Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: BT spent the money

@AC

I take it you're too young to remember the privatisation. One of the problems with being subsidised by the tax payer was that there was never enough money for investment. The telephone branch of the GPO was otherwise known as the black telephone rationing company.

Re: Paranoia over NSA tampering spurs de-Westernisation drive

@ST

Did you hear a whoosh sound?

Re: Conundrum

"compensation to the businesses whose (paid-for) ads are being blocked"

If a business pesters me with ads then I'm much, MUCH less likely to buy from them. Less as in "if there's an alternative I'll go for it". Less as in "I've taken my business elsewhere from services who thought that my being their customer entitled them to pester me".

It's to the advantage of any business that thinks it wants to sell to me to have ads that I might otherwise get being blocked. So maybe "compensation" should be negative and such businesses should pay the ad-blocker a fee to block them.

The truth of the matter is that I'm far from alone in this attitude. The situation is that the advertising industry makes money by charging advertisers to piss off potential customers.

Re: Victim Compensation

@AC

As it was lost, inevitably. If it hadn't been, in theory, yes. But very likely there'd have been an impeccable paper trail for it.

Re: Is it better in Chinese?

"Their English site is so bad"..."I'm scared topic my credit card number in."

Whoops.

Re: But uncle Tim, I want to hear them pigs squeak!

"A way to claw back bonuses, and to structure bonus incentives better, would also be good. But it's notoriously hard to do."

Just thinking out loud but...

Say we have a special share class that is used for share options. The only way to exercise such options is to buy this class of share. When the govt takes new shares for a bailout more shares of this class get issued but the proportion of dividends allocated to such shares doesn't get expanded in proportion so it's only the share option holders who get their shareholdings diluted and devalued. Could this have any traction?

the ducting, exchange buildings and other infrastructure which investors bought from HMG when BT became a private company.

FTFY

"At least the amount of damage they can inflict is limited to a single project"

Don't be too sure. Ever heard of multi-tasking?

Re: Worse case scenario...

"will be herded towards a subscription model."

For a moment I read that as "a suspicion model"

Re: Post-It note? Miserable amateur!

Upvote for "The ones with messy desks are generally the go-to guys."

Re: No need to worry

@ JamesPond

If the car is making all these other journeys during the day it will be clocking up more miles per day & thus depreciating faster. A hire-car company would include that factor in its sums so your hire charges might be more than you're hoping for.

Re: The sharp increase in the fall of bee numbers

The sharp increase in the rate of decline in bee numbers...

RFTFY

Re: BT with the stickers

The plastic thingies, at least the PlusNet ones, appear to be individually printed so I assume that the passwords are individually set so it wouldn't be a problem. However I reset mine anyway. But if you do that don't throw the card away; if you reset the router it goes back to the factory settings & you'll need the card again.

@Bunbury

I think you've missed the point here. The BT Chairman is speaking for the BT Board. In the event of a spin-off it would fall to the spin-off to roll out broadband. It's no business of his (literally!) as to what that board may do unless, of course, he expects to be its chairman as well. If the latter he's making a damn poor job application.

" totally greenfield, except for the fact there were a bunch of mainframes, minis, and hundreds of desktops, thousands of peripherals, and I never even got a handle on the number of laptops wandering in and out the gate."

Your idea of "totally" or "greenfield" seems somewhat different to mine.

Re: : Wrong Memory Card

"By eckers, lad, you have a good memory."

It's all done with punched cards.

Re: Whazzat?

'Like all PIR, it uses infra red heat and the sudden appearance of to register "movement".'

Yup. It's probably PIR. So why didn't the review just say that instead of something which is self contradictory?

Re: Blah blah free trade blah

That's the whole problem. The entire democratic basis of membership, at least as far as the UK is concerned, is a referendum about 40 years ago on membership of an organisation which is very different from the present set-up, especially the ever closer union bit.

Each time the organisation has changed the issue of popular approval has been ducked so a huge democratic deficit has been built up. Even worse, when the Republic of Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty they were told to go back & vote again until they came up with the right answer. And I think that in a lot of people's minds that is so objectionable that they'd be prepared to vote for an exit as a matter of principle even if the economic consequences meant going back to living in Iron Age round houses.

This situation could have been avoided. It would have meant getting popular approval for each stage of change across all the member countries. That would have been hard work. At each stage the negotiators would have had to come up with something which could have gained that approval. The end result might have been something rather different to what we have now. The membership might have been smaller. The role of MEPs might have been greater. But if an in/out vote were now being proposed against such a background the Europhiles would be quite laid back about it because there'd be a history of repeated approval over several decades.

The task for the EU is to get rid of that democratic deficit and retain the membership intact - give or take Greece.

Re: A general problem with IoT devices

"A $200 device attached to your front door with 2 small screws will get nicked or maybe vandalised."

I know I'm sceptical of this device but at least I'm capable of following the links & scrolling down the page to where it says:

"The Ring Doorbell attaches to its mounting plate using a proprietary screw for security."

OK, screws start off proprietary but given time the drivers do tend to end up in cheap sets at B&Q. But it then says:

"If your doorbell gets stolen, don’t worry - we’ll replace it. For free."

Re: No representation without taxation

'"local government" has gotten above its station'

It certainly has. If asked about failure to grit roads adequately or run public libraries it regularly pleads poverty. And yet it has money to spaff on vanity projects such as cycle races where it pays foreign organisers to run them over local roads which it blocks residents from using.

Re: "the ability to isolate devices from external connection"

It might not be so trivial if the PC needs to continue to need a LAN connection, even if it's only to a shared printer, whilst other PCs on the premises need an internet connection.

"One hopes this will be a lesson, perhaps not of Ratner-esque proportions"

Never assume that some manglements will learn from anything less than a Ratner-esque lesson. And one that actually happens to them.