Posts by Hayden Clark

"Using social media"=

Government-sponsored astroturfing

3g licence fees

It's a bit rich saying "you should pay termination fees to help pay for t3G licences"!!! Remember, the price was set *by the operators* as it was an auction. If there was no business case, then they shouldn't have bid.

So *I* have to pay for your companies' bosses incompetence and bravado? Why?

// Add 1 to x

Never seen this? Maybe you don't have code written by an ODC. They are told that "comments are good", and so they spew forth reams of nadadoc like this. Sigh.

Plus this gem:

unsigned int numVar;

#define INIT_VALUE -1

.

.

/* Proper casting to remove warning*/

numvar = (unsinged int)INIT_VALUE;

Well, the comment says it all, doesn't it?

Network costs

I am really, really tired of the moaning about upstream bandwidth costs by the ISP's. I quote from Tiscali's site:

" Monthly download allowance

Option 2: Unlimited downloads. This great value package offers you unlimited downloads every month. Download movies and music, play games online, watch video clips and listen to the radio. Fair usage policy applies."

The fair usage policy talks mainly about P2P.

But, if you listen to the radio, watch video clips, download movies and music - you will get capped, as you will be a "heavy user".

In other words, the ISP's have not budgeted or paid for enough bandwidth to deliver the services advertised.

Sigh.

It's your fault the BBC is crap

Yes, really.

You voted in the BBC-hating philistines who *forced* them to outsource programme making. Before this, the BBC did indeed spend a large slice of your licence fee on actually making programmes. Now they are *not allowed to*.

AVG need to grow a pair

Of course the Phorm cookie contains no browse history! That's not what tracking cookies do!

DoubleClick's cookie "contains no browse history", it's used by DoubleClick to identify which ads you view, and thus which sites you have visited - the URL of each advert is customised to include the referring page's URL or partner code. In other words, the data collected via the cookie is EXACTLY THE SAME, only the collection mechanism is different. DoubleClick use ads on partner sites, Phorm use transparent proxy log data.

I guess AVG fear the lawyers. Pity, it's the best value AV tool around at the mo. I have about 4-5 installations - but maybe not for much longer.

Bill is a businessman

n0,000 low salaries for H1-B workers + $nM lobbying fees is still cheaper than n0,000 American salaries.

Sad really.

And they can't spare 2.5M for a historic, unique, invaluable Radio Astronomy network

Pah.

Government spying by proxy

Sorry to be so tinfoil-hat mode, but that's where we are with this. It doesn't matter how Phorm claim to anonymise the data, or where they store it, or what T&C and privacy policy they have, some Government organisation (US or UK) or large corporation will simply subpoena them for their logs.

First - "tell us which IP addresses accessed this paedophilia site"

Then - "tell us which IP addresses accessed this terror site"

And then finally, the real point of this..."tell us which IP addresses accessed mininova,com/thepiratebay.com"

I bet the RIAA can't wait!

"IE7mode?" AAAAgh!

We all know what will happen here.The purveyors of rubbish content management ,site builder and corporate web app tools, that have only ever worked properly with IE6/7, will still not implement the patches to comply with W3C. They will just patch the page generator to add the "IE7-mode=on" tag to the header. Job done.

Only if IE8 rendered W3C only would all this rubbish get fixed. As it is, you're still forced to use IE on far to many (e-commerce) sites, as otherwise they either fail, or chuck your money away.

You people have such touching faith in the mass of users out there.

Most people on BT broadband will see the email, go "huh?" and forget it. Really. There will be no mass migration, no outrage, no shareholder revolt. Why would most people bother, even if they had any clue what was going on (which they won't because the comforting words from their ISP won't tell them).

It's all about price

If the price is low enough, then the hassle factor (and possible getting-cut-off) of piracy becomes the bigger issue. $5? £2.60? There's a *lot* of music buyers who'd spring for that as an impulse purchase.

And I wonder what happens if your browser doesn't support cookies?

So, will wget no longer work? If the client ignores cookie set requests, it sounds to me like the system loops at stage 1, where it eats the request and feeds you a cookie.

And what about web services?

Pillocks.

As bad as Verisign's DNS failure hijack.

Balance sheet

If you are unable to realise the value of an asset - it ceases to be an asset. In other words, as soon as you buy MS software, the book value is £0. Therefore all expenditure on Microsoft licences will need to be from the P&L (revenue) books, not the balance sheet (capital). Having a new version of Office, rolled out across the company, all realised off this quarter's bottom line should concentrate a few minds.

IANAA.

Ah, such touching faith in the legal system

All you guys wondering how they will prove it. The ISP won't have to.

1) T&Cs are changed so that disconnection for "suspicious" activity is OK, and no appeal

2) The traffic sniffer need only check for unidentified protocols and data, on long-running connections

3) The only customers hurt are the high-users anyway, so no loss.

The ISP will *need* to do this, otherwise they will get prosecuted under the new laws for aiding and abetting.

There's only one "green" Baylis product

- the original FreePlay radio. That was a huge box, containing the biggest clock-spring you ever saw and a weeny motor as a dynamo. Rather cleverly, it actually shorted-out the motor to regulate the speed, so if you turn down the volume, the rate of unwinding slowed down.

It was made of plastic, the usual electronic circuit materials (fibreglass, copper, solder, small quantities of the usual nasties) plus a fist-sized chunk of spring steel. No cadmium or mercury. And mostly receyclable.

WMWifiRouter has vanished

The author has removed all the files from his web site, with little explanation. I guess, since it allows you to bypass some operator controls on your handset in the US, he's been SLAPP'ed.

The subsidies aren't redirected from the farmers...

... they were never going to get them. These were *unspent* subsidies, that would otherwise be returned to contributing countries. In other words, your pocket.

So you will pay for it out of future tax rises.

You actually buy a brick...

.. plus a *license* to use the software on it. Once that principle is established, the licensor is free to make up whatever conditions they like.

Yeah, I know.

We've got to get serious about wind power

... or we might just as well give in to the corporate greed and mad hot waste of Nuclear.

This means that some of the wildest, most beautiful parts of the UK are going to have to have dirty great wind farms on them. If the environmental lobby objects, then that proves that its not really trying to save the planet, just the view.

It's not proper XML.

Look at the <dialog> tag - a stupidness in itself.

<dialog> <dt>name1 <dd> text1 <dt>name2 <dd> text2 </dialog>

Note the lack of trailing </dt> or </dd> elements (like </td> for table cells)

This is real standards-munter badness.

@AC

We don't want free internet. We want the service we thought we were getting when we signed up - you know, the "unlimited" thing.

Tiscali can sell whatever product they like, and traffic shape, port block, throttle, or DPI as they choose. What they CAN'T do, and what they are currently doing, is to sell a package that looks like 8Mbit/sec, no cap, and actually is something else entirely. That is what all the screaming and whining is about.

We know the real, real reason...

... that Blu-ray has won.

It has a much cooler name! That's all you need.

Duh!

(because that's what Paris would think)

Take a look at the library "Scrabble" image on the BBC...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7191264.stm

Why to the tech companies kowtow to the diddy media companies?

'cos the media companies had the bright idea of "investing" in politicians, that's why!

Safe? What about ILW?

Intermediate Level Waste. There's tonnes of it. And there's going to be tonnes more. It's too hot to just leave lying about, and it remains hot for too long to just store. But there's too much to encase in glass pucks and bury under the Lake District. And guess what? There is NO PLAN, NO SOLUTION to the disposal of it. Still.

If you need a bright CFL...

... try India. There I bought a 95W CFL (only not very "C", it's about a foot long!) that was equivalent to about 450W!

Unfortunately, the electronic ballast was a bit crap, and a quick off-on cycle killed it :-(.

Also, it seems the UK is restricted to 'orrible fake-incandescent yellow lights. Elsewhere, CFLs are by default bright-white (6500K) which is handy for photography and whatnot.

Everybody this xmas will have Word 2007

It comes as a pre-install on all new PCs.

But its a 3-month evaluation. So the owner will be forced to cough up for it as little Johnny has done all his homework assignments in it.

Seen it.

Sigh.

The toaster is just an example...

.. what we might worry about is the various LAN-connected toys you can get. Networked media players, Home NAS boxes, that new Western Digital thingie that lets you share content over t' internet - they're all fairly sophisticated IP hosts that could potentially launch an attack against PCs on your LAN.

You're trusting that the authors of the firmware were just trying to make the product work......

Promoters: Do like the low-cost airlines do

.. and implement variable pricing. That way, the seller gets to choose the balance of revenue and full-ness as sales progress. The price might drop for thinly-attended events, and rise as the event fills. Or even the price depends on the rate-of-sale. I'm sure RyanAir will sell you the algorithm.

No law needed, just a rather spiffier e-commerce solution at the promoter's web site.

Verizon personal kingdom

The VZW network complies to no standard but their own. Any device you want to use would have to be specifically engineered to the VZW specs. Oh, and don't even consider going to the VZW labs with simulators or prototypes - only full production hardware allowed. So, not only is the actual qualification process longwinded and expensive, but you spend a load of money before you even get there.

Of course, the numpties that regulate the airwaves in the US won't get this...

Shaap! Down Shapp!

... got it already....

And once it's deployed, there will be no hope

Ok, simple explanation why this idea is broken:

1) To pick up the faint TV signals, you need a big funny-shaped aerial on the roof. As has been amply demonstrated, a diddy desktop stick aerial doesn't cut it. Guess what these new devices will have.

2) While the TV aerial is mainly sensitive in the direction its pointing, it's not totally deaf to signals from, say, inside the house.

So, the new device will have a quick listen, decide there's noting to write home about in the space it's about to use, and start squeaking away. Your TV, with it's sooper-sensitive tuner and big aerial, will be swamped by this signal (so-called "de-sensing") and so you lose the picture, or get loads of snow and breakup.

And guess what? You won't be able to sue, 'cos the device will be FCC-certified.