Re: It's all good fun until somebody dies

Indeed, and I've witnessed plenty of things over the years where you have to wonder what the people involved were thinking.

The problem is that Rui has probably been down lots of holes like that, and so have his mates, and they've all come up alive - ergo, no problem. But as you point out, just occasionally it goes wrong and then it's too late. The reason we (in the UK, dunno what the situation is in Spain) have bodies like the HSE is to deal with people who really ought to know better. In many cases they do know better but it's either inconvenient or too expensive.

The biggest problem we have is that there are some extremes and some stupid stuff done in the name of "elf n safety". "Elf n safety" does **NOT** prohibit anything (well hardly anything). It certainly doesn't prohibit school kids playing conkers. And it certainly doesn't mandate "hi vis everywhere".

However, lots of stuff is done (or banned) in the name of elf-n-safety because those responsible don't know (and often don't want to know) how to manage any potential risks. So instead of applying sensible rules, they just do stupid things - imposing "hi vis everywhere" rules, banning stuff, and so on.

But that is not what health and safety is about.

It's about simply looking at the risks inherent in an activity - and working out how to minimise/mitigate/manage them. It might be that the ground conditions are such that Lester's hole was highly unlikely to collapse - but I suspect the risks aren't as low as Lester or Rui think. But the risks are fairly easily mitigated - the techniques for doing so are well known and not hard - but they probably do come under the category of "inconvenient" or "too costly". And besides, elf-n-safety is just a bunch of busybodies out to stop all activity right ?

I'll leave with this thought ...

Have a look for the poem "I Chose to Look The Other Way". Try to imagine how you might feel if, at some point, you find yourself in such a position.

Think you know what it feels like knowing that by inaction you could have contributed to someone's death ? Knowing that had you taken a different course, then someone might still be alive today ? Really think you know how it feels ?

Now find someone who is in that position. I really really don't think they'll describe it how you think. All I'll say is that I strongly recommend you stay on the side of wondering what it feels like. It's a one way street and there's no coming back - there have been people who have committed suicide because they couldn't live with it.

Re: So the Anti Murdoch brigade

> Sky Broadband and phones are actually BT service re-sold

Phones yes, broadband probably not - they are an LLU operator in my local exchanges.

Personally I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, though colleagues at work are happy with them. Apart from the ethical consideration that I wouldn't want to give a penny to anything touched by News International, there's the minor detail that I won't consider and ISP that charges extra for a static IP (like BT), let along one that doesn't have the option (like Sky).

Re: I don't always support software organisations

>> And in this case I don't.

Let me complete that sentence : And in this case I don't get it.

This proposed standard will change absolutely nothing - everyone will still use different DRM "solutions, and compatibility will be no better than it is now. All it means is that instead of just coding in that the stream uses (say) Silverlight, there'll be an HTML standard tag to say it's "Silverlight wrapped in a different standards sounding name". The stream will still need Silverlight, it'll still only play on platforms supported by Silverlight, you'll still need to install a Silverlight plugin (or something called a different name but is really just Silverlight packaged slightly differently).

Replace Silverlight with any other DRM scheme and the story is just the same.

So the **ONLY** change is that the DRM vendors will have a veneer of standardisation given to them. So they can claim to be standards compliant - but in reality there will be absolutely no improvement for the user, none at all.

Re: DRM - bane of the law abiding......

>> recently my father's blu-ray refused to play a disc. Needed a firmware update - nope. Software update - yep but the software that came with the drive is no-longer supported. Latest version is a $100 "upgrade"

If I had any BR stuff (which I don't and don't plan to any time soon) then I'd just take the disk back as unplayable. It's sold as "Blueray", my player is "Blueray", therefore if the disk doesn't play in the drive which has played other titled fine so far then the disk isn't compatible and therefore (under UK law) is not fit for the purpose for which it was sold. The shop has to take it back, and then they'll have a disk that's been opened as so can't be stuck back on the shelf. By the time it's gone back through the supply chain, it'll have cost everyone more than the disk is worth.

If everyone, or at least a significant proportion stoof up like this, then the retailers would simply refuse to stock disks from the worst offenders and they in turn be forced to stop breaking stuff.

Of course, if it does turn out that the player is "faulty", then also under UK law the retailer that sold it is liable. If it's sold as capable of playing Blueray disks, and the Blueray standard allows for things the drive can't do, then the drive is not fit for purpose. The only limit is 6 years as civil cases cannot be started after that. If retailers find they are getting drives returned after 2, 3 or so years because the manufacturer has stopped providing upgrades, then they'll think twice about selling drives from those manufacturers.

If you don't have consumer protection laws in your country, then start lobbying your elected politicians. And if you do know anyone in these situations, find out what laws can be used - the more people that make this rubbish painful (=expensive) for the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers who support it, the better.

Again, find out what laws can be used, and USE THEM. Make such failings cost the manufacturers and vendors - it's the only language they understand.

Re: I'm confused

>> Don't be ridiculous. There may be 9,600 separate tax entities in the US in total, but any one company will only need to deal with those relevant to its district.

But the whole point of this act is to make the online seller deal with all the taxes relevant to where the **customer** lives. That means being able to identify the taxes applicable to any (potentially all) of those 9600 tax entities, collect the taxes, account for them, and hand them over.

The alternative is that the seller identifies and collects the taxes, but then goes through some clearing house to get them to the right entities. Perhaps someone will step in and set this up - Amazon or eBay would probably be happy to do it as a bureaux service ... for a modest fee plus getting to know who is selling what to who.

Circadian rhythm

Look up circadian rhythm.

If left without external clues/influences, I believe humans will generally fall out of sync by running at a period of a little over 24 hours. Normally, clues like that big fusion reactor coming into view each morning reset the clock each day so we stay synchronised to the rotations of our lump of rock.

Obviously, not everyone is wired up the same, so it does vary a bit.

Re: Why is line rental so much?

> It's about time someone offered fast broadband without having to pay BT £15pcm, which for me would be unused for making phone calls.

Find an ISP that offers Metallic Path Facility (MPF) circuits - not many do, but you can have ADSL without the POTS. I don't know how many offer such circuits, but I happen to know Gradwell do them (we have dealings with them at work) though they aren't exactly targeting consumers with their pricing (they're a business oriented ISP).

Re: P.Lee @ 29 March 07:00 z

>> On the nuclear, where rae you going to store the waste

Well if the anti-nuclear campaigners would tone down their attitude, waste is not actually a big problem. A **HUGE** proportion of our "waste problem" is actually artificial - a lot of the waste is actually fuel (but people don't want it processed into fuel), and most of the rest can actually be consumed in some types of reactor (but again people are even more against those than they are against uranium fission).

As an analogy, suppose the oil industry simply took out the petrol from the crude and stockpiled the rest as "waste" ? There'd be an outcry, and more than a little outcry as proposals for a long term "waste dump". But pretty well all of this "waste" is processed into stuff that people want - and in the same way, most of what people think of as waste is processable into "stuff we want" (ie fuel for reactors).

There is a legacy though. And that is mostly down to historic decisions - which in hindsight no-one thinks were sensible by todays standards. But then was then (and bear in mind, the primary consideration was making weapons material before our "enemies"). New reactors actually have "how do we take it apart in 40 years" as part of the design criteria - but 50 years ago, that wasn't considered in the dash to get them built.

SO yes there's a legacy problem - but new builds needn't add to that, unless you take the view (which I've heard expressed many times by anti-nuclear campaigners) that it's impossible for knowledge or designs to have progressed in the last 60 years of nuclear power !

>> also the cost of the electricity from them does not take inot account the decommissioning of the said plants.

Actually, if done properly it needn't be that expensive. But once again, anti-nuclear campaigners have forced actions that actually increase the "problem". For example, consider two options for (say) a graphite moderated reactor :

1) When you shut it down, you let it cool, defuel it, and remove all the ancillary equipment and buildings. You then have the core and containment building - about the size of a house - that you can leave for a century to "cool off". By this time, pretty well anything that's "highly active" will have decayed, and so all you need is a bit of PPE and people can walk in and carry out the graphite blocks which are no more active than the rocks in some parts of the country.

2) When you shut it down, you let it cool, defuel it, and then dismantle it immediately - while the moderator and other materials are still active. So you need expensive handling methods, and create a large pile of active material that you need to store for a few decades (say a century) while most of the highly active stuff decays.

So option 1 isn't really a problem, option 2 is what the anti-nuclear lobby demand - while then complaining about the waste problem.

Re: The reason UEFI can be disabled for WIndows 8 and not for RT

> And why should the big hardware manufactures follow them?

Simple, money !

If you think MS aren't doing some nice deals on licensing based on the manufacturer bending to their will, think again. Of course, they'll be covert about it - but there will be some form of financial incentive. AT one time they simple were up front about it - "buy a cheap licence for *EVERY* computer you sell or buy them at a much higher price". Then there will be "sales and promotional" incentives. And of course, all the deals struck are private, so no-one knows how much the others are paying for their licences, but will have to negotiate their deal with Redmond. If you think that some "unofficial" and not written down terms aren't involved, then you don't know anything about big business.

@ mmeier

> The success of MS is based on the failure of the others and nothing else.

I suggest you go and learn some industry history.

Yes, there were some reasons that weren't to do with MS, but you forget that at one time MS was just one of many options. They did "fairly well" but but didn't gain their stranglehold on the industry before they employed downright illegal tactics to lock out other players. They *DID* break the law, they were convicted of doing so.

Take OS/2 for example. It was a bit ahead of it's time in that it needed more resources than were typically available, but it was technically well ahead of MS. It may well have remained a competitor if MS hadn't (effectively) made Windows free to the end user.

At the time, OS/2 cost money, but a user would struggle to buy a PC without Windows pre-installed - or at least to save any money by doing so. Thus the competition changed from being "Windows @ $x vs OS/2 @ $y", to "Windows free vs OS/2 @ $Y" for most purchasers. Yes, some technically savvy users till bought OS/2, but the market was significantly distorted against OS/2 - smaller sales figures, smaller installed base, hence less interest from developers, and it all goes round in a vicious circle.

All this was done by effectively strong arming PC manufacturers. The deal was simple, you buy a "white label" licence for DOS and Windows for *EVERY* PC you sell, or you don't get to buy it at anything like the price your competitors are paying. Thus every manufacturer (if they wanted to be competitive) had to pay MS for Windows even if they shipped a PC with OS/2. This is not supposition - MS were found guilty.

Same with Internet Explorer. Netscape was doing "OK" until Microsoft gave IE away for free. It's hard to compete with free if you don't have a source of income to cross subsidise the product with - with MS, they just included it in the price of Windows. Again, MS were eventually found guilty (both in the USA and Europe), but not before they'd screwed the market (and internet standards) to such an extent that we've still not fully recovered year later.

And in between they did dirty tricks to exclude non-Windows servers from their networks, and once Windows servers were in, to exclude non-Windows clients from Windows server networks. They were found guilty for that as well, see the settlement where they were forced to hand over interoperability data to (for example) the Samba dev teams.

In short, MS got where they are now by dirty tricks. In the early days they did indeed have some good stuff and innovation. But they got greedy, and just like Standard Oil and IBM before them, resorted to criminal activity to distort the market in their favour.

You are partly right. The "Unix wars" really didn't help. Had the differing factions co-operated a bit then they'd probably have held on to a decent slice of the market - but instead they were too busy fighting over slices of the pie to realise that they would be better off sharing and building a bigger pie.

And so on.

But the key thing is that MS still had to fight by "being better" until they managed to illegally distort the market.

But this latest secure boot malarkey is another example of them being "disingenious". Yes, it is true that third parties can get a bootloader signed. Yes it's true that the user can turn off secure boot. Yes it's true that you can load extra keys.

But, to the "average man in the street", they get their computer - and to boot "this funny other OS that their mate recommends" have to go through some steps, at least one of which will be labelled in terms which to a non-technical user mean "do you really want to f*ck up your computer ?" - then that will definitely put a lot of people off trying Linux. Even though several distros have (from reading the comments) gone down this route - it's meant that everyone else has had to jump through hoops to pander to MSs wishes.

Coming next - at some point they'll silently drop the requirement to allow other OSs or non-secure boot. This current shambles is but the thin edge of the wedge - once it's in and accepted, they just have to tap it in a bit at a time.

Just an FYI ...

>> The mobile phone companies have access to much better quality data from their tower records, especially the local signal strength maps around those towers and so can triangulate your position with greater accuracy.

In general, signal strength is a poor measure to use. For GSM networks, there is a *very* accurate distance measure available. The way GSM networks operate, the cell tower keeps telling the mobile device to adjust it's timing so that it's signal arrives at the cell tower within the timeslot allocated to that device. By keeping track of the timing instructions, the cell tower can have a quite accurate measure of distance from the tower.

Together with this, and the segment you are using, it can place you on a fairly narrow line marking part of a circumference of a circle round the tower.

Add in another tower and it can do the same from that, and place you in one of two positions (where the lines intersect). Since one of those positions probably wouldn't result in you using the segment you are on, then that can be ruled out and your position is left.

Much the same technique is used for aircraft navigation. The airborne station sends a request signal to the ground station, which sends a reply back. the round trip time allows the airborne unit to work out the distance. Some units can do this simultaneously with two ground stations and work out your position from that - and it's generally the most accurate radio navigation technique (apart from GPS).

Re: Even if it works

>> Very probably. From a UK perspective, this is what the near future holds for those responsible for UK energy policy:

Brilliant, and what I've been trying to tell (without having all the numbers to hand) people for years. There is just one thing left out ..

At each stage of crisis, the treehuggers will wave their hands in the air dismissively, and point out that a) wind is reliable because it's always windy somewhere, and b) when we get smart meters, we'll **just** adjust our lecky usage to suit. Of course, anyone who actually has any idea how things actually works knows that both those arguments are male bovine manure.

The idiots in Westminster will just keep believing this idealogical rubbish, and keep repeating it in response to any criticism or suggestion of impending doom.

Meanwhile, anyone who cares about living a normal life is starting to look at putting their own small diesel genny in (if they are ina position to) - with heat recovery to make it (probably) cheaper than mains lecky for at least some of the time !

Written as one of those of us who remember the power cuts in the 70's, and how nuclear saved out bacon back then.

Re: Building Houses

>> Also there are the complications that electricity and gas installations need to be signed off by a suitably qualified person.

> In the UK it would illegal to build the electrical or gas bits without being a qualified electrician and/or gas engineer

Actually, that is **NOT** the case.

It is absolutely legal for you to do all your own electrical work provided you have enough competence to do so. Part P of the building regs states that "Reasonable provision shall be made in the design and installation of electrical installations in order to protect persons operating, maintaining or altering the installation from fire or injury."

That is the entirety of Part P !

However, the main building regs state that all work is notifiable unless exempted by Schedule 4 which lists those works for which notification is required, or unless the work is done by someone who is a member of an appropriate approved scheme through which they can self notify.

So you can do all your own electrical work, as long as you have enough competence to comply with Part P (not that onerous) AND you notify your Local Authority Building Control (LABC) department. Since you'll need to notify LABC for building your house, the electrical works can be covered under that. If you are able to supply all the required test results, then LABC will probably accept those if they think you are competent to have done the tests and inspections properly. Otherwise they will get a qualified electrician in to do some tests.

For major works such as this (wiring a new build house), it's worth just lumping in the electrics with the main build and it'll cost you very little extra to notify. For minor works, the LABC fee structure is designed such that it's often more expensive than employing a member of an approved organisation to do the work !

BTW - Schedule 4 changes very significantly on 6th April. At present there are quite a lot of things that aren't exempt - from 6th April most of these become exempt and from memory the list of notifiable electrical works effectively comes down to : work within the zoned area of a bathroom, provision of a consumer unit, addition of an extra circuit (ie extra way in the fuse board or CU).

Much the same applies to gas work - it is a myth (that the industry is happy to keep alive) that no-one can work on a gas system without being a member of Gas Safe. The Gas Safety Regulations effectively say that you cannot work on gas "by way of trade" without being registered. If you are working on your own property then that's not a trade and the regs don't require you to be registered. The same applies if you do some work for a friend without their being any form of payment (either cash or kind) involved. But if your friend pays you, then it comes under the rags.

But, for both gas and electrical works - there are significant safety risks if you don't know what you are doing. So it really really does make sense to leave it to professionals if there is any doubt.

But ...

>> has little to no effect on existing mono receivers ... there was no need for the new system to be compatible with existing sets anyway!

But, when 625 line and colour on UHF came along, there were still mono sets, and would be for many years. So while there may have been no requirement for backwards compatibility with existing 405 line VHF sets, there was a requirement for compatibility with new mono sets.

Besides all that, I struggle to see how an RGB system could have been easily implemented at the time - in analogue, and without all that much by way of available chippery. Of course it's a different matter now with all this digital malarky, but looking back, colour was like the proverbial dancing bear - the wonder is no that it was so good considering the limitations of the technology available at the time, but that it did it at all.

Re: No brakes? - Range Rover

>> ..as the handbrake acts on a separate disk on the back of the gearbox...

> The seperate transmission brake on Land Rover vehicles is actually a drum brake.

Actually, I believe most (all ?) of the new models no longer have this. DIscovery 3/4 have parking brakes which are a set of shoes that work inside a drum which is part of the disk hub - and applied electrically. My mate tells me they change a lot of the actuator assemblies when they seize up.

And in any case, if you do have a transmission brake, then you really do not want to be trying to use it at speed. I know people that have ripped the backplate off the gearbox, and if that doesn't happen, there's still the propshaft, diff, and driveshafts to let go. The transmission brake is usually not very smooth either - so you'd be applying not just the braking effort, but a lot of cyclic variation (ie vibration and shock) to the rear axle etc.

As to the "you can always turn it off" brigade. In theory you can, but if there's a computer/electronics fault then there is never any guarantee that "press and hold the start button" will actually turn off the engine. The only (almost) guaranteed method is to have a physical switch that will physically remove power to some required service (fuel supply or ignition).

Also, as pointed out, we don't know the extent of the driver's disability, and whether he would have been capable of taking a hand of the controls to press and hold a button for long enough to kill the engine.

As an aside, when the 'first' 'new' Range Rover (P38) came out, there were a couple of reports of people careering down hills, in neutral, with no brakes. Nothing wrong could ever be found, and there was never any proof either way - Land Rover never accepted any problem existed. It is thought the process went like :

Attempting steep/slippery hill. Fail with wheels spinning. Apply brakes and attempt to engage reverse. Car rolls backwards at speed.

The theory was that the spinning wheels confused the ABS into thinking it was skidding and so it took the brakes off to correct the skid - allowing the car to roll back down the hill. Meanwhile, the "fly by wire" gearbox refuses to engage reverse while the vehicle is moving. So no brakes, in neutral, on a hill steep enough that you failed to get up it.

I've seen how fast a vehicle can pick up speed on such hills. "Exciting" probably doesn't do justice to the experience !

Re: Also, Ethernet sockets & USB ports...

>> USB has not ever been the 'one-port-to-rule-them-all' -- actually Firewire was/is.

>> with 5w of power,

>> you can daisy chain devices, I forget the length but I think it was 16 devices.

Beat me to it, far superior - not just in transfer rate, but in internal architecture as well. Even Firewire 400 outperforms USB 2, and Firewire 800 leaves it standing. USB 3 is now coming along and finally allows USB to pass where Firewire was over a decade ago !

Yes you get bus power - any device could add power to the bus and that would power the repeater/hub in multiport devices. The power was actually more normally 12W - the official spec was for up to 1A (instead of 1/2A for USB), and devices typically supplied 12V (the spec says up to 30-something I think, instead of 5V for USB).

It's not for nothing that manufacturers have implemented their own non-standard, bastardised, "more than a trickle" power support for their devices to charge through USB - many of which just get to where Firewire has always been !

Daisy chain/branch in any arrangement you want as long as there aren't any loops, with cables that are the same both ends so none of this finding you've got the wrong end of the cable - the article didn't touch on that !.

I believe what killed it was Apple being greedy and wanting too much in licence fees - so the rest of the industry told them to sod off. Pity. The difference between Firewire 800 and USB 2 on my laptop is like the difference between night and day. Problem is that Firewire devices are "less common" and "rather more expensive" than USB :(

Err, no

>> You don't see an inherent contradiction between those two statements at all then?

No, there isn't an inherent contradiction.

There is only a contradiction if the customer needs to have retained a level of knowledge/skill about the process - it's all about the context.

<struggles to find analogy><ahh, found it>

Take something mundane - providing fresh, clean, wholesome drinking water to staff - along with a means of washing their hands, flushing the loo etc.

It's a fairly critical process that pretty well all businesses rely on - yet they all outsource it without a second thought (mostly). If you are having a new building, you get the water company to put a nice blue plastic pipe in, if it's an existing building you're moving into then someone else will have had that done. After that, you turn on the tap and water comes out - and you don't know (or in most cases) care how that happens, how many people were needed to make it happens, and so on. You just pay your supplier's bill and get your water supply outsourced.

Same thing with electricity, gas, and waste water.

So back to IT. Some outsourcing will be (nearly) as mundane as that. Lets face it, there are "quite a few" outfits of all sized that will support a "common" Microsoft centric desktop and server estate.

Where it does matter is if your systems and processes are not common.

Back to our analogy. For a lot of waste, just flushing it down the pipe is all it needs - no problem. But if you have some manufacturing process that creates some noxious waste then you might need to be outsourcing to a specialist who will tanker away your waste to a disposal/processing site. In this case, if your chosen outsourcer goes tits up, then you need to find another one.

One of the suggestions in the article is to effectively know where the waste is going (ie who your supplier's supplier is). If your outsourcer goes tits-up, you go direct to his supplier and negotiate a contract direct with them - but you may also need to find another middle-man (ie someone with a tanker) which the supplier's supplier might well be able to help you with.

So it all comes down to what the process is. If it's something common then not knowing how it's done needn't be a problem. If it's something critical (like someone making a component that only you use, and only this one supplier makes (and knows how to make)) then it doesn't make sense to lose visibility of that process. Note that the article said "There is nothing inherently wrong with this", it didn't there "There is nothing wrong with this".

That's not enough

The whole point of uPNP is that $random_device can just ask the router to open a hole and redirect traffic. So you "think" you have your firewall locked down, then some device comes along, asks to bypass it, and your router obliges with no questions asked. So there you are, smug in the knowledge that it's all locked down, but you have potentially multiple open ports you never even guessed might be there.

In most cases, the user may never have even guessed that the device is doing it - see the earlier Reg article on DVRs that a) expose themselves on your internet connection, b) have flaws which means any logins can be bypassed, and c) are probably installed by people who don't know much about networks.

The only secure option is to disable uPNP - and hope the device manufacturer actually bothered to honour that.

Still, when the local $law_enforcement come knocking on the door, it's yet another defence.

Re: Am I a bad person...?

Dunno, but I was thinking of an episode of The Big Bang Theory - where Howard has, cough, problems with a robotic hand.

Re: Planning restrictions

>> The local apple store is barely a cupboard - I bet they don't meet their own standards!

Probably not. And wouldn't be the first time.

A couple of decades ago I used to part own a small dealership in a small market town in NW England. Back then there were two grades of dealer - "normal" and "Apple Centre". AppleCentre was something similar to the current Apple Stores - Apple only, defined branding, etc, etc. Just like the story, everything was defined, down to minimum sizes, computers in the mandatory training area, floor covering, wallpaper, furniture, and so the list goes on. In return for this, they got an extra 2% margin (we paid 32% off list, they paid 34% off list) and marketing kickbacks.

Even as a "standard" dealer, we still had to meet a long list of requirements - one of which was to produce a 2 year business plan with **detailed** breakdown of what we planned to sell. Anyone else see the nonsense in that when working with a company that won't tell you what it's product range will be in 2 weeks time, let alone 2 years !

But in both cases, these rules were flexibly applied according to Apple's requirements. Ie, if it suited them to ignore something, then they would. One story I recall involved a then large retail group who were having cashflow issues - and were known to have "extended credit terms" with Apple. Some other AppleCentres demanded the same terms and were turned down. Next thing, several of them invited their Apple sales manager to visit - by which time there were strategically placed stacks of IBM boxes shouting "we're prepared to dump Apple".

The next day, the large dealer chain went into administration.

But better still, a friend tells me a good tale from the local Land Rover dealership. They have a very nice showroom with a lovely slate floor. Land Rover standards required carpets - apparently the conversation went along the lines of :

Land Rover - "we want you to carpet the floor"

Dealer - We''ll carpet the floor when you make vehicles that don't leak oil"

Land Rover - silence

They still have a slate floor !

Re: 2k -> 10k credit card

>> Sure, you probably can't survive as a business without taking "credit" somewhere, whether from a bank or suppliers, but basing your business on some random-but-vital third-party not pulling the rug out from under you seems more than a little dumb, especially if you're making millions of pounds each year.

Well the reality is, that for most businesses they cannot work without offering credit lines. Unless you really are the only outfit in the area/county/country/world selling a particular type of widget - then you have to offer an overall deal that's better than others selling the same widget. Everything else being equal, your business customers will buy from your competitor instead of you if you don't offer credit and your competitor does.

Even if you don't give credit, there is normally still gap between buying and getting paid. Eg, you buy some hardware (maybe from different suppliers, and possibly one small part is delayed), you put it all together, install software, configure stuff, etc, etc. In other businesses, you may be buying raw materials and putting them through a lengthy manufacturing process. Or you may need to buy some stuff in for stock so as to be able to respond to requests at short notice. Eventually you are ready to deliver to the customer - and even if the customer hands over the money on delivery, you have still had stuff in your possession for a period of time.

Now, you cold buy in your materials and pay cash - but that means you have to pay out some time before you get paid yourself. This can work, if you have enough cash. But the more business you do, the more cash you'll need to cover this gap - hence you may hear of companies needing cash to expand (you can't sell more because you don't have the cash to buy stock/materials, you can't make that cash without selling more).

Now if you can buy in your raw materials/stock on a credit line - then with luck you can get paid before you need to pay your suppliers. That means you can afford to do a lot more business.

Lets put that in perspective by adding some numbers to a very simplistic scenario. You are a medium size business turning over (say) £1M/month. For simplicity, we'll ignore profit margins, overheads etc ... And we'll assume that on average, stuff goes out the door one week after it comes in.

a) You buy cash, and sell cash. You need enough spare cash to pay for about 1/4 of a month's worth of inputs before you get paid for it. So that's £250k needed - permanently tied up.

b) You buy on 30days, and sell cash. Now you get paid 3 weeks before having to pay your suppliers - so that changes from needing £250k of spare cash to tie up, to having £750k in the bank.

c) You are in the unfortunate position where your customers demand 3 days credit, but your suppliers won't give you any. You now need 5 weeks worth of capital - so you need £1.25M to spare !

Put another way - for every day you can get your cash in sooner, you'll have around £50k more in the bank (assuming 20 working days/month). Similarly, for every day you can hold off paying your suppliers, that's another £50k in your bank.

Obviously the figures change once you consider overheads and profit margins, but is should give some idea of the issue that businesses face.

Most businesses fail due to cashflow problems - often with healthy order books. Without either good credit lines from their suppliers, or loans (typically working capital facilities from the bank) then they simply don't have the cash to buy the inputs needed to meet their sales/orders. This constrains what they can sell, hence the profit they can make, and so they can get into a spiral of restricted sales -> reduced profits -> reduced cash available -> further restricted sales -> ...

Re: No better "expert" available??

I agree, they seem to keep finding experts with an interest in squashing it.

>> Mandate that all handsets must support it, and even the idiot USians will push out a firmware update within six months.

Exactly, make it mandatory and all new phones will come with it - no manufacturer (not even Apple) will be prepared to pull out of Europe. And any manufacturer that cares will push it to older devices with an update - though I expect Apple (and a handful of others) will see it as an opportunity to sell you a newer bit of bling.

Re: Who Pays

>> And long may the networks continue to charge each other the termination rate

I don't think there has been any suggestion that there should be no termination charge - just one that's set at a level that doesn't distort competition. What was happening a few years ago was that network A would charge a stupid rate to it's competitors that was way above what it actually cost. So if you were with A and called another user on A, you might pay (say) 10p/minute. But if a user on network B, you might find it cost (say) 50p/minute to cal the same recipient.

Of course, network B did the same, so a user on A would also be fleeced calling a user on B.

Thus there was a huge price penalty calling someone on a different network.

Up to a point this could be just put aside as a matter of competition. But it started getting really problematic when number portability came in. Take the same two users as in the first example, user 1 calls user 2, and expects to pay (say) 10p/minute as his number says he's on the same network (A). But user 2 have ported his number to network B - so user 1 gets a shock when his bill arrives.

It's even worse when there are inclusive call allowances. The user may expect the call to be "free" as it's within his inclusive minutes bundle - but in fact it's not so it's not a case of getting a bill for 5x what he expected, it's a case of getting a large bill where nothing at all was expected.

Thus OfCon insisted on a cap on termination rates to level things out a bit. The networks don't really lose form it as they end up paying less out as well as getting less in. However, they don't like it as it removes their excuse for fleecing customers calling other networks - and so they get less revenue from their own users. It also removes the incentive for their users to persuade their friends to all join the one network so as to get the lower intra-network rates.

Re: Not new...

It's not so much the current the carbon filament passes, but the track of conductive carbon particles it creates as it disintegrates. Thus you create optimum conditions for the system to "flash over", with the resulting arc creating a plasma path that will keep the arc going until <something> gives in - that something usually being the upstream protection.

Once you've tripped all the circuits, you give the network operators "something of a headache" sorting out what's tripped for what reason and how to turn it all back on.

The claimed theory is that it'll trip everything but not cause any damage - so once you've kicked out the nasty guy that's not selling you oil cheaply enough, it can all be switched back on. However, I've heard reports that the process coats the insulators with a fine layer of carbon deposits which then cause flashovers - thus meaning you have to replace all the insulators before the system can be brought back online, ie not the "non-damaging" weapon it's claimed to be.

For some fun, take a look at the Arcs n Sparks page here :

http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm

In particular, scroll down to "480 volt 3-phase Arc Flash Demonstration" to see how once initiated (in that case with a strand of thin copper wire), an arc can be maintained with a fairly low voltage if there is enough energy behind it.

Re: @JeffyPooh

>> Anyone with their own PBX (i.e. every single telemarketer out there) can set the caller ID info to anything they like.

Actually they *shouldn't* be able to do that. If they are, then their telco should be thrown off the network for allowing fraud. The exchange *should* be checking any presented numbers against a list of those actually permitted for that customer and rejecting anything not on that list - so in theory that should prevent the abuse you talk of.

I can well believe that isn't the case, so there's one point to go after.

Also, when the number is presented to the subscriber, internal to the signalling system is information on how much is network provided (ie the telco exchange is providing it), and how much is customer supplied (at least, that's the case with UK ISDN) - made CLI from my last employer "rather odd" to say the least ! So white/blacklist on network provided portion of the number and ignore the customer supplied portion.

I'm sure there are telcos who will ignore the rules on this - if so then they should lose their licence so they cease to be a problem. That still leaves the foreign calls where rules may be lax or non-existant. Looking in from the outside, it seems that USA sees no problem in imposing it's law on the rest of the world for other things ...

Re: Yet, still the UK refuses to look at Thorium

>> how convenient the blackouts start very shortly after everyone gets a smart meter installed

Convenient indeed, but completely unsurprising since the primary function of the meters is to allow for rationing - they just don't call it that.

It'll start with price rationing - so those with the least spare cash will "voluntarily" reduce their consumption when the price rockets. If that's not enough, then the smart meters have a remote turn off facility so they can organise rolling blackouts like we had in the 70s but with finer granularity.

The upcoming situation is no surprise - it's been known for several decades that our nuclear plants would be shutting down around now (something about a "design life", though it seems some people can't understand that concept). The previous Labour government in particular, but also the preceding Conservative one, basically acted like a load of wimps and weren't prepared to make the unpopular (but necessary) decisions a decade or two ago.

Last I heard, there were several of the AP1000 nuclear plants under construction in China - on time, on budget, and planned to be about 5 years from cutting sod to turning out power ! By the time we finally realise we need them, we'll be able to get the Chinese to come over and build some for us.

Re: Common law employment?

Indeed, back in the 80s when I was in the business, to be an Apple Centre you had to be (near enough) dedicated to Apple and associated 3rd party products. In return for better margins, you had to adhere to a very strict contract that prohibited competing products (so no IBM PCs allowed at all) and even went as far as specifying the (very expensive) wallpaper to be used.

Even a standard dealer contract imposed significant restrictions. I can tell you that Apple were a really nasty company to deal with, though it would be be legally risky if I in any way inferred that they might be inclined to bend the rules in their favour.

I don't know what the current contracts include (thankfully I've been out of it for many years), but if they are anything like the old Apple Centre contracts then the case would have merit - you can't insist on someone dedicating resources to your product to the exclusion of diversity, and then starve them of said product.

Re: multiple lines down nationwide

Yes, it most definitely wasn't restricted to London, or even South - we had two customers in the North West go down.

I have out of band access to one site, and yes, I saw the private addressing as well.

It gets interesting when you use automated monitoring to watch customer connections - you just wouldn't believe how many are taken down, and how frequently, by routine work in the early hours of the morning.