Posts by Mage

Caps

Be suspicious of any operator offering high caps or no caps. Contention is really bad on mobile spectrum used as real mobile, due to lack of mast density.

High caps or none encourages use of Mobile for fixed use and dramatically affects speed and ability to connect at all.

Mobile isn't a competitor to broadband and shouldn't be. It's complementary. There should be fibre or cable or at worst fibre to cabinet everywhere and then Mobile would work MUCH better, for people that actually need mobility.

The 5G doesn't change basic physics and mathematics to influence Caps. The only way to have VIABLE higher caps is x3 to x9 higher mast density.

The really high speed stuff hyped on 5G is all Line Of Sight bands, so as to have wider channels = more speed. Also Shannon Nyquist law says you need x4 power every time the distance is doubled and about x2 power every time the speed is doubled (both directions!). Hence higher speeds only masts at stadiums and femto cells on ceilings of open plan offices.

The 5G also can't be "always on" any more than 2G, 3G or 4G, except on "in office femto cells" more cheaply served by WiFi. Either needs fibre to Internet to have high speed. So no real advantage for remote access, VPNs etc even over high speed versions of 2G* and 3G.

[Basic 2G is 14.4K, even in 2002, you could aggregate channels. Edge is usually 0.2Mbps by using QAM if signal is good, but technically 2.4Mbps is possible with ERMES version of EDGE and multiple channels. Ermes would have been superior to original 3G, as 3G uses CDMA, it's capacity drops to about 50% efficiency as more users connect. The 3G was political to get in USA CDMA-1 patents (Qualcomm etc). A GSM allocation may be several MHz, but the channels are only 0.2MHz. This is real reason 3G is faster, 5MHz channe, and 4G can use 2MHz, 5MHz, 10MHz or 20MHz. Only the higher frequency Mobile bands have enough space for many 20MHz channels]

Simples

MS is still dominant in Business, despite all their attempts to drive customers to Apple and Linux with their "phone-centric" desktop, stupid flat inconsistant GUI, poorer backward compatibility and nasty Updates. Also Exchange & Sharepoint (both horrible compared with even free alternatives) dominate in medium to Enterprise.

Not a surprise.

with all the pipework such a thing entails

Not needed for beer / ale / stout. You only need a big plastic bin. A pipe to fill bottles with crown caps is optional. You can use a jug and optionally a funnel.

Not really needed for mead (the honey is an expensive ingredient), cider or wine either.

It's possible distilling (not legal here so I've not tried) needs a pipe for the vapour to condense in. The problem apart from legality, is deciding what the condensate is.

A purist might start with oats or wheat grain, sprout, roast/malt/ extract. Seems a bit of cheat to buy a can of malt. Fermenting honey or various fruits, blossoms or even sweetish roots is easier than making malt for "beer" from scratch.

I'm struggling to see how this machine improves on a plastic bin + lid. It's not like coffee where Cafetière, boiled in a pot (ME style), filter, Moka pot, electric percolator and espresso machine all make very different brews. Even different sorts of Espresso machines are different. The capsule coffee/tea machines were a good idea for a shop with a low volume of customers and self service. I had the loan of one and it seemed like a way to pay more to have 2nd rate espresso at home.

CanSpam

Almost all my Email spam is from USA entities

About 1/4 is email address only used by ICANN

"Opt out" is USELESS as that confirms you exist and read the message! An invitation to be resold and spammed under a different name.

The USA needs to make ALL communication and marketing Opt in only, and no preselected opt in.

FCC is captured by Mobile and massive USA Corps. Don't care about consumer at all.

Quite expected.

It will get worse and more critical. What is the worst? Having your business TOTALLY depend on internet connections (fibre, DSL, Mobile) or the so called Cloud.

The biggest risk isn't a solar flare taking out satellites, or even global Nuclear War. Or cyberwarfare or criminal hackers. It's creeping monoculture, maybe eventually only 3 Eco systems. We have maybe only four major mobile infrastructure companies now, one is Chinese Gov owned (ZTE) and one sort of private Chinese (Huawei). Nokia ate Lucent/Alcatel, Siemens and Motorola Networks and there is Ericsson.

Cloud providers and the OSes they use? Linux is fine, but maybe a patch pushed out by management late on Friday, maybe before a holiday. Might be for Servers, Edge Routers or both. Even MS uses Linux exclusively on some bits of their cloud.

I wrote a post apocalyptic story with lots of mayhem and death. I decided it was too dark so wrote one with a fantasy setting set slightly in the future where all retail POS, cash machines, Mobile and fixed line billing and even a lot of SCADA relies on the Internet and a handful of Cloud Service providers (Renting space on someone else's remote server like 1960s). "No Silver Lining" Ray McCarthy. You can download 1st 20% free.

All mobile, internet, cloud services etc WILL fail at the same time, sooner than later. How much retail, wholesale, SCADA (Traffic lights, Electricity distribution configuration, sewage & water pumps etc) now depend on it?

Privatisation

Here in Ireland the abolishing of "free" Council operated waste collection has resulted in:

1) Massive increase in Fly-tipping

2) Multiple (up to 6 in some areas) waste trucks visiting the street.

3) Massive bins and smells as collection is at BEST once a fortnight instead of weekly, and sometimes they "miss" and you have a month!

4) Tipped & stolen bins because of the (illegal in some areas) insistence that Bins must be left out the night before.

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Also in my youth all bottles were returnable glass and all take out packaging was paper or card. Few shop sold foods had plastic packaging.

Put a BIG tax on plastic (because it's cheaper than card / paper), a big tax on ALL oil / gas / coal / briquettes, not just retail fuel. Ban single use plastic packaging that can't be easily recycled.

Incentive to use returnable & reusable packages.

Partly Thacherism/Reaganomics are to blame. Some things should be privatised, but not things best as a single entity. The solution is independent regulation, not privatisation, for rail, refuse, water, electriciy network, phone / mobile / data networks etc.

Also abolish "road tax" and especially Tolls (inefficient), simply increase the fuel duty, then the less efficient & higher users pay more.