Posts by Commswonk

Re: Perhaps it's this

Perhaps if 5G is rolled out and the data is cheap enough, we can finally get rid of the wired connection, now that would upset BT. The question is can data be supplied at a price that will match the price of wired + line rental.

How cheap is "cheap enough"? Don't forget that as things stand the "user demand" can be split between radio and line based systems; get rid of line and the radio system has to be upscaled to meet all the demand. In simple terms that means an expanded radio system, as in every site having to be uprated in order to cope with the traffic. In this case "uprating" means more hardware (including backhaul) and even more spectrum; for what exactly? Just to poke BT in its corporate eye? The cost to users will always be set by what the market will tolerate, and by removing line transmission from the equation you enable the radio system operators to charge more, not less, because you have removed one layer of competition for reasons of "spite" more than anything else.

By getting rid of wired connections you also force business users to piss about using radio connections for business purposes, and frankly that is stupid.

My apparent "support" for BT is not because I inherently support BT (the buggers are about to force my monthly costs up) but because when trying to solve a problem (real or perceived) it is preferable to find a solution, not introduce an even bigger problem.

Re: Hmm

...if you know that an AV will emergency stop if you step out in front of it will everyone just wander into the road whenever they feel like it?

I see a good few Darwin Awards ahead. How many will step out in front of a vehicle expecting it to stop only to find that it isn't actually an autonomous vehicle? The (very) hard way.

Re: "used drones to observe the Ukrainians' movements"

@ Peter2: This means that we can relatively quickly ramp up the army in response to a crisis...

Are you a politician by any chance, or perhaps an aspiring one? Only a politician could ever believe that a country could "quickly ramp up the army" even if qualified by adding the word "relatively". In a crisis (the word you used) a response might be required in days at most, not some large multiple of months or years.

@ Lee D: I honestly don't get why honest business is so hard.

It isn't, but there are disincentives to being honest; dishonest business brings in more money if you can get away with it, and I'm afraid the evidence rather suggests that most of the time you will.

The only fix is a TRUE free market system. As imperfect as it is, free market has the inherent checks and balances to reward hard work and punish laziness

Does a "true" free market include the use of tar and feathers* for those who dump on the rest of us?

If it does then where do I sign up?

* Or worse...

Re: "What the effing toss does that shit even mean?"

One thing it means... I will have to go and buy a new bullshit detector because that little lot damaged the existing one BER*.

* No, not Bit Error Rate... Beyond Economic Repair - a much older use of the abbreviation.

Re: RE: unwanted infantilism

Ah; but beware the concept of "lies, damn lies, & statistics". The raw figures do tell a depressing tale but to demonstrate how misleading they can be I suggest you consider the following: In the event of a collision between a motor vehicle and a cyclist the cyclist is going to come off worse every time. However, the figures you quote could mean that there were 3,339 occasions when cyclists did something really stupid and as a result were either killed or seriously injured despite the vehicle driver doing everything they could to avoid it. Now that is obviously statistically improbable, but it does help show that raw data, without anything further by way of detail, presents a totally incomplete picture of the overall situation which in turn can mislead those reading it.

If you are trying to solve a problem then the likelihood of finding the correct solution is greatly reduced if you don't make sure that you analyse it properly first and garner all the relevant information about it.

Re: It saddens me

All well and good but you have failed (or perhaps deliberately omitted) to tell us how much Swiss citizens have to pay for their broadband services. Without that information it is impossible to make a proper comparison between what we get in the UK for the price we pay and the Swiss equivalents.

You cannot have failed to notice (or perhaps you have!) from some comments in this thread (and comparable broadband - related topics from El Reg passim) that uptake of broadband is price sensitive, and it has also been noted any major move to FTTP can only be achieved by increasing costs to the consumer. I can see why BT / Openreach might see a widespread migration to fibre only as being a solution; if FTTC is withdrawn then consumers will have no option other than to pay more for fibre, other than to do without BB altogether or ditch fixed line BB by fibre and use mobile services instead, although in my perhaps limited experience (PAYG dongle) that is a very costly way of using the internet.

If Ofcom gives the green light to this plan I would seriously question in whose interests Ofcom thinks it is supposed to be regulating; IMHO it certainly will be difficult to argue that it is working for the benefit of consumers.

How on earth could you conclude that? Comments so far have been about the quality of the communication, not its quantity.

This has made me remember that my stepdaughter used to speak in a continuous stream of words right up into adulthood; it was more or less incomprehensible. My stating that I had not been called upon to punctuate a paragraph of prose since my schooldays and I wasn't going to start again now neither went down well nor had any noticeable effect.

The worrisome thing is that she now has a PhD in something exotic and is lecturing university students; I just hope that she has learnt the art of marshalling her thoughts sufficiently to communicate in comprehensible, punctuated speech.

Re: On whose scale?

Quite so; everything they earn is "theirs", with no need to find money every month to keep the vultures who loaded their companies with debt away.

Must make for better sleeping at night as well.

So, similar to grappa then?

Arrgh! I tried it once on a holiday at Larke Garda; an experience that I am unlikely to forget for its memorable horror. (The grappa, not Lake Garda!)

Stuck to Limoncello after that... much better.

<sigh>

Re: Please Clarify...

...a very half-arsed reading of the Wikipedia page for Arquiva

It would need to be very half-arsed, given that the sentence given over to "History" reads as follows:

The company, which has a history that dates back to the beginning of regular public broadcasting in the United Kingdom, was actually only formed in 2005. Below is a potted history of the various organisations that are now part of Arqiva:

A rather better summary, I think.

@ Mark 85: Actually, we need for someone to pin a medal on the lad and have a parade in his honor.

The Nobel Peace Prize might be appropriate.

Re: Do things the hard way...

And would need a second one to carry some sort of illumination, come to think of it; not an issue with an endoscope, at least for a small area.

Maybe the trick with public spending is not to cut budget but to cut heads?

Trouble is that that is exactly what happened to those in uniform, if not to the desk - bound personnel in Whitehall. The armed forces have been more or less hollowed out to the point where operational capacity and capability have been seriously compromised but with no obvious financial saving to show for it.

Tragic, really...

Re: WTF..?

Probably obtained via credit checks made by car hire companies?

Sounds doubtful; if I pay for a hire car - or anything else for that matter - by credit card then what credit check would be needed? The CC company decided I was a good risk, and the car hire company has no need to conduct further checks.

Doesn't mean they don't though, but if that was going on I would hope that the FCA / ICO would step in and tell them to stop it on data protection grounds.

Re: Has anyone considered...

....decommission the legacy copper network...

Do you mean "completely" or only as far as broadband is concerned? Given the requirement to have a telephone service that works during a power failure "completely" looks like a non - starter. Although batteries in cabinets are a practical option, batteries at each individual user's premises are not; technically possible, certainly, but not a practical option given that the telcos would have to take responsibility for their long term support.

Perhaps it will be the cats who will be watching...

Unless they start chasing the originators of the experiment, i.e. the mice.

Re: Apple...

"youtubers"? Are those some sort of potato?

Re: How as this even possible?

The fact that a USB stick exists with open documents tells us plenty about that organisation.

Not sure that's either true or fair. It certainly tells us something about one person within the organisation, but finding that person might be easier said than done.

Re: Whois should be destroyed and kept destroyed. Living open is not always a good thing.

The WHOIS listing had all her information. Name, address, phone.

My starting point is that IANAL, which may explain my bafflement. If data currently available using "whois" will be outlawed by GDPR, how does this square with the data that is available from Companies House being, er, available? I noticed that someone earlier in this thread mentioned C/H but without making the obvious comparison. (If they did and I missed it then... mea culpa.)

On the face of it if "whois" data is to be banned, how can Companies House data escape the same ban? The only answer that I can see is that if you want to register a company (and/or be a director thereof) then that information being publicly available must be a specific legal requirement.

It is difficult to see why the same should not apply to domain registrations, although I have every sympathy with the young lady mentioned above.

Re: Missing something

@ a_yank_lurker: See my posting two above yours at the time of writing. Did you read the previous comments before sending your own?

Re: What Exactly Was The Breach ???

Time to stock up on popcorn, I suspect.

It will be interesting to find out exactly what personal data has been vulnerable to theft; it may very well be that the organisations that have provided information to Equifax about each and every one of us have overstepped the mark on what is permissible.

I have not applied for any form of "direct" credit for over three decades, although obviously "indirect" credit (such as utility payments) don't necessarily fall into that category.

I would be horrified to find out that Equifax had my bank account or credit card details; there is no reason for them to have that information under any circumstances. All they need is my name and address (12 Coleridge Close, Climthorpe*) and that should be quite enough to identify me.

It would be very interesting to find out if anyone has provided more than is strictly necessary about me (or anyone else) post the requirements of various Data Protection legislation. And should "excess information" about me have been deleted post that date?

It could very well be that companies provided more information than was strictly necessary for a credit - checking agency to function; if that turns out to be the case I sincerely hope that they too are heavily censured.

* Actually the address of one Reginald Iolanthe Perrin

Re: Is this addiction to the internet a modern adult (?) version of thumb - sucking?

A very good point deserving of an upvote. However, I broke away from the internet to have lunch, and will break away again to take the dog for a walk. My mobile phone will remain switched off (OK I'm retired!) in all probability.

My concern is that there is a growing inability on the part of a growing number of people for whom detachment from the internet is emotionally intolerable.

Ah the blessings of being grumpy...

Re: Alternative Comparison

Has crime gone down since the Govts started putting CCTV all over the cities.. If not then why bother with BWCs.

Apples and Oranges I'm afraid. CCTV captures "street crime" and while it may not have resulted in any reduction in crime statistics it can make identifying a possible suspect and tracking their movements possible, not simply easier. I stress the "possible" because without the CCTV that identification and tracking might have been completely impossible previously.

A BWC, OTOH, records the interaction between a police officer and a suspect or witness, which is an entirely different scenario to what CCTV captures. If nothing else a BWC will work indoors where (public) CCTV cannot.

Having said that detection rates are dismally low, so your point about CCTV may have some validity. However conclusions about CCTV cannot be assumed to be valid for BWCs; the two have vastly different purposes.

Re: Crawley

...Arqiva was still eight years from creation.

In name, yes, but it can trace its origins from the old (almost prehistoric , now) ITA which morphed into the IBA, then NTL and finally* finishing up as Arqiva.

To reinforce the point where, exactly was the ITA based?, Er, Crawley Court.

But as you said, to claim that it can trace its origins back to 1922 is disingenuous, or perhaps more correctly completely wrong.

*Until the next change of name anyway.