Posts by Chris Miller

It is possible to have network infrastructure that has more bandwidth than the consumers can use.

You might be able to achieve this on your own premises, though I think it's unlikely if you have more than 100 users. But for an ISP connecting thousands of domestic users (which is the only place where 'net neutrality' has any relevance, as commercial organisations will have their own Ts&Cs) - not a chance.

@Peter

I'm typing this looking at a 28" 4K monitor. I can (just!) detect the difference from my previous 26" 1920x1200 display (or so I tell myself). But (of course) I'm looking at it from 0.5m, rather closer than I normally sit from my telly! So I reckon that with a 56" screen you could probably see a difference with 4K if you sat 1m away. As most of us sit at least 2m from the gogglebox, that would imply a 112" screen, which would rather dwarf most living rooms (and, at current prices, break most bank balances - or, at least, marriages).

and my first 'proper' job (1973)

was as a trainee actuary. All calculations were done manually using one of these, it might surprise you to see how fast they could be 'twiddled' once you'd been doing this all day for a month or two!

Each calculation was done twice independently, and if the answers didn't agree we had to do them again. The results were hand written on a card and despatched via a pneumatic tube system down to the 'typing pool' where they were inserted into preprinted letters. If you needed a bespoke letter, you spoke into a dictation machine that recorded your epic prose onto grooves on a soft plastic disk that could again be sent to the girls (they were all girls) in the typing pool.

Later in my career, I was twice involved in automating the typing pool - once when we replaced typewriters with dedicated word processors (who remembers Wang?), and a second time when they were phased out as PCs appeared and people started writing their own letters and memos (and, even more daringly, emails).

VW Beetle

And the heater control was a flap down by your feet that could either be set to 'open' or 'close' (the missus's MG Midget had a similar system).

Re: it may backfire?

Labour has a massive problem. To win a UK election they need to recover at least some of their seats in Scotland, where they were portrayed by the SNP as 'Red Tories' - Corbyn might help them to achieve this. But in England, their votes were leaking away to UKIP, from those Labour voters who feel (rightly or wrongly) threatened by immigration - Corbyn will only acerbate this problem. And their biggest issue is that they weren't trusted on the economy, and Corbyn would make this far, far worse because he's an economic illiterate, his economic policies having been devised by a failed accountant.

Similarly, if they tack right with some of the other leadership candidates, they may regain seats in England, but will remain locked out of Scotland. Corbyn may appeal to the Russell Brand 'none of the above' voters (if any), but there are already established parties occupying this ground - UKIP, Greens, LibDems - and it's hard to see anyone winning an election from there.

In a word, they're stuffed. Labour is dead, but they haven't quite realised it yet.

Re: @RIBrsiq

Can you point to any actual comments here that fit your far-fetched description? Or is it just the voices in your head?

If I wanted to adopt your approach of erecting straw men, it would be easy to produce a description of alarmism:

"An ice age is coming - WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! No, it isn't, but the Earth is warming - WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! I have a model that predicts a global temperature rise of 2 degrees over the next 20 years. (20 years later) temperatures haven't changed significantly, but that's not because my science is wrong, the heat is going somewhere we can't see it." etc etc.

If a denier is your term of choice for someone who refuses to believe a fact in the face of irrefutable evidence (and not intended in any way to form a mental link to holocaust denier, that's just a coincidence), what's the equivalent term for someone who refuses to relinquish a belief after it's been contradicted by the evidence?

Computer science

Computer science is to science as plumbing is to hydraulics.

The Devil's DP Dictionary (1981) Stan Kelly-Bootle

@RIBrsiq

Nice straw man - now point out who's denying "anthropogenic global climate change"? Very few ElReg readers, I'll bet. What some people may 'deny' is that catastrophic global warming is inevitable unless we change our ways, often in ways that would themselves be catastrophic for civilisation.

Over the last century or two we've dumped perhaps 1,000 GtC into the atmosphere. As it's a greenhouse gas it would be surprising if this did not result in some elevation of temperatures. So there are two retrospective scientific questions that follow: (a) how much have global temperatures actually risen; and (b) how much of any rise is properly attributable to anthropic activity (this latter is what the article is about).

There are also prospective scientific questions, such as "if we continue carbon emissions, how might that change future temperatures?" and "what would be the effect of such a change?" (note that this requires some estimate of future emissions over many decades, which is itself not really a matter for science alone). And it's clear we really don't have that good a handle on the correct answers. And if we establish the science, that leaves the biggie: "what should we do about it?", which is a political question, though no doubt scientific input would be a good thing.

6x9=42

Demonstrating that God has 13 fingers.

Re: @bazza

It's true that the Internet has captured half of all advertising revenues. That's not the same thing as those total revenues doubling - that really is 'rot' - there's a reason print media are struggling.

But, as I pointed out, if you really believe in your own position, you should start a business with no advertising (or, at least, no Internet advertising). Since everyone else is throwing their money away, you'll clean up. See you at the next Bilderberg meeting!

@Mark

I'm irritated by online adverts, too (though I suspect we're not the typical target audience). The truth is that online advertising is a new, thoroughly immature industry. Compared to the (similarly irritating ) TV adverts that have been running for almost 75 years, where the nice people at AC Nielsen will tell you fairly precisely how many people watched your advert - they're trying (and investing huge amounts of time and money) to do the same thing for Internet ads, but it's (obviously) much more difficult.

But if you're correct and online ads put off more people than they encourage to buy a product, they will eventually stop.