Posts by Pete 2

Only in hits, not in sales

from the report:

"But the launch of the iPhone 4S twinned with the sad passing of Steve Jobs saw Apple’s web traffic increase five-fold this quarter"

So it's not really that important, as far as surveys go.

General Products

A #3 sounds like the best bet as a #4 hull could be a little difficult to park (but you wouldn't have to worry about dings and dents)

This only works until you try to use it.

So what can the average FB-er do with this information? Not a lot, I would suggest.

These people we only know through "friending" aren't real friends. They never call, they never pop round to see you if you're ill, they never buy you a beer, and would drop you like a hot lump of plutonium if you were ever foolish enough to ask them to inconvenience themselves on your behalf - as you or I would if they asked. (And if they do agree to, that's an even better reason to make sure they never, ever find out where you live.)

As it is, most of these degrees of connectedness go through a proportionally speaking, absolutely tiny number of hyper-connected individuals. People (if they are in fact people) who don't know you exist, apart from being a number among their thousands of followers. So the chances of sending them a message along the lines of "since we've been friends now for 6 months, how about a ....." and getting a meaningful reply are infinitesimally small, to the point of making the whole thing pointless.

The wrong sort of argument

Lewis, Lewis, Lewis!

While I admire your passion and you may even be right, you won't win any arguments. The problem is that to get public opinion in favour of an idea, that public has to lose something they value. It's no good promising "jam tomorrow" or "a bad thing might/will happen". The various financial crises we've been enduring for the past 3 years shows that nobody is prepared to suffer now for advantages later. Not us, not the greeks: nobody.

if we are going to blame the government (and to be fair, it's parties on all sides, colours, beliefs and abilities) for short-term policies, bowing to NIMBY-ism, prevarications or even carelessness it's because these are the politicians that we have decided to give power to. They reflect us.

Sadly the only way to get some action on energy security is for the country to experience its loss. Not to have the price screwed forever upwards like the mythically boiled frog. It needs a SHOCK to kick-start a new initiative, not a gradual phasing in or gradual price increases. However when that shock happens, just like it did for the economy it will (no doubt) be unexpected, severe and blaming all the wrong people for it's causes (and therefore looking at all the wrong remedies for its solution).

When that happens you may well have a schadenfreude moment, for all the good it will do. Though I'd advise you to have all your evidence printed out and a torch handy, as the lights will be off and the computers won't work.

Many attributes more important than a pretty website

My attitude to using government websites is very close to my attitude to shopping. It's a necessary evil and to be minimised. Therefore my approach to both is: get in, get my stuff, get out - with the minimum time spent, no "looking around" and avoiding things that are examples of form over function.

So if this guy is talking about aiding navigation, providing helpful shortcuts and sensible defaults then I'm all for it. But if what he really wants is a vanity site that he can show off to his friends, but takes overly long to load (especially when under stress; such as when the tax deadline looms, masks "the true path" with unnecessary eye-candy, or requires specific browsers/plugins/OS's to support the wizziness - then forget it.

Different name, same effect

So rather than being an ICBM, this is an Inter Continental Gliding Missile. I suppose that makes everything all right, then?

Don't count your neutrinos 'til they're published

The paper has been submitted, but hasn't yet been peer reviewed or published, and you can bet that the scrutiny this experiment gets will be greater than pretty much anything that's gone before.

I'm happy to wait until it appears with the name of a prestigious journal to add credibility. I'll be even happier when someone comes up with a theoretical or (better) practical explanation. Until then, we've got nothing.

Too much bran in the diet?

423 dunnies for 5,000 people? That about 1 for every 12 crew, or 2 hours per day each. Even if they are reserved for different genders and ranks (mustn't see the officers with their trousers down!) that's still a great deal of porcelain.

One can only assume that the designers needed that amount of redundancy in the system to cope for "emergencies" (aircraft-carrier landings can be scary events) and the reported breakdowns. I wonder if the weapons systems, for all their extra complexity, are any more reliable?

The story or the surfing?

It would be interesting to know whether the story resulted in the surfing or if someone was "researching" pastie clubs (and here was me thinking Devon Savouries) and stumbled upon the story.

"Honest Mr. Editor, Sir - there's this reeeellllly IT relevant story ..... right here .... it's about, err, Oh hell, you got me. I was just looking for smut."

And now ...

comments to an article about the comments to an article

Only a lawyer would rant on like this

The whole point of legal precedent is to set the practical limits of what laws actually mean. Expecting a law to describe every possibility and all the limits and bounds to its effect is impractical. With computer related laws, it's often the case that the a lot of the situations that laws could be applied to don't exist when the law is enacted.

It comes down to common sense in the way the judges interpret the law which sets out who it will affect and under what circumstances. But you wouldn't expect a lawyer to admit to that.

Ambition is a vector quantity

It has both magnitude and direction.

It's almost certainly wrong to claim that one gender or another has more or less ambition (and therefore creates a "gap") than the other. The big point is that different people want different things from life. It's not just gender related, but to assume that everyone wants to rise up within their organisation and be promoted (to just beyond the limits of their abilities, according to the Peter Principle (no relation)) is absurd.

I would suggest that for most people, who are not unbalanced, power-crazed or harbouring some deep-seated pathology the ultimate goal is to lead a happy and contented life. Not to try to earn a few gazillion more than the psycho in the next padded cell - or wood-panelled office. If a lot of people aim to achieve that through a family life, rather than their careers or "recognition" then more power to their elbows. Maybe the lack of women at the higher levels within companies is (in part at least) due to most of them not wishing to be there.

Latest twist on "Wine in a box"

Nothing new here, except maybe some greenwash to stop the trendies turning their noses up at it.

Pump and dump?

> a customer base that probably doesn't have internet access at home

... so is unable to see all the excellent deals and discounts available online and will therefore think our prices are good value.

One simple test

Go to the shop, have the phone demonstrated, drop it on showroom floor from prescribed height. If it still works, do it again. If it *still* works buy it (or rather: another sample of the same model - which you "drop test" before walking out of the store).

Here's me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . here's my apps

All I want from a desktop (or O/S, for that matter) is to minimise the distance / fuss / time / delay / keystrokes / clicks / resource usage that comes between me, sitting at my screen and the stuff I really want to do: i.e. run some applications.

It makes little difference to me whether the underlying display is Gnome (2, 3 take your pick), XP, 3270, OSX, Xfce or Android. All I want to do is run my apps and, most importantly - GET STUFF DONE. Likewise I simply don't care what colour or picture is on my desktop, or for that matter whether the desk itself is made of wood, plastic, laminate, glass or an upturned beer crate. Just so long as it doesn't get between me and what I want to do, I'm happy. If it does put additional steps in my way, then it's become part of the problem: to be removed, rather than a benefit that I want.

So, to all the GUI wizards out there I say: stop rattling on about all these wizzy desktop features: docks, bars, configurable backgrounds, movable buttons and all the other malarky. If what you're doing doesn't help the user to run the programs they got their computers to do, then you're wasting your time. You may well be producing stuff that may well make yourself look oh-so clever in the eyes of your peers, but it is merely an unwelcome hindrance to those of us unlucky enough to have if included in the environment we choose (or have to) use.

In GUI design and implementation less is most definitely more and simplicity rules.

Killer apps are _so_ last century

This guy is talking about a commodity / utility (internet access), yet he is trying to fit its use in non-utility terms. Ones more suited to buying small electronic devices: iPods/Pads or the like.

Nobody talks about electricity supply in terms of a "killer app" (maybe we should all install aluminum smelters in our gardens) to drive consumption, or that food requires a "killer app" to make us eat more/less/healthily - though I suppose cooking or fire could be classed in those terms, but that makes it all sound a bit stone-age.

What is more likely is that increased bandwidth is an enabling technology. Once people have the means to stream 100MBit/s into their house, then we'll start to see software or hardware that either can use, or needs, streams of this size - or not. If those appliances turn out to be popular, they'll create demand outside the early-adopter group. However increased bandwidth on its own, like increased car ownership, is not necessarily a good thing. It's the benefits that this increase brings (and possibly the costs and problems it causes) which will define how far it goes.

Can't tell the art from the elbow grease

Only in germany would you get such a conscientious cleaner. Shame we can't get some like that to do a number on our hospitals.

Spec you later

We've seen earlier examples of natural disasters leading to component shortages. (Anyone remember many years ago when RAM prices shot up?). The good news is that shortages don't last, and when they do resolve, it usually leads to a glut from overproduction, when all the manufacturers respond to the high prices by increasing production.

However, these days shortages are also prime targets for speculators to make a quick wad. Sadly, by doing so they exacerbate the problem by buying up the scarce commodity, even though they have no intention of using it themselves. We also see bona-fide manufacturers placing multiple orders, as they realise that they will be rationed. So instead of simply ordering the 10,000 pieces they will expect to need, they order 20,000 in the knowledge that the suppliers will ration sales and only partly fulfill the orders they get.

Of course in the mean time, it's a brilliant excuse for retailers to jack up the price of techy toys, just in time for christmas.

Groan! internet researchers

> Some people still think a billion is a ....

Only if you rely on a superficial bout of Googling and swallow the first definition you stumble across. In the UK a billion has universally and unambiguously meant 10**9 since the 1970's. So no, there aren't any "some people" any more (and probably haven't been any for decades), just like there aren't "some people who think" .. Britain still uses pounds, shillings and pence.

Interchangeable baddies

All the actions this guy describes as being the doings of repressive governments (not his government, of course, naturally!) apply equally to the copyright enforcers, DRM owners, MP[IA]A and other organisations who have given themselves the right to "police" the content we want access to.

Yawn! We've had fast-starting O/Ss for years.

> PCs started up instantly

My PDA (Dell x50v) is like that. Just press the button and the screen pops on instantly - ready for work. It's hardly noteworthy and it's definitely not new or novel.

In fact, if memory serves, the old CP/M systems I was working with in the early 80's would boot up about as fast as a modern day windows box. Though I did have to go to the trouble of swapping floppies during the startup.

The best thing (any) government can do for the internet

> getting governments and businesses to agree on how to promote and protect the internet

is to stop interfering with it. The one thing it will never need is their "protection".

He goes on to say "Nothing would be more fatal or self-defeating than the heavy hand of state control ..." which sounds to me like the same tone used to say "My esteemed colleague has my full support and backing" ... just before the knives go in. Presumably "fatal" and "self-defeating" are government newspeak for "desirable" and "best for us".

You just know that the more these lying 'stards say to promote internet (or any other) freedoms, the less they mean it and that it's merely mendacious claptrap while they work out how to control, restrict and tax it.

How will they catch people?

It's difficult to see who is the "criminal" here. If I was suitably fondled-up and lent my slab to "a friend" who happened not to have a TV licence, am I at fault? If so, then by extension does that mean the friend wouldn't be allowed round to my house to watch my TV, too? If it's their fault, then any licence-less passer-by who happens to look over the shoulder of a slab-watcher becomes a crim? Or (worse) does the mere act of owning a mobile-content capable device, but no TV licence, now make you a suspect - irrespective of if you ever wanted to watch mobile TV.

Either way, given that a lot of iplayer content is watched on the hoof, will we have to have iplayer-police stationed on every street corner, checking the credentials of anyone who happens to be staring at their mobile device while going about their business.

Is this when SSDs take over?

With the end-user price of HDDs getting close to double what it was a couple of weeks ago, presumably a lot more people are viewing SSDs more favourably. Whether for cost reasons or simply 'cos HD lead-times are increasing (as will SSDs as demand ramps up).

Hopefully the increased demand for SSDs will drop the price as more suppliers increase production - or accelerate their plans for expansion - which will make them even more attractive, and HDs less so.

So when the HD makers do get round to drying out their factories, they could find that a lot of their lower-end devices have lost the market and that the only people wanting HDs in the future will be after the BIGGUNS: 1TB and up - even though it's a hard task to fill one of those puppies, unless you have an impressively sized "video" collection.

Although people scoff at small HDs it could be that they find the sizes of SSDs are more than adequate for their lappies, fondlies and desktops and when they get used to the speed of SSDs they'll be unwilling to go back to "slow old" spinning storage.

What's robots for the goose are robots for the gander

> after buying the robot ... he could use it to spend time with his wife in New York,

Presuming of course that his wife doesn't buy a robot to take his place.

Alternatively ...

And here was me thinking that all of todays fashionable monsters (vampires, zombies, ghosts, ghouls and all the other various forms of the undead) were simply the result of needing a form of non-specific baddie that didn't offend any particular race, religion, gender, physical or mental disability group. But most of all were cheap and quick to slap together, didn't qualify for the extra pay of spoken parts, needed next to no theatrical skills nor any special film set adaptations as THEY'RE JUST ACTORS IN RAGS AND MAKEUP.

IT needs to get away from quick wins

> someone administering security to actually keep their job

It's not down to the "someone" to ensure this happens. It's down to whoever controls that "someone"'s work schedule. The person who says to the project manager "No, we can't build your test environments this week, we have pressing security updates that MUST be installed". Or who says to the CFO "Cutting the headcount is not an option as we then can't keep our security measures up to date in a timely manner."

The point being that too many non-IT people are allowed to put too much pressure on the "someone" to do IMMEDIATE work rather than IMPORTANT work for their narrow goals. Once you can resolve that conflict there is the possibility that "someone" will be able to keep their IT security tight. Though there's nothing they can do to prevent all the other security lapses in the organisation

Simple solution

Change your name.

on a not unrelated point:

> ... redirection of all their important post to their current ...

Roughly translates as "didn't want the debt collectors / psycho ex-partners to know where they lived now.

Spycatcher

> Websites and IP addresses will become unreachable for the first time in the UK for copyright reasons.

There have been other sites blocked from the tender eyes of UK surfers for other reasons. ISTR the New York Times (or somesuch) was blocked so that we couldn't read all the secret information that the above book revealed - although it was perfectly alright for the rest of the world to know it. I also seem to recall that the workarounds to let people read the blocked content were published and widely circulated within hours of the measures coming into effect.

I am in little doubt that this judgment will be enforced with the same level of efficacy.

Not just children

I'd never move to a location that didn't have an internet service (mobile signal? Hmmm, that's a tricky one), but I'd move to a TV dead zone in an instance - and save the licence fee into the bargain.

When the clocks change ?

> help the ... in the free hour when the clocks change.

So we're supposed to get them out of bed at 02:00 and teach them how to use Google?

Apart from them still being asleep - and just incorporating the whole miserable experience into a bad dream, it's more than likely that a lot of the people being targeted here have no desire whatsoever to use the internet. Despite what the celebrity zealots may want to beliieve.

Old problem, new look

Industrial espionage is as old as, well, industry. The fact that a lot of it is now done via the internet instead of the old-fashioned way doesn't make this a brand new threat (or one that could be countered simply by improving internet security). If companies tightened up their electronic systems that would provide some benefit - but isn't it likely that the baddies would just go back to their old ways: bribing employees, blackmailing staff, sneaking in dressed as cleaners or just employing some disaffected brainiacs who carry all the relevant knowledge in their heads?

Anyhow, stealing other peoples' secrets is a two-way affair. It would surprise no-one to discover that british (or any other country's) firms were also engaging in such pursuits and reaping the benefits of their work, too.

Raise the drawbridge, get stuff done!

The best way to deal with email is to ignore it.

Maybe read the ones from your boss, provided they weren't sent to everyone (and your boss's boss with the same proviso). Apart from that, if it's important the emailer will phone you, or come to see you to ask why you never pick up your voicemail - which brings me on to the next stage.

There are only two times of the day to read email: soon after you've got in (and had your beverage du matin) and some point shortly after lunch. Never, ever open your email within an hour of knocking-off time or you may be staying at the orifice later than you expected. It's been my observation that people who are continually glued to their email don't really have anything better to do with their days - and spend most of them sending emails to others in the same situation. Don't get drawn in to this sticky web.

Unless your job description specifically says that you are employed to deal with emailed inquiries it's a reasonable bet that most of anything you get from outside your chain of command is either irrelevant or asking you to do something that you won't get recognition (or a cost code) for. So you'll end up doing someone else's job but on your own time.

So far as sending email goes: don't. The only two reasons for emailing someone is as a CYA or to avoid phoning them. If you email someone, they're quite likely to reply. If they reply, they'll almost certainly require you to do some extra work that is not in your interest or immediate set of goals.

Groupon is as Groupon does

So will they offer their shares at a discount if lots of people organise to buy them together?

Or is that sort of thing reserved for products that nobody really wants .... errr ...