Posts by David Hicks

Re: @David

Right, so now we get to the bottom of it, you don't need those cookies. It's not going to break the internet to ditch 99% of them, and you consider yourself entitled to track users activities.

Those are (at best) 'nice-to-have' features that allow you to track what goes on with your site, and at worst are precisely the sorts of behvaiours this legislation seeks to make more difficult.

I'm glad we've got to the bottom of this - there is no technical reason that most cookies can't be ditched.

Re: RE:Memory (and firefox)

It's not just firefox that has the large footprint but.... yeah, it's pretty poor. I'm not sure whether you ought to blame firefox or the legions of web developers who no longer consider footprint or performance to be their problem, but either way it's ridiculous that I can have three tabs open and be using half a GB of RAM for the browser alone.

Who's with me for the native/local code revolution?

Essential for modern websites?

Strange how, when someone like me puts a cookie blocker on their browsers, most things continue to work just fine without them.

Sorry if it spoils your revenue model, but I'm not keeping cookies around just because you think your site needs them. It most likely doesn't.

Re: Ilgaz - Nobody blames thieves

Nobody blames the theives because they removed linux *before* piracy was even possible.

George Hotz demo'd a proof of concept hack that required interfering with the hardware to make it 'glitch', under PS3 Linux. There was no piracy at that point. Sony removed linux, then the firmware *without* linux was cracked and piracy enabled.

People like you get flamed because you have your facts and your timeline wrong.

'Hacking' was an extremely flimsy excuse for removing the capability, not a good reason at all.

Re: @David Hicks

@AC

"The lawyer for their side tried to claim that the film was a documentary, and as such the makers were allowed to use 'small segments for the purposes of criticism / review'"

And if that was genuinely found to be the case, that they had used small excerpts for the purposes of criticism, then I would support them over you. Some uses should be protected, commercial or otherwise, regardless of your objections.

Re: Windows just isn't cool or desirable

Oh dear! Someone doesn't understand the smartphone market at all.

To you and me features and function may be king, but to everyone else?

Of *course* it's a fashion accessory! Mobiles (well, the ones that want to sell in huge quantities) have been primarily a fashion accessory since the late 90s. You need the right one, and the right one is an iPhone if you're an independent thinker with good taste, or Android if you're a free-thinking non-conformist! If you don't get either of these then clearly your independent or free-thinking nature hasn't led you in the right direction, that being the one everyone else has moved in.

That said, MS and Winphone can suck my appendages, I'll not be buying one.

Re: About bliddy time

Agreed here too. Took A-levels in 95 and 96, practicing on past papers got harder the further back you went. Same with GCSE's two years prior.

Given that everyone I know that's involved in education laments falling standards, that the universities often go on records saying that standards are falling, yet somehow (!?) average grades just keep getting better and better... yeah, we have a problem.

It's an irritation to me that every time people try to discuss this when the results come out, they get shouted down as just wanting to belittle the hard work that's gone in to it all and puff themselves up with declarations about how hard their personal challenge was. It's really not the case at all. My personal challenge wasn't all that hard back then and it sounds like it would be even easier now.

Re: Oh right DDT resistance

The point is that there are better ways to deal with the problem now, and that DDT is actually still in use where it is the best solution and doesn't pose an environmental hazard.

That's why I called 'troll', and I was right.

Oh, also -

Anyone else reckon that five books of 'Winter is coming!' followed by apparently a single one that deals with it, after build-up from word one, is a bit unlikely?

I forsee more than the proposed two more books in this series, and a very, very long wait for completion.

Re: You can take it with you...

No, you can't.

Some (not many) software guys seem to have this misguided opinion that they hold the rights to stuff they produce under contract. This is incorrect unless you have some incredibly permissive contract.. Stuff produced on company time, with company equipment, is theirs once produced, not yours.

Anyone that's worked with them

Not that the individuals are necessarily stupid, or terrible at what they do, but there are systemic problems. I worked with Indian folk in the UK. One of them told me that - "The top flight people, they all go to the US for the money. The rest of the good people come to Europe for a little less money. What's left is, well, what's left."

So they don't have a good starting point there, they do have a cultural bias to agree with anything you say (do you have the skills for that? do you understand what I'm asking?) even if it's not true, there is a language barrier, there is a massive churn of staff and frankly, when looking at the results, you tend to get either nothing at all or just plain crap.

Re: So do people actually scan these things?

A phone number is usually quite large, and not in a consistent format or size. A QR code is a funny looking square of black on white. Much easier to over-stick than unknown shape, unknown colour, unknown background phone numbers.

It probably won't ever be a big thing (it takes effort) but it could be done pretty easily.

The Diprotodon...

... is most often described as something like a grumpy-looking Wombat the size of a Humvee.

I think that would be great!

Also can we bring back the Thylacine?

Re: Abso-bloody-lutely

I'm not talking about novels, I'm talking about text books which do not require creativity in anything like the same order, and can be commissioned to order.

I'm suggesting that these are written like software - to order, by employees or contractors, so that the commissioning party owns the result. As a software engineer I don't own the IP to the software I create as part ofd my job. I don't see why this model can't be applied to textbooks.

Re: @jake - "strawman?"

None of which makes any of the previous argument a straw man, you idiot.

A straw man fallacy is the construction of a synthetic argument, characterising (inaccurately) your opponent's position, such that you can easily knock it down.

Answering a question, even if you feel the answer is incorrect, is not a straw man.