Posts by Doctor Syntax 42407 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
'Yes you'd think so, but by the time the process has been bloated with "eye candy", large images, buttons that are images so must be downloaded before you can see what they are'
Testing.
Not just testing on the dev's box sitting on the desk but build a prototype and go out into the field and test it from there on the sort of links that will be used in practice.
"Ahh, the joys of having to use internal IT resources rather than going out to the market for the best supplier."
I'm not sure about this. There would be a good argument for having real internal IT, namely internal to the individual departments who could work with the rest of the department on a regular basis and call in outside resources as and when needed. Part of the problem seems to be the lack of skills required to even communicate with outside suppliers or even to work out requirements in an orderly fashion.
"typical power grabbing senior civil servant behaviour"
AIUI these were CEO types parachuted into top posts rather than having come up through the ranks. Maybe this is typical of senior civil servants these days. If so it tells us that recruitment to senior civil service posts is every bit as bad as recruitment into the top levels of corporations.
It's a consequence of seeing anyone who does the work as an expense to be outsourced to the cheapest bidder rather than the core of the operation and as a possibility for the next generation of managers. In fact they're likely to be seen as a threat to the current generation if they're any good. And that also applies far more widely than the civil service.
"And yes, I did once work for an Ad agency"
Do you know if the industry has ever attempted to measure the net effect of advertising? They can easily say x% of people who saw an ad bought from it. But if y% were so pissed off that they made a mental note never to buy that product the net effect is actually x-y% and that could very easily be a negative number.
I doubt its something that could be easily researched. I also doubt that anyone with any sense in the ad industry would avoid doing that for fear of what they might find but there seems to be sufficient arrogance that the possibility of finding something to burst their bubble might never occur to them.
"I am obviously in the minority, because I would rather pay than see adverts online."
I'm not sure that that's properly tested. The number of sites one would pay for is always going to be less than those one might arrive at by a link from a paid for site. But that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be scope for worthwhile sites to earn paid subscriptions and - who knows? - maybe make more than they could through adverts.
I can't help feeling that the people who are really being ripped off in all this are the actual advertisers, the people with the products being pushed. The advertising industry is taking money from them and presumably they see some orders coming in but the industry's antics might well be losing them more potential customers than they bring simply by being so annoying. But then, as I've said before, the one thing you can be sure the advertising industry sells successfully is itself.
"And realistically, building the infra for a dedicated secure network would bust the chops of most power companies."
It shouldn't bust the chops of most telecoms companies. What do you think the power companies used before they had the internet to do their coms?
Nevertheless something other than Windows wouldn't be a bad choice. Dependence on an OS that can be obsoleted at will by a vendor isn't good.
There's clearly a need to known how many. The neediness to know who is much more questionable. When we see statements such as "legislation to make it easier for local authorities and government departments to share citizen data without breaching the Data Protection Act" we really should be questioning this. Firstly is the DPA there for a reason? Secondly does the DPA allow for this sharing already? If it does why do we need extra legislatation? If it doesn't is this additional legislation intended to weaken the DPA so what's illegal now can become legal whilst still claiming to be not breaching it? And if so does it make a nonsense of the reasons we have the DPA?
"what happens when networks get the bright idea of selling ads themselves"
Given that they seem to have cottoned onto the fact that users don't want ads then if the other networks do provide ads themselves not doing so is a valuable differentiator.
There's a big difference between being ad-supported and providing a paid-for service. Ad-supported sites could suffer in the sort of thermonuclear war you suggest. Paid networks aren't going to nuke themselves unless they have very stupid managements.
BTW, re your prediction. How are Google going to send ads to Android devices if the networks are ad-blocking?
But should Net Neutrality mean that users pay for the advertisers' bandwidth? I'd suggest that whoever wants to use the bandwidth pays.
At present the objections to ads are (a) they're annoying (b) they may be malicious and (c) they steal bandwidth the user paid for. If the advertiser wants to sell something to me then stealing from me isn't exactly a good start.
So if the advertiser pays their share then that's one obstacle removed.
The next is that if advertisers are paying for their bandwidth then they may start paying attention to just how effective their ads are and realise that pissing off the potential customer by being annoying isn't a good idea either, not it wasting money sending out ads for something their tracking tells them the customer's bought already. So the ads might get less annoying.
The worry is that the only "ads" worth paying to send the user are ransomware or the like.
"That would make the court a lawmaker."
Well, making case law is a role for the courts. But I don't think it's a matter of defining what's acceptable. It's already said that the pig wasn't for specific reasons. It will then have the job of deciding whether the pig with lipstick is any better depending on whether the specific reasons have gone away. Somehow, I think that lipstick or no, the pig's going to remain earth-bound.
"1) Security pays what? 6 - 7 quid an hour or thereabouts?
So, you are basically going to get either: Total monkeys "who like the uniform" or those people with other problems in their life (like being recently out of jail or supplementing their measly salary in ways that might land them in one). Neither character is going to be around for long, why train them? It's not like anything they do will come back to you (If it does, you can always sack them)."
If you're safeguarding important installations with international security regulations pertaining to them then these are not the people you should be hiring to do it, the people you're hiring should be trained and if 6 - 7 qph isn't enough to recruit and retain the people you should be hiring and training, then it's not the rate you should be paying.
"Theft is theft, there is no time limit or extenuating circumstances such as saying that you were going to return the item eventually."
Theft is indeed theft. It's taking with intent to permanently deprive. That's why the charge against a joyrider isn't theft, it's taking and driving away.
"They will learn, adapt and in time drive those roads better than either of us ever could."
They'll have a lot to learn. The sheep might not be in the road yet. Given that they can recognise a sheep, can they still recognise it when it's standing on top of a wall. Can they recognise that the sheep on the wall is facing the road? Can they recognise that it's getting ready to jump and that when it does it will already be too late to break so break NOW?
Here's another interesting one: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Northumberland+St,+Huddersfield,+West+Yorkshire+HD1/@53.648938,-1.7805395,3a,66.8y,75.07h,73.98t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sUmncoXKNzFGnjA-AhaYgog!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x487bdc6d76aee929:0x84feda5b66e64326?hl=en
Bus (non bendy but see below) occupying the left hand lane opposite the side street waiting for the lights to change at the next junction with me behind. Smallish Volvo, (i.e.smallish in Volvo terms) exiting the street on the right (it wasn't one way back then) absolutely determined to butt in behind the bus crept forward until the rubber strip on his bumper was resting on the side of the bus half way along.
What I hadn't noticed until the bus started to move was that he'd actually pushed in what must have been an unsupported panel form in the skirt of the bus. I watched fascinated as the bus eased forward. The panel yielded as it came to the bumper, then sprung out again after it got past so a depression an inch or so deep ran past the bumper until the leading edge of the wheel arch cleared the bumper..
A second or so later the trailing edge of the wheel arch hit the bumper and tore it clean off. The bus drove on. I drove round the back of the Volvo into the side street and left the muppet, his wife, their car and its bumper to sort it out on their own.
"Unfortunately - unless you rewrite huge swathes of company law, you will have a problem."
Leave company law alone but amend insolvency law to prevent a company being liquidated whilst criminal proceedings or fines are pending with the body issuing the fines joining HMRC in getting first dibs at the assets.
"almost all PCs still have slot-like 16:9 display aspect ratios"
So, you assume that everyone else ought to have your preferred aspect ratio? Why do we keep getting this stupid pattern of "I prefer/need $OPTION so everyone else ought to have it too"?
"How, then, did we afford to get electricity and water to just about anybody who wants it, even in our relatively impoverished past?"
Gradually. I grew up in a rural house that initially didn't have mains water (actually when we got it we still preferred the spring for drinking water anyway) nor electricity until after we left in 1958.
We're looking at a copper network that was installed over decades. Replacing that with FTTP would be a huge investment. Deciding who'll do that is secondary to finding the money. As you point out the cable installers lost money even though they were able to cherry pick the compact high density urban areas. Then there's the rate at which such a replacement might take happen; and hence working out how large a workforce might be or could be assembled for the task, how many roads could be dug up simultaneously etc.
And now we have muppets thinking that all it takes to roll out FTTP to the whole country is the right wording in an OFCOM report.
"the futility of doing something like this on a Friday"
This is actually OK. You just have to budget for spending your entire weekend fixing it. Providing you do that either (a) everything will work just fine or (b) you'll still not have everything fixed by 27:00 hours on Sunday evening. This is the consequence of the uncertainty principle running into time dilation.
