http://tech.uk.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=11130442

 and I agree with the comment. This is the way to use the net to sell stuff not just get it ripped off. The point the record company people have missed since the days of cassettes is that 5,000 personally made illegal copies  is NOT 5,000 lost sales. 4,000+ of those people would just do with out and of those 5,000 some at least will be new fans who will go on and buy a genuine copy at some point.

Of course if we are talking about Hear Say X’s latest single then it will be totally forgotten in a couple of weeks so no one will buy it. But what kind of loss is that?

To be fair I guess there is always a major scaling issue involved in this kind of thing. The nameless company is a big one and that mail shot will have gone hundreds of thousands of people - maybe the site got a few more hits than it could cope with.

I’m not a web developer but surely there are ways of testing that accurately simulate (is that an oxymoron?) heavy usage? Microsoft Visual Studio used to come with a “Stress” tool which no longer seems to be there. I liked it because the icon was an elephant hopping on a trampoline - a feeling we are all familiar with (as the trampoline not the elephant). This let you consume X amount of resources (memory, CPU, windows handles (yes it was a long time ago), etc) and see how well you app responded when the system was “stressed”.  Thinking about the snail like bloatware that comes as business applications these days you can see that “stress” isn’t used as part of testing anymore.

Anyway, is there not a facility to stress a web site? If not I feel a business opportunity coming on. Buy me www.rentamob.com and knock up some spoofing s/w that generates thousands of random clicks & keys from thousands of random addresses. I know a few people who ought to pay a fortune to use it…

\source\mainwindow.cpp(201) : error C2664: ‘QWidget::insertAction’ : cannot convert parameter 1 from ‘QAction *’ to ‘QAction *’

Hmmm, convert parameter from ‘QAction *’ to ‘QAction *’ - just how much conversion does that take?

If you’re interested it’s all down to my poor use of template libraries - but if they confuse the compiler that much where’s the shame in them confusing me?

I’m not sure about it. One of the things I love about the web is that you can get to talk to opinion formers and decision makers in a way you never could before but would I trust the Beeb with my hobbies or career details? Do I want to be a freebie advisor?

I’ll think about it - if anyone else signs up let me know how it goes!

We are X directory so we hadn’t used to get too many cold calls but these days assume it’s random dialling and recorded messages. Maybe I should listen long enough to get the company name, trace the directors and keep phoning them at odd hours but I don’t have the time or energy at the moment.

Sometimes it’s an embarrassment to work in an industry that makes such things possible.

Anyway, we used to sell two products that shared some same code and did much the same. One was named after X (because it runs on Linux using X Windows) the other after windows because it runs on Windows.

The marketing guys at the new company decided they ought to have a streamlined name like “blah for windows” and ”blah for linux”. Great except we keep getting people trying to swap between them thinking they are identical. They seriously differ in places.

Choosing names is a big issue in marketing - Pen Island could have had a better name for their website than penisland.com for instance. They say the Mini Metro marketing team had to come up with a name and just as a starting point they were given 6,000 already considered and rejected!

However, a thought to engineering or even a moment to reflect why a company that knew the product used different names could have saved a whole raft of support issues and disgruntled customers. Marketing has its place but that place shouldn’t always be at the top of the heap.

We could reduce the net traffic considerably!

It appears the problem is yahoo bought it and scrapped the existing database to try and get people to upgrade. MMJB was one of the few bits of shareware I’ve actually paid for - because it was good. It also doesn’t work with ie 7 - but that was just another reason not to use ie7.

How many times do we see a great piece of software bought up by some huge bunch of bozos who *-* it up(1)? Usually it is Microsoft who buy it & *-* it. Auto-route was brilliant. I remember the first time I saw the DOS version (85?) and the whole office clustered round to see this brilliant thing work out routes, display maps and generally wow us. The later versions with full OS map overlays - still brilliant. Microsoft bought it renamed it and totally *-* it. It sits on a 1G PC with a 19″ monitor and people would rather use a Tom-Tom because it is easier and faster. How did they manage to ruin it that much? Staggering.

More than staggering for some of us. For some of us it is worrying. I am now part of huge multinational - what will they do to the software product we have been designing and selling as a small company for the last 20 years?

Not too hard I hope - not with the explantions anyway! 

5 Addict alternatively in honours degree (4) - Hidden word but take alternate letters USER

6 Backing parts to support guitar (5) - Sort of anagram but “back” can imply just reverse the letters! STRAP

7 Less than decadent Neil Young compilation (6) - less than or almost, mostly etc can mean use most of but not all the letters (a bit cheating for an anagram I think so I tend to use it as a hidden word type clue) DECADE

8 Postscript contains example tuners (4) - Letter codes, lots of abbreviations and initials are used in cryptic crosswords - about= re,  sappers=RE (Royal Engineers), artist=RA, hesitation=ER/UM, international body=UN. Contains means the letters go inside the others - look it’s PS with EG in OK? PEGS

9 Irish poet loses heart from your threats (5) - heartless, begins ends, … means take the letters from the start and the end to make the word YEATS

10 Magazine with reinterpretation loses entertainer (5) - Loses, without,… can mean take the letters out, if you are lucky what is left is the word, if you are unlucky it is an anagram of the word! ITPRO - had to get that it really!

1 Heavy metal from guitar to amplifier (4)  - Double meaning - so something that is a heavy metal and is spelt the same as something that goes between a guitar and its amplifier.

LEAD

2 Vocalist reigns awkwardly (6) - Anagram of reigns (implied by “awkwardly” or confused, cooked, stewed, upset or a million other code words) and it means “vocalist”

SINGER

3 2 Across seen in chapel visit (5) - Word hidden in “chapel visit” (implied by “seen in” or conceals, contains,….) Linked to 2 ie it’s a vocalist

ELVIS

4 Look at what is reportedly the summit (4)  - Homophone (implied by “reportedly” or we hear, sounds like,…) so it means “Look at” but sounds like another word for summit

PEEK

And some other egs - getting harder!

5 Addict alternatively in honours degree (4) - Hidden word but take alternate letters

6 Backing parts to support guitar (5) - Sort of anagram but “back” can imply just reverse the letters!

7 Less than decadent Neil Young compilation (6) - less than or almost, mostly etc can mean use most of but not all the letters (a bit cheating for an anagram I think so I tend to use it as a hidden word type clue)

8 Postscript contains example tuners (4) - Letter codes, lots of abbreviations and initials are used in cryptic crosswords - about= re,  sappers=RE (Royal Engineers), artist=RA, hesitation=ER/UM, international body=UN. Contains means the letters go inside the others - look it’s PS with EG in OK?

9 Irish poet loses heart from your threats (5) - heartless, begins ends, … means take the letters from the start and the end to make the word

10 Magazine with reinterpretation loses entertainer (5) - Loses, without,… can mean take the letters out, if you are lucky what is left is the word, if you are unlucky it is an anagram of the word!

And I’ll publish the answers to these another day!