Reticularium - Notes

Translate API

2011-12-17T10:07:00+01:00

The “En|Ru” link on the right of article titles on this site is supposed to 1) get translated version of the article from the database 2) if it’s empty, use Google Translate API.

Part #2 has never worked: the API was being changed and I was lazy to keep up with it. After it’d been changed to v2 I decided that I’d better wait until it’s become stable. Well, it has become stable now I believe but it’s also become a paid service :)

Well, I can’t say it’s so much of a pity: En/Ru machine translation is so ugly that it is almost unusable.

M-Script's new home

2011-07-31T11:16:00+02:00

M-Script project has been moved to its new home: http://m-script.org

It’s been under heavy development lately: old scripts have been renewed and enhanced, folders reorganized, files moved to proper locations, default monitors made more informative.

It’s also been published on Github

Imagine a car...

2010-05-23T09:00:00+02:00

... that drives you where it’s told to and is able to repair itself (at least restore itself back to the last known working state). It sounds cool, but it makes you a passenger rather than a driver.

... that has it’s hood melded shut, and if engine fails all you can do is replace your car. Sounds like a good idea, but think about this:

each time you replace the car, you lose all your customizations.
what if it’s impossible to replace for some reason (e.g. you are on a wilderness trip)?
would you really enjoy to own such a car? wouldn’t you feel like an idiot not allowed even to look under the car hood?
you would pay for even a simple maintenance and repair that you could do yourself otherwise; if you couldn’t, there would be other owners’ communities to help you; there would be such communities for hood-melded-shut cars as well, but they would discuss only which repair shop is better instead of how to do it.
you would pay more to fix more complex issues because only a service company having a special access license granted by manufacturer could help you, or they would merely charge you more because they would know that you couldn’t do it yourself even if you wanted to.

... that has hidden compartments that you have no access to. In theory, only manufacturer has. But in practice, criminals get access easily, and each such car is being used by criminals. There are companies that offer various products aimed to protect such cars from criminals, but criminals are always a step ahead. And such cars owners have to pay extra money for those products. But those products make things even worse: they make such cars owners believe that their cars are now safe, which is far from real.

... that is so extremely fool-proof, that each time you want to e.g. turn right, the car first asks you if you really meant to do this. Perhaps you wanted to turn left but confused left and right? Only after you confirm your decision, it allows to actually turn right.

... that doesn’t allow you to just do things like open doors, fasten seat belts and the like. You have to do everything via a good-looking central console named GUI that is not an addition like in other cars, but the only controlling device for everything. This solution looks friendly, but it has two main disadvantages: 1) if this GUI doesn’t have a control for some operation, this operation can’t be done at all (though sometimes you can buy 3rd party product that adds needed control to the console), and 2) if GUI fails, you can’t even unfasten your seat belts. If you are not fastened, you can re-initialize the controlling device; to do this you have to stop the engine, exit the car and then enter again and start the engine. If you are fastened, there is a special button named “Hard Reset” that throws you out of the car and then restarts everything.

Google transliteration

2010-04-09T21:42:00+02:00

Funny to see how my name is transliterated to :

Persian:

یگر سیمونوو

Greek:

Ηγορ Συμονοβ

Hebrew:

יגור סימונוב

Russian:

Игорь Симонов

Hm, looks familiar :)

(If you see some weird squares instead of good-looking symbols, try to set UTF-8 encoding manually. If doesn’t help, you don’t have proper fonts)

Waiting for Japanese. I want to see my name in hieroglyphs :)

Update – Japanese:

There are many variants, just some of them:

いごr しものv

以後ｒ下のｖ

囲碁ｒ霜のｖ

You Have 0 Friends

2010-04-09T20:15:00+02:00

Several days ago I read an article on cyberpsychology. It’s a research of Facebook users social relationships, quite interesting despite scientific language. You know, all those “uncertainty reduction theory” or “hyperpersonal relationships”.

I remembered this article (well, except that I wanted to boast that I read scientific articles :) ) because of the South Park episode You Have 0 Friends aired two days ago. It’s ingenious. It not only describes the same as that article and even much more, but does it funny, emotional and even philosophical way.

Our cloud(less) future

2010-03-06T12:26:00+01:00

There’s been much buzz lately about cloud computing. As happened with many other good technological things, it is turning now from something that only geeks were playing with to something where corporations see their future revenue.

Probably the best illustration of this: Steve Ballmer said that by next year, 90% of Microsoft employees will be working on cloud matters.

Ballmer also said that eventually all software will be in the cloud.

Do you remember the Windows 95 startup image with Microsoft logo in the clouds? Back in 90s, they knew!

Hacking a movie

2010-02-27T00:21:00+01:00

I like HD, it makes possible to see more details.

In Die Hard 4, in the scene where Matthew is chatting with Warlock right before McClain visit, Matthew’s desktop is visible on his Apple monitor. First interesting thing, there is Windows. Not looking like default Windows theme of course, but some icons on the desktop make it apparent (e.g. Cain and Abel – Windows password recovery tool).

Another funny thing is some kind of console there that is running.. what do you think? – of course nmap! Since The Matrix nmap is a must have utility for any serious movie about hackers (product placement, huh?). But what Matthew is running it against? Some Government or Pentagon servers? Not at all, the exact command is:


nmap -v -T4 -A insecure.org scanme.nmap.org

So he is doing his hard everyday hackers work scanning the nmap utility developers’ website and the host specially created for everybody could test nmap against it :)

I am not blaming anybody, this movie is much better in this regard than most of others. After all, what else would they scan?

Rackspace confused by VAT - part 2

2009-11-28T01:56:00+01:00

I have just found where that Rackspace decision to add VAT to the price resulted from. First I wanted to edit the previous article, but then decided to leave it as is. It’s still correct except a couple of details.

These details are as follows.

There are new EU VAT regulations forthcoming. The best explanation I’ve found is the so-called Notice 741A from UK HMRC website.

The most important moments there are:

“From 1 January 2010 there are two general rules for the place of supply of services, one for business to business (B2B) and one for business to consumer (B2C) supplies.”

“The B2B general rule for supplies of services is that the supply is made where the customer belongs”

“The B2C general rule for supplies of services is that the supply is made where the supplier belongs”

Thus, starting from 2010, Rackspace will have to pay VAT if they supply their services to non-business customer (private individual or any body with no business activities or any body who receives a supply wholly for private purposes).

So, I agree that Rackspace did have a good reason to add VAT to the price for non-business customers. And the VAT they add should be the UK VAT, this is correct too in accordance to the new regulations.

But still two important questions left:

Notice: I am talking about Rackspace only because they were the first (as I know) who were kind enough to warn about these changes. I am afraid there going to be others.

The first question is how Rackspace is going to tell business from non-business customers. Notice 741A explains possible options:

“VAT registration numbers are the best evidence that the supply is not received for a wholly private purpose and should be requested. If your customer is unable to provide a VAT number, you can accept alternative evidence. This includes certificates from fiscal authorities, business letterheads or other commercial documents indicating the nature of the customer’s activities. Such evidence should be kept as part of your records. Where VAT numbers are available, they should be shown on your invoice.”

Rackspace in their message and on their website mentions VAT number only. This affects sole traders and small businesses that are not registered for VAT. I am sure there are plenty of such customers. This affects me too since I operate as a sole proprietorship and I am not registered for VAT. So I will have to get a clear answer from Rackspace regarding this, follow the updates.

The second question is more complicated. Why Rackspace is going to add VAT instead of deducting it? Let me explain.

There are 7 possible Rackspace/customer relationship combinations. Look at the table:

Rackspace location Customer type Customer location Who pays VAT now Who will pay VAT in 2010

UK	Business	UK	Customer	Customer
UK	Non-business	UK	Rackspace	Rackspace
UK	Business	EC / non-UK	Customer	Customer
UK	Non-business	EC / non-UK	Customer	Rackspace
UK	Business	non-EC	Customer	Rackspace¹
UK	Non-business	non-EC	Customer	Rackspace¹
US	Any	Any	Not Applicable	Not Applicable

¹ I am not sure (I assume nobody is), the rule of “where it is used and enjoyed” applies here, and telecommunications services is a pretty specific case. I think that I am correct here, because e.g. TV broadcasting is used and enjoyed where customer is located but servers hosting logically is rather used and enjoyed where datacenter or supplier is located.

I would assume that non-EC customers will be supplied from US office, so it’s not the case. But this may be the case if related to other service providers established in Europe and their non-EC customers.

One obvious moment is notable: UK non-business customers that are currently paying prices without VAT will be paying price + VAT despite of new regulations don’t affect them!

And finally this comes to the main question: why VAT should be added to the prices? My vision is that prices should remain the same except prices for business customers, where VAT should be deducted—because business customers pay it themselves (you may want to google about the “reverse charge” or “tax shift” procedure).

I know that there is no VAT in the USA, so it looks kind of logical to add it to the price that USA customers pay. This fact is always confusing European customers and they agree to pay extra money. But it’s wrong. I have USA clients and I don’t have corporate tax. Should I add US corporate tax to my usual prices for my USA clients?

OK, another calculation. According to Wikipedia, in the US the average combined federal and state corporate tax rate is estimated at 39.3%. In the UK corporate tax is 21 to 28% and VAT is 17.5% which totals to 38.5 to 45.5%. I know that this is quite inaccurate, but accurate enough to give an idea: operating from Europe, US companies have less tax burden if they claim that their usual prices don’t include VAT. They like this situation of course, so, when they are forced to pay VAT, they want to add it to the price to maintain status quo.

As I mentioned on Slicehost forum, it’s not about the price. I inderstand, there may be higher business and operational expenses in Europe, so if they simply had separate prices for USA and Europe, I would understand. But I feel like me and all European customers are being fooled with that VAT trick. Correct me if I am wrong..

Rackspace confused by VAT

2009-11-27T13:38:00+01:00

Yesterday I received an email message from Rackspace:

“Dear Igor Simonov,

The Rackspace Cloud would like to inform you of an important change to our billing system that will enable us to correctly handle VAT invoicing for our European customers.

As an existing Rackspace Cloud customer, you will need to enter your VAT registration number in your control panel prior to January 1, 2010 to avoid being charged the 17.5% tax for VAT. If you do not have a VAT ID number, or choose not to supply one, The Rackspace Cloud will begin charging you the 17.5% VAT tax on all invoices after January 1, 2010.”

There is an update for this article

Yesterday I received an email message from Rackspace:

“Dear Igor Simonov,

The Rackspace Cloud would like to inform you of an important change to our billing system that will enable us to correctly handle VAT invoicing for our European customers.

I got stuck for a little. From what I know about VAT nothing can result in any price difference for customers are they VAT payers or not. So I have come up to conclusion that Rackspace billing guys just don’t understand what VAT is and how it works. They might have been confused by necessity to enter it in invoices as a separate line, and they obviously missed the point: if I am not a VAT payer, it’s me who don’t include VAT in my invoices, and it’s my clients who pay VAT instead of me. It’s me who is a client for Rackspace, not vice versa.

Here’s a simplified example:

Rackspace produces a service from scratch and sells it to me for 10 dollars.
I produce my service based on a service provided by Rackspace and sell it for 20 dollars.
My client offers a service based on my service for 30 dollars.

If there is no VAT at all (e.g. if these three entities all are in USA), everything is clear. Each participant makes 10 dollars and pays taxes calculated on this basis. Income tax, corporate tax, whatever.

If there is VAT and each side is registered as a VAT payer, it looks like this:

Rackspace supplies their service to me for 10 dollars and pays VAT tax based on 10 dollars
I receive their service and supply my service for 20 dollars. From their invoice I get their VAT and claim that the service I’ve received had VAT included in its price, so I pay VAT based only on my 10 dollars earnings, i.e. same amount as Rackspace.
My client supplies his service for 30 dollars, but like me he pays only VAT based on 10 dollars, because his cost basis has already VAT included.

Total VAT calculated on basis of the final service price is exactly the same as the sum of VATs paid by all participants of this chain together, but each pays the own part.

Well, this is simple. Now where has Rackspace mistaken.

If Rackspace is a VAT payer, I am not a VAT payer and my client is a VAT payer, how it should be:

Like in the previous case, Rackspace supplies their service to me for 10 dollars and pays VAT tax based on 10 dollars
I am not a VAT payer and therefore I cannot deduct Rackspace’s VAT from my VAT, but I don’t need this – I am not a VAT payer! I still should receive the same service from Rackspace for the same price, the only difference is that I don’t care if they enter their VAT in invoice or not.
Now, if my client receive my service for the same 10 dollars price, it’s no good: I cannot show VAT in my invoices, so my client will pay VAT based on the whole price, i.e. on basis of 30 dollars. Apparently this cannot affect Rackspace at all, they already have gotten their money. For me personally being or not a VAT payer doesn’t make much difference, because:

my services are not being re-sold
my prices are lower by (at least) VAT percentage – because I don’t have to pay it.
95% of my clients are from USA anyway

Note: to make for my clients possible to pay VAT I don’t supply my service for 20 dollars. My actual price is 10 + 10 / 117.5 * 100 = 18.51, so my clients still can supply their service for 30 dollars and make same money as if I was a VAT payer.

How it looks like if Rackspace doesn’t change their decision (I hope they do):

They simply supply their service for higher price to non-corporate users. And they will have to pay VAT based on 10 dollars plus VAT based on additional 17.5% dollars that they call VAT but in fact it is just a higher price.
I can’t supply my service for $18.51 anymore, I want to keep my earnings unchanged, so my clients can’t supply their services for $30 for the same reason, they have to pay my VAT too, and I can’t compensate it, because the compensation is paid to Rackspace, but it should be paid to the treasury! This is very very wrong.

So in this scenario I make less money, my clients make less money, treasury gets same taxes, Rackspace is the only one who gets more money. Well, probably this is the real reason..

To make this even more idiotic I have to mention that my VAT, if I paid it (Czech Republic) would be 19%, not 17.5% :)