Posts by Just Thinking 524 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jan 2009
I had a call from my ISP today suggesting that my ASDL connection might be slow, and if I transferred my phone to them they could get me 8Mb (currently I see 2Mb).
I am currently on an 8Mb service. UPTO obviously. I thought 8Mb was what I was paying for. Stupid me, assuming 2Mb was them doing their best.
Either they can supply 8Mb (but they aren't supplying it at the moment, even though I am billed for it) or they can't (so the offer is false).
Perhaps ISP's sometimes throttle services so that they can charge you extra to give you what they promised in the first place? No of course not.
Nothing wrong with getting information on products or services you might not know about, based on the site you happen to be viewing at the time. I have occaisionally found useful things like that, and once in a while bought stuff.
Behavioural ads take all that useful randomness away. Probably makes more money for Google, but for me it might be time to block ads.
I can imagine Streetview might be of some use in areas such as a high street or industrial estate, particularly if the images are updated reasonably often. You can have a look at a resturant before you book, or check that the firm you are about to mail-order from really do have a warehouse.
There isn't so much expectation of privacy in these areas. If you live in a flat above a shop you are probably used to people gawping in from the top of the bus, so Streetview doesn't make much difference.
But why do they need to photograph every house in every quiet cul-de-sac? That is what upsets people, and if they just stopped doing it they might have a useful and uncontentious service.
Mounting a camera on a pole and photographing over someones fence, publishing an image which can't normally be seen from the street, well that's getting a bit sinister.
If they have something of low value, an MP3 file, they massively overcharge for it. When a large section of the public respond by filesharing, they want special laws introduced to stop it.
If they have something unique and valuable, front row tickets to a big concert, they undercharge for them. When a business responds by snapping up the underpriced tickets and reselling them at their true market value, there are special laws to stop that too.
Why don't they fix their business model so it works under the same laws as every other business?
The biggest risk to children is that they will start smoking before they are mature enough to make an informed decision, then they get hooked and suffer ill health later in life. We should do something about that before we worry about 3rd hand smoke.
Perhaps for the moment we have gone far enough with mitigating the effects of second hand smoking (I rarely encounter it now). We should be looking at the availability, the promotion and the media representation of smoking as if it were some normal human activity?
ie don't allow so very many places to sell them, then it might be easier to police the age restrictions. Don't allow shops to put up huge, brightly lit banks of shiney cigarette boxes which are the first thing you see when you walk in. Don't show people smoking on early evening soaps (yes I know it is part of real life, but so what - wouldn't the real Phil Mitchell swear a bit more often than he does?)
Why does the phone system work this way? Why can't the call end automatically when either party hangs up?
Apart from the scam aspect, the current system also allows a complete stranger to prevent you from using your phone (it won''t even cost them anything if they have free calls). That, to my mind, is a more serious abuse than nuisance calls.
I heard on the news he is accused of stealing 1000 passwords. That implies that the passwords were stored somewhere in plain (or decipherable) text. Isn't it basic security practice to never store passwords anywhere (just a salted one way hash instead)?
I also heard that some of the computers he "hacked" had blank passwords.
Are they the passwords he is accused of stealing? Did they find them in a zero length text file on his hard drive?
I agree GPL is problematic. I have been involved in a couple of small open source developments. One was a library, and GPL seemed too restrictive. Not much point writing OS libraries that other people can't use.
OTOH, if you are writing an OS application, where you might want to include GPL'd libraries, I am not entirely certain how GPL fits in with a less restrictive application license. Seems easier just to GPL the whole application and avoid any problems with fundementalist loons.
I guess it depends on your motivation for writing OS inthe first place.
"It seems that with more revenue-based businesses turning to open source, folks are getting wiser to how licensing has an impact on how their software is used"
When I read this I thought it was going to be a very interesting article. But then it just quoted a couple of stats and finished. A bit of analysis would have been nice.
Reading the full Times story, basically the council have been messing up recently and accidentally installing signs without the apostrophes. A few pedants have complained, and the council have figured out it will cost a lot to fix (with the side effect of making them look like idiots). So they have decided to justify a policy of no longer using apostrophes, based on totally nonsensical arguments. Saves them fixing the problem.
It is hilarious to see the councillor (hopefully an intelligent and educated man) pretending that he thinks the correct grammatical form of a phrase depends on whether it is actually true. FFS, should all fictional works omit apostrophes because the characters don't really exist?
The emergency services database argument has also been debunked here.
The council are covering their own mistakes.
The reason this is important is because councils do exactly the same when they screw up over something which actually matters. Like schools. Police, protecting vulnerable children, town planning etc etc.
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