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A UK hosting company that offers the worlds first dedicated server environment for Joomla! has credited iomart Group plc subsidiary RapidSwitch for its recent growth.

Joomla Wired says it has doubled in size in the past year alone because of the highly available and reliable hosting it gets from RapidSwitchs 1300 ft Spectrum House data centre in Maidenhead.

RapidSwitch, a leading UK supplier of self-managed dedicated server solutions, has provisioned some of its fastest servers to support Joomla Wireds customers.

Mark Smeed, director of Joomla Wired, explains: Our partnership with RapidSwitch has been so successful that weve not even had to advertise our business, all our growth has come from word of mouth and RapidSwitchs support has helped make that happen. The exceptionally fast servers theyve provisioned for us in their Maidenhead data centre means we can maximise our returns from each server, which ultimately benefits our business.

RapidSwitch is one of the few UK hosting companies to own its own datacentres. It chooses the very best components for its server builds, having over a decade of experience in building systems. Servers are built in-house from hand-picked components to maximise performance at every price point. RapidSwitch uses quality components from SuperMicro, Crucial, and Seagate with tier 1 contracts in place, and exclusively uses Intel CPUs. All RapidSwitch servers are put through rigorous testing procedures and benchmarking to ensure their quality is sustainable before being put into service.

Sarah Haran says: Its not uncommon for it to be cheaper to invest in newer technology than it is to try and recode the software stack. RapidSwitchs continual push with new products and solutions means our customers get a better return from their hardware.

The Maidenhead data centre team is on call for customers 24/7, 365 days a year, backed by a 100% uptime guarantee.

Mark Smeed says: We trust the RapidSwitch staff. Their fast response sets such a great example that weve actually used it as a benchmark for our own business in terms of the high level hosting we offer to our own customers.

Sarah Haran, Managing Director of Rapidswitch, says: We refuse to sacrifice on the high qualities expected from a hosting provider and we are delighted that our support has allowed Joomla Wired to expand their business.

RapidSwitch is a subsidiary of iomart Group plc (AIM:IOM) which was named Scottish Digital IT Company of the Year 2011 and is ranked as one of the top web hosting companies in the world.

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RapidSwitch supports worlds first dedicated server environment for Joomla

By David Benoit

Jamie Dimon continues to get some serious love from his brothers in rich-people finance.

Earlier this week we saw WarrenBuffett compliment his ability to write a great letter, a compliment JD returned yesterday to the Oracle. Buffett added he personally owns shares of J.P. Morgan and applauded Dimons shares ideas on capital management.

And today, Alan Schwartz, the executive chairman of Guggenheim Partners and the man who handed Bear Stearns over to Dimon in that seminal deal, praised Dimons integrity.

Speaking on CNBC this morning, Schwartz said the discussions during those turbulent times included many promises from Dimon. They werent contractual obligations, just his word. Even as things continued to get worse, and the banks found themselves in a blizzard of problems and bad press, Dimon didnt back down from any single promise Schwartz said.

His word was more important, Schwartz added.

The bromances are coming out in full as the spring-time nears.

Read more:
Jamie Dimon’s Word Is Stronger, More Long-Lasting, Than Gold

The word "snob" has been much in the news lately -- which prompted me to wonder about its origins and history.

Apparently, according to the Oxford University Press, the word was first recorded in the late 18th century as a term for a shoemaker or his apprentice.

By the end of the century, it had been adopted by Cambridge University students, who used it to refer to townspeople or local merchants who were not enrolled in the university and then more widely for people "of the ordinary or lower classes" -- more or less the opposite of today's meaning.

According to one Aodh de Blacam, who penned a Short History of Snobbery, in 1940, it was the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (best known for the 2004 movie Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon) who gave the word its modern meaning in his "Book of Snobs" (1848).

"An immense percentage of Snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life. You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob. I myself have been taken for one," Thackeray writes in his introduction.

He goes on to elucidate the many different varieties of snobs -- the royal snob, the town snob, the country snob, the military snob, the clerical snob and others. The word soon passed in French (le snobisme) and German (der Snob).

Today we have the wine snob, the beer snob, the cheese snob, the opera snob, the film snob and countless other varieties. One definition of the food snob that amused me is "a person who looks down on those who do not know the difference between a daube and a navarin."

For those few readers who do not know, the former is made with slow-cooked beef, the latter with slow-cooked lamb.

According to the BBC, "Garden snobbery has been with us since the medieval queens imported exotic herbs in the 14th century. Gardens have always been places for a show of wealth and power and, of course, demonstrations of one's good taste and superior class." That seems a particularly British form of snobbery.

Here in the United States, I guess we have "lawn snobs" (people who look down on their neighbors whose grass is less green and lush and weedless than their own) and its opposite, "eco-lawn snobs" (those who look down on neighbors who waste precious dollars by pouring gallons of poisonous substances on their grass in order to create a fake and toxic perfection).

Read this article:
Alan Elsner: You Callin' Me a Snob? The History of a Word

Gossip sites went nuts Tuesday with news that the rumored secret marriage between Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied (conducted in a super-secret bunker deep in the bowels of NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain?) had been confirmed.

The couple's jeweler, former ballerina and Ben friend Jamie Wolf, issued a press release saying she designed the couple's wedding bands - the same rings they wore to the Oscars.

The eco-friendly rings "were made with recycled platinum and conflict-free diamonds," Wolf told Us Weekly

How that actually confirms anything is beyond us. We're holding out till the chimney sweep weighs in. (No word yet from the happy couple.)

NBC has announced the lineup for the 14th season of talent show Dancing With the Stars. The dozen dancers include 67-year-old diva Gladys Knight; actors Melissa Gilbert, Jaleel White (Family Matters), and soap star Jack Wagner; athletes Donald Driver and Martina Navratilova; and TV show hosts Sherri Shepherd (The View) and Maria Menounos (Extra).

The new season begins March 19.

Lady Gaga will unveil her good-cause dot.org, the Born This Way Foundation, with a live streaming event Wednesday at 4 p.m. on the org's site (http://bornthiswayfoundation.org/live). Her GagaShip will be joined by Oprah, Deepak Chopra, and other dignitaries. The mentoring and advocacy org will help young folk with bullying and self-image issues.

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Sideshow: What's the word, Natalie and Ben?

29 February 2012

The Isle of Man has no intention of introducing taxes on capital gains, the island's Treasury Minister, Eddie Teare has confirmed, clarifying the situation following the removal of the island's deemed distribution regime.

Following an investigation by the European Union Code of Conduct Group on Business Taxation, the Isle of Man agreed to remove its Attribution Regime for Individuals from April 2012 to ensure that the territory meets international standards.

Teare said that the abolition of the attribution regime had removed provisions deemed 'harmful', allowing the territory to retain its zero/ten corporate tax regime. Due to the changes, company profits can only be taxed when paid out as dividends received by Isle of Man shareholders rather than on a deemed distribution basis, ie. with tax chargeable regardless of whether a distribution is made, based on the shareholders' cut of the company's profits in a given year.

Teare said that, to combat tax avoidance as a result of the regime's removal, Practice Note 174/12 was released to outline changes to make more strict the tax treatment of an income distribution to prevent individuals from employing tax planning to avoid the payment of income taxes. However the government has clarified that, contrary to erroneous reports, a charge to income tax will not arise to shareholders when capital gains made by a company are distributed.

Teare said: "It has come to my attention that unacceptable tax planning was being contemplated and I had to take steps to ensure that tax due on income, not capital gains, was paid. This is not an attempt to introduce a form of capital gains tax; nothing is further from my mind, the minister confirmed.

The Isle of Man's attribution regime was introduced in 2008 under The Income Tax (Attributed Profits) Temporary Taxation Order 2007 (Statutory Document 928/07), following approval by the island's legislative assembly the Tynwald in December 2007.

The removal of the regime was announced in Budget 2011, and is effective from April 2012.

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IoM Intends No Tax On Capital Gains