Posts by MuddyBoots 21 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2011
Dates were stored in 6 digits rather than eight because the record size on cobol and dbase indexed files was very limited in the 1980s as i recall. We had removable drives the size of washing machines that cost 1000's and had capacities of a few hundred k. Most dates were coded to assume <=50 is year 2000 and >50 is 1900's. For dates of birth this was ignored because we didn't deal with customers under the age of 18. The assumption was made (correct as it turned out) that a Wang VS would not be used much past the year 2018 and would be replaced.
Obviously this isnt the case for many of the large banks who are still reliant on very old systems...
I imagine that because bad publicity actually costs private firms money and is not just "water off a ducks back" then private industry approaches security in a much more robust manner than councils.
I recall getting a letter from a bank with whom I had a credit card a number of years ago (>12) telling me a laptop was stolen with my account details on it but that the laptop was encrypted. In addition they provided me with a new account number to ensure the information couldn't be used.
Unfortunately, organisations (like people) have to feel it in the abdomen when this stuff happens for them to do anything real about it.
My work laptop has hard disk password protected encryption - unfortunately using the password incorrectly 3 times renders it a brick. I imagine that the way laptops are shared and passed about in local government due to a lack of funds may mean that it is harder to implement such things. But not impossible!!!
Presumably people are pirating the movies because they are not prepared to pay for them.
If they can't get the pirated version, they still won't be prepared to pay for them and will instead wait for them to be in Morrisons/Asda in the bargain bin - show me a DVD I can't get for £2 at Morrisons EVENTUALLY...
I'm not sure wether these people buy other movies legitimately or not - I guess that depends on the quality and availability of free stuff.
I don't quite understand the copyright people saying that the movie industry is losing £X millions/billions in income because that money was never there in the first place!!!
On my S1 I kept uninstaling the Samsung Store, preferring to stick with the Android store instead.
This was precisely because Samsung innundate you with Spam and their Store is virtually unnavigable due to the sheer volume of tat. Of course, on every update the Samsung Store kept reinstalling itself or disabling apps that "needed" the store to "verify" my account.
It never surprises me that a company that's so good at the hardware side seem to have a software arm that is run by the Sales and Marketing Department.
I'm now on an iPhone because my company is prepared to foot the bill (surprising how things like that will sway me). I miss Android for it's flexibility and at the same time, love the iPhone because it just "works". One day, (and it's not today) somebody will provide a phone that has both these things...
Why differentiate a "loan" from a "purchase"?
Any attempt to manipulate a market tends to cause problems and any attempt to fit an old model onto a new market tends to cause problems.
Rather than discussing libabry loans of ebooks, I suggest we go back to first principals; what book sales are supposed to achieve:
A fair income for a popular author to incentivise tha author to write more.
A fair income for the publisher to do the work they do - editing, advertising, commissioning artwork etc.
A fair commission for the website selling/loaning the book.
Ability for a low income reader to access literature.
It amazes me that online booksellers get away with selling an ebook at hardback prices when the hardback is the only book available, and then selling it at the paperback price when only a paperback is available.
If the cost of manufacturing and shipping the book is taken out of the price of an ebook, then surely the ebook would be sufficiently cheap that libraries would become redundant for the majority of people.
The cost of running the libraries could then be spent on providing the unemplyed / retired etc. with free books or discounts.
I got into continuum which was entertaining - not really real sci fi; but in this world of budget cuts and series cancellations, I don't suppose many companies are prepared to pay the upfront costs for the sets - so sci fi in a modern setting (continuum, fringe etc) is probably what we are stuck with!
A shame you stopped b5 on season 2 - before it got going! 1 and 2 are admittedly slow.
The really impressive stuff in b5 was in series 3 and 4. I loved the fact they had 1 , yes 1 time travel story done properly and told over 4 series - whereas on stng and voyager and ds9 there were temporal fluctuations pretty much every episode.
I never could get my head around series 5 of b5; by then they had lost the plot so still consider the end of series 4 as "the end"...
Agreed, hana is not written in abap but many tools using it will be and no doubt will need " tuning" (recoding) to address performance.
Also, I'm not talking about scalability of hardware, but scalability of performance in the real world with x million rows cubed from sap fi gl posting tables from companies that don't dare to archive... I.e. coalface applications.
All I am trying to say is that performance improvements have been promised before, and in the real world don't match up to expectations especially if you aren't ibm and just don't have the funding for 100 x 1tb nodes...
Yes, prices will come down, but at sap and ibm they may not come down fast enough...
Went in to comet during their sale - saw a pair of headphones with 50% off plus another 10% due to closing down. As i was in the market decided to take the risk and buy these. They were still £5 more expensive than the identical item on amazon (from Amazon not a reseller).
That says it all for me - they just dont know how to compete in the real world...
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