* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

ERP deniers their own worst enemy

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@Bruce Ordway

Interesting comments. Sounds like there was a big shift away from *nix to Windows

However you seem to be saying the *bigger* issue is the limited (nonexistent?) customization allowed by the package. Would you have been OK if it was a .Net system with the source code available?

The backup issue with *all* customization is the extent to which they will preserved when you *upgrade* the package. Other posters have described situations when the package radically changes (making a fair portion of their mods redundant) or where the the package has poor support for this and require applying the changes to the next generation by hand.

I believe there are *very* few commercial businesses (if any) which rate a completely bespoke system (usually interfaced to an accounts package) in the way that systems a decade ago might be built. However I also believe different ERP systems favor specific types of companies or market sectors. The better the fit to xx Corps business the lower the customization

Just my $0.02.

Third of UK students would strip their way through college

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Male art class modelling can be fun.

You stand naked in front of a group of usually mostly female quite attractive teen art students and get *paid* for it. * Handy if your physique has more floppy bits than a stuffed toy dog.

*However should your body react to them you will be fired on the spot. It's true that the more you *don't* want to think about something, the more you *do* think about it.

Mammoth patent troll holder snags smartphone threat

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US patent office needs good er review.

Really. How can they still be issuing this sort of s^$t.

Times websites want £1 a day from June

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FAIL

Saw some claims by the Guardian's editor

1)Guardian took 37 million viewers last year.

2)2nd behind BBC website

3)Never planning to charge as it would *drastically* cut down their customer base for advertisers

4)Only successful charging *general* new websites are Financial Times and Wall Street Journal (although according to other posters they might be part free and part "premium" content).

5) They both supply time sensitive information which is worthwhile (to some people) to have now.

6)They can be paid for by companies on behalf of their employees.

Murdoch has *never* been neutral. In a *rare* interview he stated that "The Times will support who they like, I will be talking to the Sun's Political Editor to discuss who they will be supporting," a fairly clear indication that he doses the prole feed. Although when it comes to China he does *exactly* what Beijing wants. Still could make life for the in-laws awkward if he doesn't

You will note that cross media ownership (IE Owning Sun/Times/Sunday Times/Fox News) and the influence they wield has *never* been on *any* Labor agenda since 1997. Likewise extending the Representation of the People Act (which requires UK TV channels to be even handed in their political coverage) to cover newspapers.

The Murdoch model is roughly

1)Charge consumers for the product

2)Charge advertisers for access to the consumers eyeballs.

3) Get a chunk of license fee off the government because the BBC is "unfair" competition and won't do what I say.

And on a practical note. It's not really a micro payment scheme is it? People buying a newspaper pay money and get a *physical* object in return. They *know* it costs something to make this and distribute it. They also know that it costs a *hell* of a lot less to then distribute content on the internet.

Would *anyone* pay for some content. People do so for specialised content already. what might I pay for. Specialised content? Detailed knowledgeable analysis. Long term deep investigations.

Some people have stopped buying *any* newspaper altogether.

Anglia defends Oxburgh's eco network ties

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Credibility

We've heard of it.

Kit attacks Microsoft keyboards (and a whole lot more)

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XOR "Encryption"

This will be that dry Nordic sense of humor at work. I'm quite sure his audience knew this is about as far from *real* security as using a PIN based on your DOB for a confidential file and putting it on a post-it note *with* the file when you send it off.

FBI cyber cop says 'very existence' of US under threat

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@Paul Crawford

My comment was actually typed with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

Seriously I don't actually know how many US Govt Apps are coded to *need* IE6 but my *suspicion* (given the sort of bad procurement and implementation habits large organizations can acquire) is

a) More than 1

b) At least 1 deals (directly or indirectly) with large sums of cash, or something which can be turned into cash (OTOMH a pharmacy warehouse management app processing government funded prescriptions) giving The Bad Guys a *lot* of motivation to find a way in.

c) it supports enough users that re-coding it (and testing the system afterward) will *not* be cheap, to the point that TPTB will conclude "We have no *evidence* anyone *has* tampered with the system, it works OK, and besides who even *knows it runs on IE6? We'll leave it to the next FY/Change of administration to re-consider"

Maybe nothing does happen. I''m reminded of the Anthrax murders a few years ago. Essentially just to revive interest in the killers anthrax vaccine mfg company. He seemed to consider a few bodies the price of increasing the greater good (of his net worth).

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Can't dump Windows

What about all those apps that can't run on *anything* but IE 6?

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Joke

Hackers do trashing.

Bureaucrats do "troughing"

Oink, oink.

German cable operators told to tighten up

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Electromagnetic Compatability

We've heard of it.

And?

Brown's website as mad as he is

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The Queen twitters?

Who knew?

Does she have a Facebook account as well?

Pre-election budget targets politics, not policy

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FAIL

I quite like badgers

But I think the time has come for a culling.

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@Kevin Dwyer

*provided* Mr Broone doesn't get another attack of the frosty footies and decided to hang on till the *very* last minute in the hope the British Economy gets a little bit better (inflation falls a smidgeon, GDP rises a tad, unemployment falls by a pubic hair).

Alternatively by doing so he gives the whole lot of them the chance to implement more of their "Scorched earth" policy of accelerated ID card roll-outs, hardware procurement for IMP and installation of poison pill clauses in all major IT contracts.

He's done it once, doing it again must be considered possible.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Headmaster

@Glyn 2

"From midnight tonight there will be no stamp duty on properties worth up to £250,000 for first time buyers, double the current threshold."

That's up *to* £250k, which might well include 1st homes in some better off areas.

43 days likely, 78days max. If its a Labor constituency vote for the runner up.

MPs criticise government's climate of fear

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welcome to the state of fear

How much of this has stopped *real* terrorists?

Selecting an ERP supplier - the pitfalls and practicalities

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Bottom line

The closer to the original target market for your ERP solution *you* are the more likely it will fit you out of the box.

And (not to put too fine a point on it) *never* trust a word of what an ERP vendor or VAR tells you about their track record *without* checking their claims.

Good article.

Don't blame Willy the Mailboy for software security flaws

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@James 47

"The end of the Indian outsourcing economy!"

You say that like it's a bad thing.

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IIRC Harlan Mills @ IBM Federal Systems* put it this way

"Software development is far too important to be left in the hands of people who like coding"

*Now part of Loral.

Biometric harvest network can handle just 700k a year

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Your post master/mistress. A ruthless interrogator

Who can smell when your lying.

Want to bet?

34 centres. Bet a few of them could be cut (most if Conservatives get in?)

Thumbs up. Who would like to see this reduced *even* further.

BT ordered to share telegraph poles for fast broadband

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@Terry Barnes

"Exactly how many people do you know who have an electricity pylon going to their house? You understand the difference between backhaul and last mile?"

Yes. While they are not that common in towns I gather they're pretty common out in t'country. I'd bet most (all?) of the assorted villages that BT aren't bothered by. While that doesn't help with the local loop my impression is BT's backhaul infrastructure out in the boondocks is not good either.

I mention them as an option. Fixed line of sight radio (Ionica) is also an option. Competitors do not have to be at the mercy of BT's allowing access. .

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Electricity pylons are still an option

The technology is pretty well understood.

Just a thought

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Joke

A message from Farmer Palmer

GET OFF MY LAND.

Police reject Tory plans for elected chiefs

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UK police forces have elected oversight *already*

It's called IIRC the "Police Authority"for that force and (except in London where the Police come directly either under the Home Secretary or the Minister of Justice).

AFAIK it is made up of local councilors. while it may have limited powers on operational matters I believe it can have a vote of no confidence in the CC and give them the boot.

How vigorously they have pursued their brief however is another matter.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coffee/keyboard

<choke> I find myself *agreeing* with the head of ACPO

The UK govt seems to do a defense review about every 5-10 years. Hard to believe the last one was 48 years ago. To put this in perspective.

That year's fashion sensation is the mini skirt. A 5 piece band called the Beatles has got a gig in Germany (but almost no one has heard of them). The Prime Minister is Harry MacMillan and the president is John Kennedy.

Party ministers and shadows played their party lines. I find *all* of them unimpressive. Very much the same old s"#t in the same old bucket.

I'll suggest 2 things such a Royal Commission *might* consider. 1)With an estimated 70% of *all* UK prisoners inside on drug related offenses (not sure if that includes alcohol) what about a consistent approach across all prisons to cut down the number of addicts and encourage the ones in for dealing to look for other lines of work. 2)The role that unelected bodies of senior police offices which look remarkably like a trade union have on influencing and in some cases appearing to set government policy.

I'll just recall Sir Humphrie's words that an RC is what you convene when you *don't* want to make a decision. But I'll hope for a better outcome.

Not sure I can hold it down much longer. New keyboard here I come.

Train rebrand costs us dear

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Coat

Notes on UK Trainlines

UK train operating companies (TOCs) may well pay a franchise fee.

However the Treasury pays them a *subsidy* per passenger as it is recognized that they could

*never* make a profit at the capped fares they are allowed to charge.

Franchisees compete offer the *lowest* passenger fee the Treasury has to pay. AFAIK this is a "Reverse auction."

However the rolling stock comes from Railway Leasing Companies (RLCs). Few TOCs own their rolling stock (IIRC Virgin is one of the few which does). RLC's are funded by merchant banks and investment arms of UK banks. They paid a very low percentage of the full price of the stock on the argument that "What if *no* one bid for the franchise old boy, we'd be stuck with stock we could not lease. x% is our final offer."

Leasing charges paid by the TOCs are *not* capped or regulated any other way.

The track is the responsibility of a public body called the Strategic Rail Authority but the maintenance is done by yet another pseud-public company (whose name I can't be bothered to look up). SRA runs signal boxes etc but repairs/upgrades re-design are done by pseud-public company. SRA charges TOCs for upgrade and repair work. Historically pseud-public company was called Railtrack and was stock exchange quoted. Since it had to make money it saw *no* reason whatsoever to schedule work during the working week. This has now changed.

Modeling the effects of this structure on train service, ticket costs and likely hood of improvements is left as an excercise to the interested reader. It originated with the last Conservative government (they'd sold off 8every* major national asset anyone *wanted* to buy) and has been (in theory) *slightly* improved under Labor.

Mine's the one with a copy of the Railway Gazette in the side pocket.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Was this the one that bunged a Minister

to avoid the £500m penalty for walking away from it as they couldn't hack it?#

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this basically.

1) Create new logo icon files

2) Insert into test website environment.

3)Cut & past on all page to replace name X by name Y

4)Pass to new franchisee for update notes (unlikely. Same old s$%t, same old bucket)

5)Swap live test with live site at 3am in morning

6)Archive old site (clearly labeled as old franchisee)

7)Take tomorrow off in lieu.

I'm not a webmaster, content administrator etc.

Zurich Insurance promises changes after data loss

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WTF?

Data transfer outside the EU? No fines? No mandatory encryption

Icon says it all.

Branson's SpaceShipTwo rocketplane gets off ground

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Joke

Will Bransons flight

Make him the first beardy in space?

I think historically there has been some problem with face fur causing trouble with the breathing masks, but I'd not swear to it.

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Happy

AC@13:03

Good point. Some of those SP8000 volumes are quite old. However the ISS is at least an *order* of magnitude bigger than any previous human built structure in space. And drag is proportional to area (and there is a *lot* of that).

The fact that anyone taking a walk outside still needs a *full* space suite suggests it's not exactly breathable.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

OMG UK finally sets up Space Agency

As opposed to buying club for various research councils.

Guess they had to do *something* with the takings from the them park in Leicester. *

*Although I *do* find this funny it is *true*. Possibly the second useful thing Labour have managed to do in 13 years in office.

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Troll

@Stuart Halliday

"if you look at the international standard of how high is considered 'Space' (62 miles, 100KM) you'll find this craft just makes it."

The words "International standard" might suggest why this is the target. Spaceship 1 achieved this but IIRC SS2 is meant to go somewhere in the 70-100 mile range. At least one NASA astronaut got his astronaut status while flying the X15, which is not a spacecraft at all.

Some scientists still claim this height isn't really 'Space' as technically you've not left the Earth's exosphere atmosphere at that height!

Atmospheric drag remains the largest force on a space vehicle below 1000km. *none* of the Saturn V's in parking orbit while they prepared engine firing for the moon went above IIRC 250Km. Most people would class them as space vehicles. However orbits above c100km are stable for 100s of years despite this drag. 1000km is the start of the inner Van Allan radiation belt.

"But as the U.S. space agency awards astronaut status to persons who fly above 50 miles altitude I guess that's all the passengers will care about - getting a $10 certificate posted to them for their $200,000 flight!"

Since you insist on being pedantic you might like to be aware that this is a *commercial* space flight and will be run under FAA rules. The term is "Spaceflight participant" and AFAIK they will *not* be entitled to astronaut wings any more than I would be entitled to call myself a pilot despite having booked a seat on an aircraft.

Were I wearing a jacket it would have an ebook reader loaded with the NASA SP8000 series on it.

Microsoft sneak peeks freshened comms server

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Joke

Handy for HR

Most of the numbers/email addresses cutoff/diverted on pink slip in 1 click.

The state of the art in modern termination technology.

Someday all staff will be fired this way.

Bill Gates goes (mini) nuclear

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@Steen Larsen

"Another promising small scale reactor type is the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR)."

I think this is a variation of what is commonly called a "molten salt" reactor. work on this certainly dates from the mid 1950s US nuclear powered aircraft programme.

Some projects on this were done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It's low pressure, fairly high temperature, can burn multiple fuels including nuclear waste isotopes (although being a thermal reactor not depleted Uranium) as well as Thorium. 1 Practical feature I especially like is that unlike solid fuel systems you don't need the moderator to be precision machined.

BTW I believe India is looking at Thorium fueled reactors as part of its experimental programme but I don't think they're a more conventional solid fuel design.

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Coat

A few reactor notes

Uranium (element 92 IE 92 protons in the nucleus) consists of multiple isotopes with differnent numbers of neutrons. The biggies is U235 (92protons/143neutrons). Nearly all the rest is U238. Depleted Uranium (Uranium Lite?) has *no* U235, enriched is any with a level higher than 0.7%.

anyone who thinks this is going to be available in house size units is delusional. The target size is 300MW, not 300Kw. This seems (*very* vague on constructional details) to be a fast reactor, no moderators (graphite, heavy water) needed. That makes the core *smaller*, not *small* as in desktop. We're talking several meters on a side and with an SG of 19 (relative to water) that won't be light.

It helps if you know this is also called a breed/burn. The enriched Uranium ignitor starts breeding the U238 to Plutonium (like a breeder reactor) but which then fissions in-situ. It's more like an underground coal seam fire than a conventional all over burn.

Big problems.

1)Getting the heat out of this *solid* block of material fast enough that it does not melt. Making it out of Uranium should improve thermal conductivity (relative to the oxides and carbides they've been making modern fuels out of). It seems they are looking at molten sodium as per fast breeder practice. This is *not* a safe material. It's highly corrosive (but maybe it won't be allowed to get too hot) and *very* bad things happen if even gets a sniff of water (sodium/water "excursions" have been a regular fixture of fast breeder development).

2)No apparent control rods. Like that coal seem fire you *can't* put it out. You need 2 loads, a conventional one (like grid supply) and some kind of dump load. Power management consists of varying the split between these. ideally the dump load can take *full* power (if necessary) and turn it into something useful, but is just as happy taking say 1% when the system is doing what it's designed for.

The only thing I've seen *like* this is an Oak Ridge (IIRC) design using fuel pellets embedded in a carbon foam. constant (c1MW) power output. If it overheats foam expends and reactivity goes down. Quite neat.

I note that *noone* has called it a cigarette reactor, which I'm pretty sure what some would have called it in the 1960's.

Mine's the one with "Reactors for Dummies" in the pocket.

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On a Whiteboard *everything* looks easy.

Pretty much *all* modern reactor designs incorporate walk-away-safe features designed to shut it down and continue the heat removal (essential to avoid core meltdown) despite loss of pump power, large amounts of coolant etc. Sealed for life reactor designs have been developed by both the Brazilian and South African nuclear authorities. the holy grail remains the simple sub-critical reactor. Sadly while there are multiple sub critical mass nuclear weapons designs no one has *ever* cracked this problem.

BTW IIRC correctly this guy is mentioned in "Barbarians lead by Bill Gates" by another ex-microsoftie.

Highly entertaining.

Darling confirms telephone line tax

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50p at *least*

Does anyone doubt this will rise?

That it won't be ring fenced (handy for raiding if some other programme/department overspends).

I cannot believe that ISP's cannot cross-subsidise their customers instead of this "we're so helpless we can't afford to run this extra fibre out. I doubt either BT or VM's yearly profits were exactly unhealthy.

It's called investing in your user base or having a loss leader. as for wireless broadband I think *only* Ionica had a go at this seriously.

Mine's the one with a burnt CD of Thunderclap Goldstein in the pocket.

Heathrow security man cops perv scanner eyeful

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"The Pornograph"

Sir consider my cap duly doffed. You have my vote.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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X-Ray scanner is so undiscriptive.

How about "The Pervatron."

"Power up all Pervatrons and less see what this shower are (literally) made of"

US Navy plans self-building floating fortresses

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Neat idea

Providing they can find missions for this which are within its capability.

No doubt one of these will be an elint container for a discrete monitoring of comms and radar signals.

But remember standard ISO containers are *not* bullet resistant. They do have incredible strength to mass ratios (c 10:1 payload to empty weight is *not* uncommon).

Oops: Chief Climategate investigator failed to declare eco directorship

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FAIL

So of the GLOBE figures listed

3 played the HoC Expenses system.

2 of which did so to the point that criminal charges have been bought.

And the His Lordship has several other directorships (Remember Non Executive does *not* mean unpaid. Think £3-5k a day).

Honest perhaps. Impartial, *highly* unlikely.

And why a geologist? Is it Impossible to find *anyone* with a background in statistics (let's face it a *lot* of the issues in this hinge around likely hood, chance etc), atmospheric or ocean physics.

Not encouraging.

MIT boffins on track of portable 60-watt seawater desalinator

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There is'nt even a water shortage in the UK

According to the *only* known national survey of it's kind (done in 1976 for some reason) there's plenty of water, but most of it is in Wales.

OTOH Thames water loose as much water per household as they supply to that household.

Thumbs up for this neat piece of tech. Logically whenever you scale things down you should sharpen up voltage gradients a *lot*, just the sort of thing you want to pull salt ions around.

'Go veggie to save the planet' UN, EU plans debunked

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flame thrower bottomed cow pic

Quality.

IBM faces mainframe biz European antitrust probe

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does this sound *remarkably* like the microsoft DOS license

To OEMs

Run any OS you like

We charge by the number of processors you sell.

So if you sell a board with DOS loaded, you pay us. If you sell it DOS free, you *still* pay us.

Note Hercules are *not* asking IBM to port z/OS, let them run it. At uses *own* risk. BTW a *long* time ago (mid 80s?) IBM did supply an AT with an s/370 type processor in it. Remember a Byte writeup but never very popular. Expensive by PC standards but (in theory) a bargain for training or offloading development before deployment to a real MF.

IBM may not have taught MS all it knows about being a monopoly supplier, but they *sure* made a good teacher.

Thumbs down for IBM's behavior.

Britain expels diplomat over faked passports in Hamas hit row

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AC@16:28

"I know a few people who've had the same problem at US immigrations control as well."

I'd guess that's more to do with the literacy level of TSA staff.

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26 people to kill 1 man

Mossad is unionised?

Who knew.

LaCie LaCinema MiniHD

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Neat. Best of all no PSU brick

Why can't other mfg's do this?

Lots of them seem to do the "our hardware is *tiny*, oh, the power brick is still about the size of a shoebox."

I'm just guessing but having a variable sped fan (noisier when working hard IE playing stuff that will mask the noise) is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Whatever happened to the piezoelectric fans used in some later macs that IIRC operate at ultrasonic speed so you can't hear them at all?

Virgin Media downed by thick Leeds 'copper' crooks

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Go

Will Virgin replace copper with Fibre

Well that would be good of them if I trusted them.

1 word.

Phorm.

Your health, tax, and search data siphoned

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unencrypted, uncompressed back channel?

The implication of this is that the updated "suggestions" are sent in clear and in effect you employ an inference approach to figure out who has conditions like this. Jeopardy in software, or "inverse design" if you have a CAD background.

Given one of the aims of this is to reduce large downloads by only downloading options based on a series of questions the *obvious* answer is to apply data compression to reduce the volume, padding to make *all* responses a standard size and encryption to make the packets a lot harder to read.

The question is do these protocols *support* such options in the first place. If you can some kind of frequency analysis and a fairly small dictionary should yield substantial compression. If you can't do this behind the scenes in the client then you're looking at some *major* rewriting.

Good article. But *boy* has it taken some people to consider this *might* cause trouble.

Yes, Internet Explorer is on the wane in Europe

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Ballot screen *only* shown if inital browser *is* IE

So that fact is people don't have to choose *any* other browser.

But when they can, they do.

Remember they can choose to *retain* IE quite easily.

After all if IE were the superior choice surely that's what *most* customers would choose, right?

Note for people in higher education. Macro media author ware does not seem to work with *any* other browser but IE. It seems to need an ActiveX control that *only* IE can make sense of.

You think unified comms is just about productivity?

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UC. Not just for big business

Good points. In a small business in say mfg there may only be a few key decision makers. There are no deputies to cover for them.

There are many small(ish) businesses who could potentially compete on a global basis but whose staff support is so poor any attempts in this direction will be strangled at birth.

Most critical is that senior management *want* to try for this and have a plan to look at it. Wanting to do it and *not* having a plan is aspirational management.