Here is Australia the federal government is trying to roll out data retention laws so that telecommunications companies, and especially internet service providers, will need to retain data on their customers usage for 2 years. I wasn't going to post about this due to possible conflict of interest, but I just got sick of hearing so much misinformation about this topic, I just had to set the record straight.
The bill itself uses the term "metadata", possibly the most mis-used term I have seen in a very long time. However the bill itself does not define what this metadata is. Instead the Attorney General, who has already demonstrated his inability to get a grip on this subject, has provided a list of the data they want to start with when this bill goes live.
This proposal includes the following text when discussing what is kept about the destination of a communication over the internet.
"The Bill explicitly excludes anything that is web-browsing history or could amount to web-browsing history, such as a URL or IP address to which a person has browsed."
I imagine this was added to aleviate the greatest concern they were hearing from the public. But there are a number of issues with this.
The most significant being, they already capture this data, the data they say they are not retaining. If you send a message out on the internet, then all they need to do is attach a device to any intervening network and they get that data for free. The only bit of information they are missing is who is behind each IP address. And that's what this bill is all about, at least in respect to internet traffic. It's so they can get their hands on the information they can't get any other way.
We know, courtesy of the Snowden leaks that the US is already doing this. The only point of contention the US has from a legal perspective is whether they can do that for their domestic traffic.
You really have to think of the internet as a great big public place. Once your message hits the wire, it can be publically scrutinised on it's journey, just as cameras in public places can monitor your travel in the real world. The only issue is that all the internet cameras can see is the IP address and are left to wonder who that IP address is being used by. With the data retention act, they can answer that question.
The second issue is, how does the ISP decide your traffic is web browsing or a call to a service. If it's a service, then the ISP is obliged to capture the destination IP. Not all web browsing is done on ports 80 and 443. They are going to have to open up your message and make a judgement call.
The third issue is that because the definition of the data that must be captured is not defined in the bill, it can be changed on a moments notice. If they decvide to capture more, it doesn't have to go back to parliment, they can just change it.
Also there is nothing to stop them from extending the time the data has to be retained. Once the bill is enacted, they have 2 years to just change the rules to extend it, and during the review, they were already talking about extending it to 5 years.
It seems to me that it is hypocritcal on one hand to say, "No, we can't go through judical authorisation because it will cost too much" but then go ahead an impose the additional cost of capturing and storing this data on the ISPs.
And we have seen the extent and ruthlessness that government leaks are investigated, chased down and prosecuted for matters such as the "boat people" issue, that has nothing to do with national security or terrorism and all to do with trying to stop embaressment for the government."
Make no mistake, this is serious step towards a big brother society. They can dress it up as a "We have to do this or the terrorists are going to kill us all" but they have already shown they are quite prepared to abuse this, and I'm talking about both sides of politics here, not just the current bunch.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Repaying Loans Fortnightly or Weekly Won't Always Save You Money
Have you ever heard "Just by changing your home loand repayments from monthly to fortnightly you can save $$$ and pay your loan off much sooner?" Often this is presented with a wonderful little chart showing one path hitting the zero line much quicker than the other.
Well, if your paid monthly, then this is not true. If your paid monthly your always better to repay monthly, prefferably at the same time you get paid.
The golden rule with reducing compound interest is "pay as much as you can as soon as you can".
So if you being paid monthly, repay monthly. If you getting paid fortnightly, repay fortnightly. If you being paid weekly, repay weekly.
I've had bank managers and loans officers who can't get this simple concept. In one case I had a loans officer change my repayments to fortnightly even though I demanded they remain monthly. In another case, when we went shopping for a home loan, only one out the six loans offices we talked to could answer the following question correctly:
"If I'm being paid monthly, am I better to repay monthly or fortnightly?"
How did they get it so wrong?
Well we need to go back to when repayments were almost always monthly, but most people were paid fortnighly. For the banks, handling the loan repayments was a much more manual process, and so was best if only done once a month. With the introduction of computers, handling repayments was less expensive.
Since most people were paid fortnighly, it was actually better for them to repay fortnightly.
But the main factor that makes fortnightly repayments quicker was that it involved extra payments. When repayment was monthly, that meant that most months, a person would be paid twice, but around every 6 months, a person would be paid 3 times in a month. They were like bonus months where a person would either spend the extra money on something or add it to there savings. By changing to fortnighly these previously extra pays were now going back onto repaying the bank loan.
It all depends on whether you fornightly repayments were caclulated as half the monthly repayments or as 6/13 (six thirteenths) of a monthly payment. The later provides a more accurate comparison of repayments, but the first one gets the graph to zero much quicker and that's a selling point.
The trick is that this all assumed that the person making the repayments is paid fortnightly. The problem is that the hype about repaying fortnightly get repeated like parrots, but the assumption of fortnighly payment is never mentioned.
So don't trust a bank to get it right.
Well, if your paid monthly, then this is not true. If your paid monthly your always better to repay monthly, prefferably at the same time you get paid.
The golden rule with reducing compound interest is "pay as much as you can as soon as you can".
So if you being paid monthly, repay monthly. If you getting paid fortnightly, repay fortnightly. If you being paid weekly, repay weekly.
I've had bank managers and loans officers who can't get this simple concept. In one case I had a loans officer change my repayments to fortnightly even though I demanded they remain monthly. In another case, when we went shopping for a home loan, only one out the six loans offices we talked to could answer the following question correctly:
"If I'm being paid monthly, am I better to repay monthly or fortnightly?"
How did they get it so wrong?
Well we need to go back to when repayments were almost always monthly, but most people were paid fortnighly. For the banks, handling the loan repayments was a much more manual process, and so was best if only done once a month. With the introduction of computers, handling repayments was less expensive.
Since most people were paid fortnighly, it was actually better for them to repay fortnightly.
But the main factor that makes fortnightly repayments quicker was that it involved extra payments. When repayment was monthly, that meant that most months, a person would be paid twice, but around every 6 months, a person would be paid 3 times in a month. They were like bonus months where a person would either spend the extra money on something or add it to there savings. By changing to fortnighly these previously extra pays were now going back onto repaying the bank loan.
It all depends on whether you fornightly repayments were caclulated as half the monthly repayments or as 6/13 (six thirteenths) of a monthly payment. The later provides a more accurate comparison of repayments, but the first one gets the graph to zero much quicker and that's a selling point.
The trick is that this all assumed that the person making the repayments is paid fortnightly. The problem is that the hype about repaying fortnightly get repeated like parrots, but the assumption of fortnighly payment is never mentioned.
So don't trust a bank to get it right.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
The Great Postal Vote Scam And How To Do Something About It
I've mentioned before that the major political parties have
exempted themselves from the Privacy Act. I think it’s section 7c. In 2006
Natasha Spot Destroyer (remember her) introduced a private members bill to
remove this exemption but of course it’s failed to gain any serious support and
last I heard it was dropped, reintroduced, and then put on indefinite hold.
Why don’t they want to drop the exemption?
Because I suspect it favours the major parties. The ones who
can spend the big $$$ building up huge databases on anything they can find out
about us.
And of course it allows them to get away with this latest
travesty I’m calling the “Great Postal Vote” scam.
Maybe you’ve received an envelope recently addressed to you that
had something written on the outside like “IMPORTANT Postal vote information
for the 2013 Federal Election.”
If you opened it up you will find an application form for a
postal vote, a reply paid envelope, and you may also be surprised to find a
letter from your local member of either of the major parties. I’ve only got the
Liberal one but I understand that Labour are up to the same trick, albeit
slightly more transparently.
This letter of course has nothing to do with the Australian
Electoral Commission and has in fact been completely prepared by the political
party in question and mailed out en masse.
The trick is, the address on the reply paid envelope is not
the Australian Electoral Commission but is instead controlled by the political
party in question, albeit disguising itself, in my case, as the “Postal Vote
Centre”.
This allows them to copy down your full contact details, the
date by which you need to vote by, your security question the AEC uses to
confirm who you are, and your signature, before of course forwarding on the
form to the correct AEC address. If you weren’t looking carefully, you might
have been none the wiser that the political party was even involved. They certainly
do their best to hide the fact.
To rub it in the application form includes an AEC privacy
statement assuring you everything is above board. In fact candidates (not the
party) are entitled to your name, date of birth and residential address.
However they are not entitled to your phone numbers, your email, and especially
not your secret security question and answer.
No doubt if pressed the parties will say “No… this is not
deceit… this is providing an essential service to remind people who will need
to postal vote…”.
Seriously politicians, you don’t believe this rubbish, why
on earth do you expect us to believe it.
It’s obvious by the deceit they have used to gather this
information that they cannot be trusted with it.
If ever an argument was needed political parties should not
be exempt from the privacy act, this is it.
However, here’s a good payback. Grab the application form
and instead of filling it out, write in big red letters, “I WOULD NEVER VOTE
FOR A PARTY AS DECEITFUL AS THIS!”. Don’t give them any details. Put the form
in the envelope and mail it back to them. The good news is, they have to pay
for the postage, and you get to tell them first hand you’re not happy with them
for pulling this stunt.
If enough people do this it will hurt them on the $$$ and
they might just reconsider. The really cool thing is that they can’t just
ignore them because there just might be someone’s genuine application form in
there that they are now responsible for forwarding on.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
The Real Pete Kistler Story
I spent about six months in the USA some time ago and in most respects really enjoyed myself. One of my favourite discoveries was a program on NPR called All Things Considered. This program as well as meeting some Americans for real did a lot to break down the perception that most Americans are thick-witted red necks.
For me, its things like NPR in America, ABC here in Australia and of course the BBC, that are symptons of a healthy democracy. If rights and freedoms are to be eroded, it's independant channels like these that will be the first against the firing squads.
ABC radio occasionally repeats All Things Considered, but it's scheduling has to fight with the sitting of parliment. I know which I'd rather listen too.
But the good news is it's online. And one of the stories today (which is yesterday for the USA) was about a guy called Pete Kistler and the company he has set up.
So the story goes, Pete Kistler went for a job he was suprised not to get, and later found out from a friend that the interviewers had googled him up and found a drug dealer by the same name, and got confused. (Doesn't that sound just a little incredible to you? It did to me.)
This story has been repeated to infinitum on the web by a bunch of parrots. But the NPR guy is not a parrot, he is a journalist, a real journalist, and he checked the facts.
And guess what, the whole story is a fake. No such Pete Kistler has been recorded in any jurisdiction. The stuff on the web was faked for any one who bothered to check the story online, which is as far as any parrots got if at all.
The story was created just to promote the company this bloke set up that offers a service that is supposed to do something about similar problems, starting at $1000 (USA) a year. It's the sort of story that ensured they got free advertising and promotion by all those parrots who loved a good story but didn't check their facts.
(And by the way in case your wondering I classify myself as a parrot too, I'm not a journalist).
The question left is would you trust your reputation protection to someone who resorts to fraud to promote himself and his business.
For me, its things like NPR in America, ABC here in Australia and of course the BBC, that are symptons of a healthy democracy. If rights and freedoms are to be eroded, it's independant channels like these that will be the first against the firing squads.
ABC radio occasionally repeats All Things Considered, but it's scheduling has to fight with the sitting of parliment. I know which I'd rather listen too.
But the good news is it's online. And one of the stories today (which is yesterday for the USA) was about a guy called Pete Kistler and the company he has set up.
So the story goes, Pete Kistler went for a job he was suprised not to get, and later found out from a friend that the interviewers had googled him up and found a drug dealer by the same name, and got confused. (Doesn't that sound just a little incredible to you? It did to me.)
This story has been repeated to infinitum on the web by a bunch of parrots. But the NPR guy is not a parrot, he is a journalist, a real journalist, and he checked the facts.
And guess what, the whole story is a fake. No such Pete Kistler has been recorded in any jurisdiction. The stuff on the web was faked for any one who bothered to check the story online, which is as far as any parrots got if at all.
The story was created just to promote the company this bloke set up that offers a service that is supposed to do something about similar problems, starting at $1000 (USA) a year. It's the sort of story that ensured they got free advertising and promotion by all those parrots who loved a good story but didn't check their facts.
(And by the way in case your wondering I classify myself as a parrot too, I'm not a journalist).
The question left is would you trust your reputation protection to someone who resorts to fraud to promote himself and his business.
The Buck For A Vote Scam
Just ask people who know me and they will tell you I complain about the government almost as much as I complain about SharePoint. But it's obviously not that bad because I've never actually done anything about it.
Well that stops today (well tonight anyway).
I've just read up on the new legislation that is about to be intrdoduced into the Australian Federal Parliment that will effectively give each member of parliment 33 cents per year for each vote they get in an election. That works out to be around $1 an election cycle.
For independant MPs, at least those who were independant at the time of the election, it goes straight to them. But for party MPs, it goes to the party, not the MP.
Normally corrupt governments are supposed to hand out dollars for votes. It takes an really corrupt government to think up an idea where it takes your vote, and your dollar too.
Just like in the USA which is dominated by the Republican vs. Democrat parties, or England's Labour vs. Conservative (and friends), Australian politics is dominated by the Labour vs. Liberal party. Well I should say Labour vs. Coalition because there are a handful of Nationals (read Country party) which doesn't mean much unless your from Queensland.
In the mix there are a handful of independants, I think 6 now, though 2 of those were not by choice being found out to be so crooked that each party has had to disown 1 member each. I want to stress the "found out" bit there. It's alright to be a crooked MP as long as your not found out, otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more independants.
And only a bunch of crooks could come up with this scheme and try and sell it as a good thing to the Australian public. And of course it's being endorsed by both parties. You don't get that sort of cooperation between the otherwise opposing political parties unless your talking about politician pay rises or political party exemption from things like the Privacy ACT or the Do Not Call Register.
And what's worse they are going to back date this thing 2 years, so the two main parties each earn themselves a $2 million windfall, just under 4 months out from the next federal election. Actually, since I think we have about 14 million registered voters, and voting is compulsary in Australia, I would have thought this should be a bit more.
Where was your mandate to do this? Mandate is a word politicians love to use when they are introducing unpopular or controversial polcies in their first years of office. I certainly never voted for this.
This has got me so frakking angry. If you don't watch Battlestar, then frakking is a rude thing that coal seam miners do to holes in the ground.
And with the current government party effectively in walking dead status, this is a perfect time for them to slip this sort of snouts in the trough legislation through. Keep your eye out for some more like this in the coming weeks.
A few, I dare say, marginal seat politicians have objected to this legislation, or voiced deep concerns. And sure they might try and claim the higher moral ground for a few news bites, but they are still going to take the money when it goes through.
And the worst thing about this one party is as bad as the other. Instead of Liberal and Labour you might as well call them butter and margarine. I can't taste the difference.
Take the issue which is commonly called "boat people" in this country. When in opposition Labour attacked the Liberal Government for lacking compasion, but when in power, took an exterme right position on the issue, more right than the previous government's position.
But don't get me wrong here, for every complaint I have of one party, I can identify an equal complaint with the other party. They both talk about how they serve the economy and forget the people who vote them in. Neither side has any real answers for the big issues.
And so all this is going to do is allow the party machine to drown out any idependant and original message with the continual party diatribe, even more than ever before.
Well I've never written to my local MP before, but now I will. If you support this policy then the other guy is going to get my vote. I'll write the same thing to whoever the other guy is and let them work out the conundrum between themselves.
Now the government is telling us, this is a good thing, It means that parties won't be influenced by big money, like in the USA, which is funny because most of the time they seem to be doing exactly what the USA is doing, like going to wars, locking people up in some bay, etc.
I think it's a little too late to be worried about big money. I mean, what do all you politicians do when your finished being politicians, you go and work for all those big money interests that you represented when you were in government.
And I include you in that list Mr Carr, touting yourself up as the next leader of federal Labour. What did you do when you stopped being Premiere of NSW (that's like a state governor for anyone in USA). You went and worked for the same financier that made a mint out of public works tollways you helped roll out while in government. I would expect this from the Liberals, because they are meant to represent business and facists, but people from Labour go and do exactly the same thing.
No one is fooled for a second that big money interests aren't already represented and well entrenched in our government. Just look at the ICAC investigation into Obeid, which gives us an idea of what is going on regularly. They don't need to worry about some $5,000 limit on donations, they just go around it.
Actually come to think of it, this absurd spin of how this is such a good thing, which they can barely deliver with a straight face, has made me change my mind.
The worst thing about this is that all that money is not going to be spent on getting the message out, it's just going to be spent on useless spin and attack ads. And for propping up the son's printing business or the wife's PR company.
So heres an idea. I'm guessing that an informal vote doesn't count towards this revenue. Since voting for one party is as bad as voting for the other, how about, just vote informally. Don't put numbers on the ballot sheet, just write in really big letters: "NOT GETTING MY DOLLAR".
I can't think of a better way to protest than to hit their wallet nerve. And it's not like my vote is doing any other good.
Well it's a thought.
Well that stops today (well tonight anyway).
I've just read up on the new legislation that is about to be intrdoduced into the Australian Federal Parliment that will effectively give each member of parliment 33 cents per year for each vote they get in an election. That works out to be around $1 an election cycle.
For independant MPs, at least those who were independant at the time of the election, it goes straight to them. But for party MPs, it goes to the party, not the MP.
Normally corrupt governments are supposed to hand out dollars for votes. It takes an really corrupt government to think up an idea where it takes your vote, and your dollar too.
Just like in the USA which is dominated by the Republican vs. Democrat parties, or England's Labour vs. Conservative (and friends), Australian politics is dominated by the Labour vs. Liberal party. Well I should say Labour vs. Coalition because there are a handful of Nationals (read Country party) which doesn't mean much unless your from Queensland.
In the mix there are a handful of independants, I think 6 now, though 2 of those were not by choice being found out to be so crooked that each party has had to disown 1 member each. I want to stress the "found out" bit there. It's alright to be a crooked MP as long as your not found out, otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more independants.
And only a bunch of crooks could come up with this scheme and try and sell it as a good thing to the Australian public. And of course it's being endorsed by both parties. You don't get that sort of cooperation between the otherwise opposing political parties unless your talking about politician pay rises or political party exemption from things like the Privacy ACT or the Do Not Call Register.
And what's worse they are going to back date this thing 2 years, so the two main parties each earn themselves a $2 million windfall, just under 4 months out from the next federal election. Actually, since I think we have about 14 million registered voters, and voting is compulsary in Australia, I would have thought this should be a bit more.
Where was your mandate to do this? Mandate is a word politicians love to use when they are introducing unpopular or controversial polcies in their first years of office. I certainly never voted for this.
This has got me so frakking angry. If you don't watch Battlestar, then frakking is a rude thing that coal seam miners do to holes in the ground.
And with the current government party effectively in walking dead status, this is a perfect time for them to slip this sort of snouts in the trough legislation through. Keep your eye out for some more like this in the coming weeks.
A few, I dare say, marginal seat politicians have objected to this legislation, or voiced deep concerns. And sure they might try and claim the higher moral ground for a few news bites, but they are still going to take the money when it goes through.
And the worst thing about this one party is as bad as the other. Instead of Liberal and Labour you might as well call them butter and margarine. I can't taste the difference.
Take the issue which is commonly called "boat people" in this country. When in opposition Labour attacked the Liberal Government for lacking compasion, but when in power, took an exterme right position on the issue, more right than the previous government's position.
But don't get me wrong here, for every complaint I have of one party, I can identify an equal complaint with the other party. They both talk about how they serve the economy and forget the people who vote them in. Neither side has any real answers for the big issues.
And so all this is going to do is allow the party machine to drown out any idependant and original message with the continual party diatribe, even more than ever before.
Well I've never written to my local MP before, but now I will. If you support this policy then the other guy is going to get my vote. I'll write the same thing to whoever the other guy is and let them work out the conundrum between themselves.
Now the government is telling us, this is a good thing, It means that parties won't be influenced by big money, like in the USA, which is funny because most of the time they seem to be doing exactly what the USA is doing, like going to wars, locking people up in some bay, etc.
I think it's a little too late to be worried about big money. I mean, what do all you politicians do when your finished being politicians, you go and work for all those big money interests that you represented when you were in government.
And I include you in that list Mr Carr, touting yourself up as the next leader of federal Labour. What did you do when you stopped being Premiere of NSW (that's like a state governor for anyone in USA). You went and worked for the same financier that made a mint out of public works tollways you helped roll out while in government. I would expect this from the Liberals, because they are meant to represent business and facists, but people from Labour go and do exactly the same thing.
No one is fooled for a second that big money interests aren't already represented and well entrenched in our government. Just look at the ICAC investigation into Obeid, which gives us an idea of what is going on regularly. They don't need to worry about some $5,000 limit on donations, they just go around it.
Actually come to think of it, this absurd spin of how this is such a good thing, which they can barely deliver with a straight face, has made me change my mind.
The worst thing about this is that all that money is not going to be spent on getting the message out, it's just going to be spent on useless spin and attack ads. And for propping up the son's printing business or the wife's PR company.
So heres an idea. I'm guessing that an informal vote doesn't count towards this revenue. Since voting for one party is as bad as voting for the other, how about, just vote informally. Don't put numbers on the ballot sheet, just write in really big letters: "NOT GETTING MY DOLLAR".
I can't think of a better way to protest than to hit their wallet nerve. And it's not like my vote is doing any other good.
Well it's a thought.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Defending The Battleship
Do you remember when Windows Presentation Foundation first came out and suddenly all the Microsoft WPF avangelists were saying, "Battleship Grey... Yuck!" to put down traditional Windows forms to make WPF sound better.
Well you know what. They missed a very important point. It was never just battleship grey.
Back in '93, I worked for a place that hired a consultant who, for as much as I could see, spent 30 mins every morning changing the colour scheme of his Windows... uhm was it 3.1. First he started off through all the team colours for Rugby League and then after exhausting that sport, moved onto AFL. (These are two types of football games for any international reader out there).
And about the same time, Visual Basic was getting popular and we started to get lots of crazy coloured contexts. You know, the sort of app where all the windows to deal with accounts receivable are in green, while all the accounts payable are in pink and so on.
And this used to ifuriate me so much because the Win API had some clearly defined custom colours that were just being ignored. If you choose your own colour scheme then everyone used the colours the developer liked. But if you used the system colour schemes then the user could use the system configuration tool to choose their own colour scheme.
Why is this a good thing?
Well not so my colleague could keep himself entertained for half an hour every morning.
But rather, because the eye and all the wiring and process to support it is possibly the most complex organ ever developed in evolution. And Most people are not average but sit somewhere on a bell curve. Half the people have better than average sight and half the people have below average sight.
Some have colour blindness, some are dislexic, some work in light too bright, some work in dark rooms. And the ability to change the colour scheme of you whole system and all supporting applications in a single go is absolutely essential.
For example, I am dislexic, and I've found that if I tone the white background of text fields to a slight blue/grey then I can actually avoid headaches that I otherwise get after a while reading black text on a white background.
These days I wear tinted glasses that do much the same thing, but being able to adjust the colour of the background still helps.
It was one of the things I was looking forward to Windows Phone 7 because I had heard they had tight control on colours. But Windows Phone 7 was a little too locked down and the colour schemes that the user's had to choose from had some serious flaws.
It's something I miss with Web Development, where "graphic treatments" are order of the day and no one seems to care about us poor dislexics. There is probably more effort put into helping blind people read web pages through trying for WC3 Accessability conformance.
But at the same time, if you've done enough browsing, you will almost certainly come across a web page where you find the colour scheme so bizarre that you can barely make out the text, and usually have to select the text with the mouse just so you can read using the inverted colours.
Wouldn't you like to be able to control colours on certain web sites? Without resorting to hacing the CSS that is.
Well you know what. They missed a very important point. It was never just battleship grey.
Back in '93, I worked for a place that hired a consultant who, for as much as I could see, spent 30 mins every morning changing the colour scheme of his Windows... uhm was it 3.1. First he started off through all the team colours for Rugby League and then after exhausting that sport, moved onto AFL. (These are two types of football games for any international reader out there).
And about the same time, Visual Basic was getting popular and we started to get lots of crazy coloured contexts. You know, the sort of app where all the windows to deal with accounts receivable are in green, while all the accounts payable are in pink and so on.
And this used to ifuriate me so much because the Win API had some clearly defined custom colours that were just being ignored. If you choose your own colour scheme then everyone used the colours the developer liked. But if you used the system colour schemes then the user could use the system configuration tool to choose their own colour scheme.
Why is this a good thing?
Well not so my colleague could keep himself entertained for half an hour every morning.
But rather, because the eye and all the wiring and process to support it is possibly the most complex organ ever developed in evolution. And Most people are not average but sit somewhere on a bell curve. Half the people have better than average sight and half the people have below average sight.
Some have colour blindness, some are dislexic, some work in light too bright, some work in dark rooms. And the ability to change the colour scheme of you whole system and all supporting applications in a single go is absolutely essential.
For example, I am dislexic, and I've found that if I tone the white background of text fields to a slight blue/grey then I can actually avoid headaches that I otherwise get after a while reading black text on a white background.
These days I wear tinted glasses that do much the same thing, but being able to adjust the colour of the background still helps.
It was one of the things I was looking forward to Windows Phone 7 because I had heard they had tight control on colours. But Windows Phone 7 was a little too locked down and the colour schemes that the user's had to choose from had some serious flaws.
It's something I miss with Web Development, where "graphic treatments" are order of the day and no one seems to care about us poor dislexics. There is probably more effort put into helping blind people read web pages through trying for WC3 Accessability conformance.
But at the same time, if you've done enough browsing, you will almost certainly come across a web page where you find the colour scheme so bizarre that you can barely make out the text, and usually have to select the text with the mouse just so you can read using the inverted colours.
Wouldn't you like to be able to control colours on certain web sites? Without resorting to hacing the CSS that is.
PHP Strings Are Fast
I've recently been playing with PHP again. Last time I touched it was 2001 or there abouts.
And I found I needed a HTML-Builder (well needed to port my C# one). Being a little rusty I looked around for something like a StringBuilder and found none. Because, as most of the posts put it, PHP strings are fast enough.
Well I wasn't completely convinced, so I wrote a quick test that through a number of iterations built up 3 really big strings at the same time, and the response just came back straight away. Not to be put off I kept upping the iterations till it was getting to something absurd, when finally, I got an out of memory error. But the key point is, up till that moment, the responses were always coming back almost instantly.
So well done PHP. I find some of the language a little old fashion, but those PHP strings are lightning fast.
And I found I needed a HTML-Builder (well needed to port my C# one). Being a little rusty I looked around for something like a StringBuilder and found none. Because, as most of the posts put it, PHP strings are fast enough.
Well I wasn't completely convinced, so I wrote a quick test that through a number of iterations built up 3 really big strings at the same time, and the response just came back straight away. Not to be put off I kept upping the iterations till it was getting to something absurd, when finally, I got an out of memory error. But the key point is, up till that moment, the responses were always coming back almost instantly.
So well done PHP. I find some of the language a little old fashion, but those PHP strings are lightning fast.
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