Posts by AndrueC

Re: Cui Bono?

And the same argument will still hold in a couple of decades ! I'f we'd been putting in FTTP as a matter of policy for all new developments*

Agreed totally there..but only if done properly. All new developments in the last decade should have been fibre. A few of them were but only for voice services and ironically when ADSL came along they ended up getting copper overlay because ADSL is not compatible with fibre. Some more recent that did get a data service were exclusive (ie;no wholesale service so you have to go with the builder's ISP). Said ISPs were often poor quality and again people started asking for copper lines so they could take a service that way instead.

There certainly are advantages to full FTTP but we have to be practical. It's a very expensive proposition. Talk Talk say it's costing about £500 per property passed in York. So if we ignore the higher costs of rolling it out to less urban environments that's £500 * 22 million which is £11b. Unfortunately roll-out costs rise the less urban you are, quite dramatically as well.

What compounds the problem is that BT needs to get funding for such an endeavour but the cost and availability of funding depends on their assets. Trouble is if their biggest asset is the thing they want the funding to replace. If they talk up the benefits of FTTP they risk talking down the value of the collateral. The other issue is that their network is extremely good at what it was designed for (voice) and actually not too shabby at data.

As I wrote in another post a while back: It's like that ancient Vax you keep at the back of the server room. It chugs along day after day doing all that is asked of it. You try getting your CFO to sign off on spending several thousand pounds replacing it :-/

Re: Copper

that way there is no line rental to pay as you no longer have a phone line.

I'm not sure you understand what line rental is for.

There will always be a charge associated with the cable whatever type of cable it happens to be. You can't just stick them in the ground or string them between poles and ignore them. Line rental is what ensures that your line can be repaired for a (sort of) reasonable amount of money and also what encourages (sort of) network upgrades.

It's possible that it will eventually be rolled into the cost of your data service and the small part that pays for telephony broken out but the bulk will always have to be paid. And FYI ignore the line rental cost levied by your CP. The underlying charge made by Openreach has actually been falling in recent years. It's the likes of BT Retail, Talk Talk and the rest who keep increasing it.

Re: Cui Bono?

Where there is a screening need for bandwidth that is not being serviced.

Except that there isn't (assuming he means screaming). It's obvious from the relatively low take-up of top tier services that there is limited demand for speed. People want something better than 'crap speed' but that's all. Only a minority of people who could choose the higher than 80/20 service from BT choose to do so. In fact only a minority of potential FTTC subscribers (around 35% I believe now, probably bolstered by BDUK gaining traction) are even bothering to switch from ADSL.

Only a small number of VM customers have chosen the top package. VM keep upgrading customers for free because they won't move themselves.

There are arguments for going FTTP (or at least TPON) but roaring speed isn't currently one of them. The best one is future proofing but to be honest the huge costs of upgrading the UK network to FTTP and frankly the logistical difficulty of doing it mean that it's probably not practical. I published a link last year to a Thinkbroadband article that pointed out that it would take more telecoms engineers than currently exist and a couple of decades to complete such a project. If BT had actually gone that route then most of the population would only now be moving from analogue modem to FTTP.

But..I have to admit that I'm not happy with BT's plans for G.FAST. When they were talking about installing them deeper into the network it seemed a sensible next step. But now they say they are only going to install them on existing cabinets. That seems like a bad idea to me.

..plus there are a variety of (mostly unpleasant) ways for someone else to 'borrow' your fingerprints.

Re: Well there is a point to this

Even with comments it is not easy to understand. Without comments? Good luck.

So use comments then!

Neither I nor that article have said that you shouldn't use them. We're just saying that you should consider rewriting the code as an alternative. In my original post I made the observation that kernel code likely would need commenting because by it's nature it was harder to write clear code. In my second post I just said you should consider rewriting code. Clearly you've come up with another example where it's hard to write code that is self-documenting.

Are you incapable of thinking in a nuanced way? That author clearly encountered people like you when he published his first article. You appear to have had a knee-jerk and polarised reaction and decided to pigeon hole me as never commenting my code.

At no *censored* time have I ever suggested that

All we're saying is that comments can create various problems and in a lot of cases they are not actually solving a problem. The best code is code that is self-explanatory and in my opinion every time you feel the need to write a comment you should at least take a minute and consider if the code could convey that information on its own. That's all. If the answer is 'no, it can't' then by all means use comments!

Re: Well there is a point to this

It's interesting that some people don't like my idea of avoiding comments. You might find this article interesting at it sums up my view.

But to my mind it's fairly simple. If you feel the need to explain what your code is doing consider re-writing it.

An explanation of 'why you're doing it' is often useful and is fine. It's the plethora of 'what you're doing' that I dislike. They so often get out of date and are so often an excuse for poorly written code.

Re: Well there is a point to this

That depends on the comments. I prefer to write code that just doesn't need them but Kernel code has to be performance and size oriented so that would be a lot more difficult unless the compiler is very, very good.

If it's anything like the UK there will be a whole slew of reasons why a warrant might not be required (protecting evidence, protecting people, protecting property, pursuing a criminal).

Or the related sign that we actually had outside our house in the 1970s while the housing estate was being built.

"Danger, children".

Re: And the house of lords?

Democracy in the UK? Let me see now.

Like around 75% of the population I live in a safe seat so right from the off my vote is basically worthless. In fact right now my MP (by which I mean the MP that was foisted on me) is trying vainly to become Prime Minister(*). That's a process over which I (like probably 95% of the population) have absolutely no say in.

So it's possible that the most important decision to affect the UK in my lifetime is going to be taken not only by someone over whom I have no control whatsoever but someone who I didn't even know was going to be in the position to make that decision.

Meanwhile when it comes to the EU my vote counts as much as anyone else'. I ended up with a nice representation of two Conservative, two UKIP and one Labour MEP this time around.

(*)In the unlikely event that she succeeds I'm going to write to her and ask if she finally has enough power to give the go-ahead to the Farthinghoe bypass. Last time I enquired I was told she had no control over local transport policy :-/

Re: From another angle...

In effect it was nothing more than an opinion pole.

Some would say we already have too many Poles in this country.

Re: So how long before ...

The selling price of the first thing I bought is not affected buy the buying price of the second.

It is if it's fungible ;)

A litre of petrol bought a year ago and stored in a can is worth the same as a litre of petrol just drawn from a pump. It takes several years for petrol to go off and until that happens a litre of petrol costs what a litre of petrol costs regardless of where it comes from.

You could be honest and have the price vary minute by minute but capitalism isn't a fundamentally honest economic system. Prices tend to go up faster than they tend to go down.

Re: So how long before ...

So why should fuel at the pump rise?

Because it's bought (mainly) in Dollars and the Pound is falling against the Dollar.

Sorry for injecting a sensible comment on Friday evening. Maybe I do need that fourth glass of wine.

Re: Zuckerberg is running Thunderbird

I'm clinging on to TheBat. It has a good macro language. I just wish they'd fix a couple of issues with IMAP. One of them means it can't read some emails in text only mode.

Re: I actually spy on my camera and mic

I have to say I was quite taken aback when I found the anti virus update settings on it and suddenly realised I had bought a really thin wall mounted computer, with a microphone built in.

I was a bit taken aback when I discovered that the one of the hidden menu items on my TV enabled a CLI. Mind you I couldn't do much with it as it doesn't have a USB socket so no way for me to attach a keyboard. I can only assume that either there's a hidden USB socket inside or perhaps someone makes keyboards that use an HDMI cable.

Re: Taping over the mic has no effect at all, it's just another membrane.

Sellotape won't do much, but Duck tape will have quite an effect.

Sounds quackers to me.