Posts by TerryAcky 21 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2010
2 down voters... What prey tell is it that you don't like about my post you naughty downvoters you?...That one can dispense with G**gle? That I don't feel the need to use social twaddlery? Please do tell!
'Mountain View Chocolate Box? Chocolate starfish more like :)
A few UK based sites I have tell wildly different stories.
One with c. 50k unique hits/month shows 96.4% of traffic coming by way of Google. Another, with higher traffic numbers and a more rapidly increasing traffic throughput, only shows about 58% of traffic arriving by way of Google. The latter site was, a few months ago, at 92% from Google. The difference in this case is that traffic from Baidu and Yandex has increased rapidly and, whilst the actual Google hits have not decreased in real numbers, their percentage share has decreased - due to the increase in Baidu and Yandex traffic.
My guess is that you can tell the story either way. But as for Google being dominant - it should be qualified that is only (generally) dominant in the western hemisphere and India :) Throw in all traffic from China, Russia and ex Soviet countries for example and you will probably get a much more accurate picture - showing that Google is not quite as dominant (on a global basis) as we many think.
You know, I effectively did that a number of years ago to see how I would find things. No Google, no FB etc - and you know what? - my web experience has not suffered one iota because of it. In fact the contrary, and as a bonus, I am more productive. 'Now how's the tiny market share looking?' Pretty good actually, thank you for asking :)
For me, the hardest part of the process was not any degraded web experience but rather to remember to forget to use G**gle by default. To me it was like giving up smoking - hard kicking the habit - but better for it afterwards.
No, it's not a solar based munching that awaits us... It will be the approaching, mandering magnetar that the 2012 loon-doom-merchants have missed that is causing the problems you describe. That said, we have already been co(s)mically splatted but, due to causality issues demonstrated by FTL neutrinos, we just don't know it yet - as it happened before we could dispatch a 'message to self' into our past timeline, which coincidentally, hasn't yet happened :)
Just to keep the ball rolling...
The green adgenda simply does not scale adequately. Wind farms, geothermal, solar, biomass, hydro etc. All very laudible, and each useful - if only in in a geographically limited scope. Each however has its own geographic or economic issues. In all honesty I personally see no real evidence that these, in combination, will meet the future energy demands of a rapidly growing and developing global population, at a price that all current and future nation and individual consumers will be able to afford.
Parts of the green agenda are based on falsehoods or incomplete science - and in the case of the *cough* IPCC - often both. For example we now know that the IPCC climate models are - in very simple terms - wrong. Real science has now proven that solar forcing, as one example - as used in IPCC climate models - is grossly understimated. [Link: [Warning. PDF] http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1102/1102.4763v1.pdf].
If the greens can advance their adgenda based on factual science and science that has no politically predefined/preferred outcome then I wish them well. Until this time however, the green agenda cannot be taken seriously as a global proposition.
If I were a greenie, I personally, would stop bleating about nuclear and concentrate on whining about fossil fuels and those darned American polluters.
"What pro-nuclear knuckleheads can't get through their thick skulls is nuclear causes pollution that is both more dangerous..." Blah, blah, yackety-smackety... I worked around radioactive sources for about 8 years in the 80's/90's and I ain't glowing yet :)
Here's my view: What anti-nuclear dimwits can't get through their thick skulls is that nuclear does not necessarily equate to fission alone. All this bull**** about wind fams... Pah. Nuclear is the only viable, realistic answer... Fission short term, fusion long term.
Me? I'm the one with hydrogen fuel pellets in my pocket. You can keep your fart farms ta very much :)
Fact: I beileve I made no mention of Javascript, security or reliabiliy.
Fact: I further believe I stated that other alternatives are available. They are.
Fact: Such alternatives are available for use in household sites and software products from both the closed source and open source ecosystems. Whether I would use them is entirely a different debate.
Fact: Session variables and cookies can be dispensed with if necessary.
Avoiding a few specifics, there is little difference between cookieless and cookie if your system or connection has been compromised.
Furthermore, I assume that you failed to read my posts... Nowhere did I use the words reliable or reliably. I therefore only made the case that it can be done. What I did not do however was state that it can be done reliably, as you claim. I can only assume that inference was drawn by you for the progression of your argument.
As a final parting comment, cookies are in themselves, not a secure mechamism. They never have been, they likely never will be.
I would have though that someone bearing the same moniker as the Elizabethan Enochian magician Dr John Dee would be able to work a little magick ;o)
Session variables and cookies can be dispensed with if necessary. It ain't difficult. Try using Google/Bing or whatever and you will find your answers.
"We either pay for stuff on the 'net, or we have to have adverts on sites."
Utterly incorrect IMHO. What you appear to pre-suppose is that, as consumers, we must all accept that the only successful business model is an ad-supported business model. This is a flawed logic. Granted, it is most certainly the most successful and others are well, lacking. However that does not mean that revenues cannot be generated in other manners.
Dare I suggest that we do not "need to achieve a middle ground that is acceptable to advertisers, end users and web-site operators", but rather that business finds other more innovative revenue generating streams. Yes, if we want everything to be free, then ads are likely an essential part of the landscape. However, as freetards, should we have the right to expect everything to be free?
As for other commentors who appear to be suggesting that cookies are essential, they are not. There are, and always have been, other ways of maintaining state. OK, they are more expensive in terms of development costs, network bandwidth and storage - however the option(s) have always been there and will always remain. Cookies are a cheap way of maintaining state (amongst other things), but to any developer who suggests they are essential (for example, in shopping carts, as some seem to suggest), I would suggest that you need to read a little more about basic methods of state management and basic development in general.
"The security shortcomings of Java on browsers has prompted some security experts to begin advising surfers to disable the technology."...
"Experts begin advising"..? Begin??? Experts???
Like, well, c'mon...hasn't this been the general concensus of the educated world since, well, like about 1996?
Methinks these 'experts' missed the train some 15 years ago!
"Gone are the days when customers will pay for software just because there's a proprietary wrapper on it and a big price tag... There are those that 'get it.' Those that don't won't matter for very long."
Not to sound like a troll, but what utter, utter impartial tosh Matt! I can only surmise that your position is somewhat biased, sitting squarely on the open side of the fence as you appear to do.
During the past 15 years working on projects for quite an array of national and multi-national corporations in the finance and leisure sectors (FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies for example) and on projects that hande in excess of $8bn of trades daily (in this case for a company that handles over 100 times that volume a day - yes, those numbers are real and are correct!), I have yet to see much evidence supporting your "Gone are the days..." statement . Quite the contrary in fact.
About 60% of the larger projects I have been involved in during the last 10 years have sat firmly on the 'closed' side of the fence and there is no movement to change that position on these projects, as far as I can see.
I can say without any uncertainty and doubt, that customers, big customers, are still willing to pay a large price tag for a 'proprietary wrapper'. I can go even futher and say, again without and uncertainty and doubt, that the companies to which I am referring plan to continue with heavy investment in these projects, where open source is - perhaps surprisingly - not even part of the equation.
Now, that's not to say that your statement is not correct in some circles, however from my experience it holds only in some circles, and some of those circle where it doesn't hold are pretty darned large circles!
Personally, I see good and bad in both open and closed source on a daily basis. In my opinion open souce will not and cannot save the world, nor can it turn water into wine. On the flip side, closed is not always evil. There's good and bad in both IMHO.
Me? I prefer to sit on the fence in the open vs closed debate and instead go where the most money is for me at any given time. It has surprised me I have to admit, but the last 12 months I have seen a not insubstantial increase in workload and revenue from working on 'proprietary wrappers' for projects with a big price tag. Quite the opposite to your assertion.
Based on my experience, your article is somewhat myopic, flawed and far from impartial. Maybe, because I choose to prostitute my skills where the money is, this makes me 'evil'? ;o)
I do hoever believe that pricacy has server Microsft well over the years, but this is not a new idea.
It may be a case of my misunderstanding you, but when you say "it's exactly the same thing as supporting H.264 (closed everything).", you are either mis-reprtesenting fact or fail to understand fact. Let me explain...
H.264 *is* an open standard and was always developed openly. WebM was developed as a proprietary, totally closed codec, before bought by Google. So point (1): open != closed.
H.264 is a collaborative effort and has involved 2 standards organisations. The same cannot be said of WebM, on either count. Point (2): WebM is therefore simply the bastard-child of 1 brain and no standards organisation(s).
The issue is not one of open vs closed. If it were WebM would actually be lacking here, historically. The issue is one of of patents.
Concerning patents: H.264 does not require end-users such as joe public to pay for any licence. Businessses, yes. End-users? No.
Capability: WebM is lacking in so many ways (as 'OffBeatMammal' points out hereabouts). H.264 is the far superior offering.
Ultimately not only is any 'open standard' argument in favour of WebM doomed to fail (as it's simply a lie, or at best cowardly semantics), but WebM is technically inferior in so many *important* ways.
Granted, the patents and licencing surrounding H.264 may be distasteful for many, but that is an entirely seperate argument from the (partially) ill-informed (or deliberately mis-informed) one you have presented.
Personally I would rather see all major user-agents support H.264, WebM and Theora. In my opinion choice is more important than being forced to use an 'open', technically inferior solution. But that's another debate entirely.
Well, the likely demise of ACS:Law has hastened Cramer Pelmont Solicitors to position themselves for a little extra business. They have appearently even hired one Terence Tsang of ACS:Law/Davenport Lyons infamy. Also, Gallant Macmillan are on the march against PlusNet (to be heard January now I believe, due to the weekends hilarity).
Over on the BBC I read with interest comments from a (BT owned) PlusNet rep: "The incident involving the ACS:Law data leak has further damaged people's confidence in the current process," Er, confidence? What confidence? You mean like the confidence in the Digital Economy Act introduced by the grubby mits of that oft' unelected weasel Mandelson? Confidence? That would be none then :o)
They went on to say "We have not simply consented to these orders in the past, we have asked for stricter terms as public concern has risen. The data leak with ACS:Law prompted us to take further action today." Personally I read that as meaning 'Just like with Phorm, we do what the feck we want, when we want and how we want. We only give a toss when we get caught acting irresponsibly or possibly illegaly. Only then do we pretend to care.'
There's a long-term trend developing here, especially at BT.
As I said in a post above, this whole issue is about much more than just 'illegal' P2P filesharing and the entertainment industries.
I would usually try to be a little more responsible but, as is often said... Laugh? I nearly died!
As for ACS:Law, I hope Andrew Crossley finds a nice big rock to climb under and stays there. I would however like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Crossley for a wonderfully hilarious read of his email over the weekend. It was the best laugh I have had for a long time!
To me this whole issue is bigger than the filesharers and the greed driven industries persecuting them, often with flawed or incomplete evidence. Politicans and lawmakers need to wake up in a different bed to the music industry methinks. That said, perhaps politicians and lawmakers should just, well, wake up!
God forbid the day the UK intruduces ridiculous statutory damages against filesharers, like our lawsuit-mad friends across the pond.
For the record, I am not a filesharer (I was 10 years or so ago though).
“The primary responsibility has got to fall on the developer who is taking untrusted data and putting it is a CSS context within an HTML page,” he told The Reg. “If you don't escape properly, you're going to have XSS every time. Until developers get that through their head, we're going to have to live with lots of XSS holes.”
Here, here that man!
In this instance I see no reason why IE should not be 'fixed'. However, if it's XXS, then the so-called developers should learn to code responsibly. If any developer blindly allows attackers to inject code - either through lazyness or ineptitude - they deserve what they get... Hopefully a job collecting and emptying wheelie bins.
All the same, it won't hurt Microsoft to issue an update to resolve their end. (At least then 'developers' delivering unfit code may start to assume responsibility for their mistakes. Then again, probably not).
"The implication is that MySQL is being downloaded by developers or for evaluation and that it goes no further."
Not an uncommon scenario I would imagine.
I regularly work with a variety of major relational databases. Sometimes on Microsoft platforms, sometimes not. One thing that has been consistently apparent is that, whilst MySQL is a reasonable database, it has rough edges and lacks in one or two important areas. For me personally, it is not quite 'there', always falling just a little short. For me, it never gets rated higher than a 3rd place, but then, that's based on my personal experience alone.
Is it unreasonable to for end users to expect a major database to provide a comprehensive GUI with the database install? I would say it's quite a reasonable expectation these days. Quite a few developers I have spoken with have said the lack of a GUI (with the database) 'kinda sucks'. But then it doesn't take much to download SQLyog Enterprise, for instance. Are they just lazy? Coule be. But then MySQL really should have had it's own admin GUI years ago IMO.
@Mike Pellatt: As for phpMyAdmin... Well, I would imagine that you may be hard pressed to sign up many self-respecting corporate DBAs for this one!
It's quoted elesewhere that David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer said whilst talking about this, "That's why we act every day to maximize free expression and access to information. Free expression is one of our core values. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual,"
What he really means is "Every day we dream up more ways for Google to access your personal data and monetise it. Omnipotence is our motivation. We know that more access to your data means more money, more power and ultimately world domination for us. We tell you lies and more lies and you just lap it up. We are Google. We are Legion."
@ 'The Other Steve': You say, '...once we know the secret sauce Google will be gamed so hard it will become useless.' And you think that is bad because...?!?!!!
"An exception exists where the cookie is "strictly necessary" for the provision of a service "explicitly requested" by the user,"
With respect to first-party cookies:
'Strictly' speaking, cookies are only necessary because a developer says they are. 'Strictly' speaking, there is no web application out there that cannot be made to work without cookies.Therefore, 'stricty' speaking, cookies are never the only solution to a problem and 'strictly' speaking' it could be argued that cookies are always unnecessary.
Cookies are cheap, alternative mechanisms are not so cheap. That's all there is to it. Technically there can be no debate about what's "strictly necessary" as technically cookies are never absolutely necessary.
With respect to third-party cookies: They should always be blocked IMO.
Epic fail from just about every conceivable angle.
"If we disagree we're automatically blinkered."
Oops. I didn't really mean it to come across like that. My comment about the blinkers relates to attitudes that I encounter daily (and I am sure you do to). Primarily that many - shall we say, unquestioning service consumers - find some random service useful and therefore assume that said service must be good and that the service provider is honourable (or they simply don't think anything beyond 'Hey, great service. Does just what I need'). Also, there are of course, those 'in the know' that simply fail to acknowledge any any 'shortcomings' in their preferred service provider. It is in reference to these groups that I made the blinkers remark.
"...thus automatically meaning your point-of-view wins every time".
Hmmm, I am not that clever. I see no problem with being proved wrong. In fact such events (as rare as they are <<< humour) are useful. That's how knowledge is often gained - by being proved wrong.
I will agree that the quailty of a service and the way that data is handled are 2 different issues. However, for me, they are - in many cases - strongly intertwined. To me, no matter how fantastic and innovative a service may be, if I cannot trust the service provider then the service itself is next to wothless/useless.
Finally, I agree, Google have created some clever 'stuff' over the years. But then there's been some pretty interesting stuff run through Microsoft Labs over the years. And don't start me on webmail!.. Personally, having used the Interned since the mid 90's, I have never found a compelling reason to use any webmail service. But than, that's just me.
There was one error in my original post... When I said Goole are becoming more arrogant by the day, what I should really have said is that *Schmidt* is becoming more arrogant by the day. This man lauds openness and freedom, just so long as he can drive all traffic through his network, monitor your every action, read your mail, ad infinitum. and then monetise. This is the man who believes that you and I should have no fundemental right to online privacy. This is a man losing touch with reality.
PS. Reg: Where's the Schmidt is a penis icon?
"The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data," the Wall Street Journal quoted Schmidt as saying. "Failing that, there are other ways to get that information".
Google are way too big for their boots and their arrogance is becoming more open by the day, but then I don't really care - Google and Facebook both suck anyway. I would not trust either of them with my data hence I make no use of their services - I'm not going to volunteer to be Google Fcuked, but you lot help yourselves!
Google boys and girls, downvote away (but only after taking your blinkers off please) ;o)
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