So trying to identify the middle ground will not be easy. Symantec will have to negotiate both its tax position on both tax claims(Veritas & Symantec). Once they have settled on an amount of back taxes with the IRS, they'll have to prove they were not evading income taxes, ergo just a simple mistake.
Then they can review the penalties and negotiate that away. Both sides will look at the cost of taking it to court, legal resources and costs and a number of other factors
My simple example shows the upper bounds of the claim. If Symantec negotiates the $1b claim down to say $600m, they will still need to negotiate the penalties and interest too. Which could indicate a final payment around $1b or more anyway.
My apologies for crappy formatting on original comment:
There's a more thorough version of this story at Red Herring
There are two parts to this
Veritas claim $900m
Symantec claim $100m
Total of $1b
If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin.However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid. So if we lump the Veritas portion in at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006.
That's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded)
Plus interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest
Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts)
This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties.
Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties.
That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest.
Symantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges.
However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly.
No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already).
Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas. I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.
There's a more thorough version of this story at Red Herring http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16541&hed =Symantec+Faces+Hefty+Tax+Billor=Industries&subsec tor=SecurityAndDefense
There are two parts to this
Veritas claim $900m
Symantec claim $100 m
That's a total of $1b
If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin.
However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid.
so Veritas if we lump it all at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006
So that's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded)
Plust interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest
Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts)
This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties
Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties
That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest
Add it all up
Veritas tax claim $900m
Veritas Penalties $2.295B
Veritas Interest $229m
Symantec tax claim $100m
Symantec Penalties $75m
Symantec Interest $7.5m
Grand Total Potential claim - $3.607 Billion
Reality Check
Symantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges. However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly.
No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already).
Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas.
I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.
I'd love to chime in here with some great examples, however, I've received a lot of death threats from a Chinese ODM company. (Not Lenovo)
Its been my experience that some (hopefully not all) Chinese ODM's operate in a realm of purest marketplace capitalism with no oversight or controls. As such they are pretty much free to do what they want.
In America we have the perspective that we can appeal to their greed. Ergo, if we give them enough incentive with profits and opportunity they will take the right steps, follow the right procedures, obey the laws etc.
I've learned first hand, that this is not always the case. Sometimes the ODM has the capability to sell the products on the black market (not legally, they just don't care). So if they have an outlet for their goods, you cannot appeal to their greed. They'd rather take all the shortcuts in the world to make a fast buck, plus a little bribery on the side, than do things right so that they can make five bucks down the road.
Its basically a slash and burn type of methodology.
Lenovo may or may not be in this category, however, too many people that were not xenophobic have gotten a taste for this type of mis-behavior. At the end of the day as a corporate executive, you rely on your computer. Would you trust a company known for avoiding shortcuts, or one without a track record?
I've got a T40 that's got some quirks (mostly due to a crappy image that my IT team supports) but all in all its one of the best computers I've had. Its about 2 years old. I've had terrible experiences with Dell's and average to poor experiences with HP's. I'm not going to gamble on a Lenovo until they have proved out their ability to deliver.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, that's just my general obtuseness in dealing with Slashdot's interface. I resubmitted the article three times. It kept getting stuck. The third time, my clip board lost the html tagged version and I got lazy.
My apologies, but it would be nice if Slashdot came out of the stone age and update their interface a bit. Why force people to write up those tags if its not necessary?
In the meantime, I did think of something that makes working with DNS more difficult. . . .
Its tough to eat Cheetos and use DNS at the same time. Plus, when my dogs bark at home and I am composing an email, the dog bark triggers the send command and the email gets sent prematurely.
I'm using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 right now. I've been using it for several months, and I have written a dozen articles on it. I think it works fantastic, but you definitely have to learn how to write all over again. Out of the box it trains extremely quickly, if you do not want to train it at all you can just start talking and it will eventually catch up with you. (Note it caught catch up and not ketchup) I started using it as a preventative means of avoiding repetitive stress injuries. I cannot use it to code, however I can definitely use it for my writing. Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I can easily push out five to 15,000 words a day. (notice it used the word five and then a number) Ultimately it provides you very accurate writing. It's almost impossible to have a spelling error, however word substitution errors are still very common. If you attempt to compare your typing accuracy versus your dictation accuracy, you will often see spelling errors in the typing and word substitution errors in the dictation. That means that when you go back and edit your own work you have to spend a good deal more time editing because you're not used to editing the type of dictation errors that you make because you have years of experience editing the normal types of spelling errors that you made. You also have to learn how to compose sentences by speaking as opposed to composing to your fingertips. This definitely exercises a different area of your brain and I'm sure you will find that you are not as good of a writer when you speak as you all are when you type. However with practice you can get up to speed dictating and you will then definitely benefit from the ability to type at 150 words a minute without breaking a sweat, stressing out your wrists, or even suffering from eyestrain. Dragon NaturallySpeaking definitely helps people to avoid eyestrain because you don't have to stay focused on the computer monitor while you're typing you can look around the room, or outside or anywhere. Touch diapers (s/b touch typers!) can do this also however good ergonomics dictates that you sit in positions that align your body correctly to avoid repetitive stress injuries and this includes pointing your face for words (forwards!) towards the computer screen. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking I can face in any direction I like in the program will keep up. Downside it does substitute words and on occasion it skips words entirely. I run at least a gigabyte of RAM in my computer and I was would suggest double that amount. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a bit of a resource hog, however it's worth it and it's not as bad as Firefox. I should have purchased it years ago and definitely do not regret the purchase nor my new attempts to learn how to write all over again. I had to learn to write with pencil and paper, and then with pen and paper and then with a manual typewriter and then with an electric typewriter and then with my trs 80 and then a laptop and my treo and yada yada yada I can sure learn to do it with my voice.
Per Zak's catch on my math error,
The total claim with penalties and interest (not compounded) would be an additional $229m not $2.29b
Still a substantial chunck of money for Symantec.
Please note I did not compound interest nor penalties. The IRS does.
Zak, You are correct. Should be $4.5m per month not $45m per month. My son doesn't listen to me either the first time that I tell him his math work has an error. Apparently, the condition is genetic. - brett
All very astute points.
The penalty and interest mechanism at the IRS is stacked in favor of the IRS and set up to severely intimidate people to pay their taxes in full and on time
Its very very easy for the penalties and interest to double the tax liability when someone owes back taxes
The more time that passes the more this arithmetic growth displays itself(keep in mind I did not compound the interest nor the penalties in the simple example
As my Reality Check indicates, this usually gets negotiated away, hence the lack of publicity on the topic. It does the IRS no good to publish the fact that they will negotiate it away, and it does the company no good to publish a potentially larger bill.
So trying to identify the middle ground will not be easy. Symantec will have to negotiate both its tax position on both tax claims(Veritas & Symantec). Once they have settled on an amount of back taxes with the IRS, they'll have to prove they were not evading income taxes, ergo just a simple mistake.
Then they can review the penalties and negotiate that away. Both sides will look at the cost of taking it to court, legal resources and costs and a number of other factors
My simple example shows the upper bounds of the claim. If Symantec negotiates the $1b claim down to say $600m, they will still need to negotiate the penalties and interest too. Which could indicate a final payment around $1b or more anyway.
My apologies for crappy formatting on original comment:
There's a more thorough version of this story at Red Herring
There are two parts to this
Veritas claim $900m
Symantec claim $100m
Total of $1b
If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin.However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid. So if we lump the Veritas portion in at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006.
That's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded)
Plus interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest
Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts)
This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties.
Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties.
That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest.
Add it all upVeritas tax claim $900m
Veritas Penalties $2.295B
Veritas Interest $229m
Symantec tax claim $100m
Symantec Penalties $75m
Symantec Interest $7.5m
Grand Total Potential claim - $3.607 Billion
Reality CheckSymantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges.
However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly.
No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already).
Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas. I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.
There's a more thorough version of this story at Red Herring http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16541&hed =Symantec+Faces+Hefty+Tax+Billor=Industries&subsec tor=SecurityAndDefense
There are two parts to this
Veritas claim $900m
Symantec claim $100 m
That's a total of $1b
If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin.
However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid.
so Veritas if we lump it all at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006
So that's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded)
Plust interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest
Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts)
This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties
Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties
That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest
Add it all up
Veritas tax claim $900m
Veritas Penalties $2.295B
Veritas Interest $229m
Symantec tax claim $100m
Symantec Penalties $75m
Symantec Interest $7.5m
Grand Total Potential claim - $3.607 Billion
Reality Check
Symantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges. However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly.
No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already).
Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas.
I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.
I'd love to chime in here with some great examples, however, I've received a lot of death threats from a Chinese ODM company. (Not Lenovo) Its been my experience that some (hopefully not all) Chinese ODM's operate in a realm of purest marketplace capitalism with no oversight or controls. As such they are pretty much free to do what they want. In America we have the perspective that we can appeal to their greed. Ergo, if we give them enough incentive with profits and opportunity they will take the right steps, follow the right procedures, obey the laws etc. I've learned first hand, that this is not always the case. Sometimes the ODM has the capability to sell the products on the black market (not legally, they just don't care). So if they have an outlet for their goods, you cannot appeal to their greed. They'd rather take all the shortcuts in the world to make a fast buck, plus a little bribery on the side, than do things right so that they can make five bucks down the road. Its basically a slash and burn type of methodology. Lenovo may or may not be in this category, however, too many people that were not xenophobic have gotten a taste for this type of mis-behavior. At the end of the day as a corporate executive, you rely on your computer. Would you trust a company known for avoiding shortcuts, or one without a track record? I've got a T40 that's got some quirks (mostly due to a crappy image that my IT team supports) but all in all its one of the best computers I've had. Its about 2 years old. I've had terrible experiences with Dell's and average to poor experiences with HP's. I'm not going to gamble on a Lenovo until they have proved out their ability to deliver.