So, young Atilla has reached the age where he needs to start chewing on nails. Or something. Apparently, between 7 and 12 months, he's supposed to be knocking back 11mg of iron a day.
Doesn't sound too hard, right? But then They, by whom I mean "those busybodies who are never shy to tell us that we're doing everydamnthing wrong", give us this deeply confusing leaflet about how much iron is in different foods, and how much gets absorbed by the body. And doing the sums, to get 11mg into his system, he has to eat around 440g of lamb's liver a day.
That's pretty much a whole liver. Assuming one of the larger sheep breeds.
There are only 40 million sheep in New Zealand. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations tell me that there are probably 30,000-40,000 children in that age range. Which means they should be chomping through the entire sheep population approximately every four months.
Now I know why adults so seldom eat offal here - the kids are troughing it all.
Unfortunately, baby Tilly doesn't like liver. But of course that's not the only option. He could get the same results from eating a kilo of lean steak, or about 2kg of pork. For vegetarians, the best option seems to be baked beans - you can get by on around ten litres a day, or slightly less if you can also find room for several bowls of cornflakes and a flagon or two of red lentils.
It comes as no surprise to learn that this leaflet is published by Beef & Lamb New Zealand Inc, easily the most powerful lobby group in the country.
However, the "11mg" figure is supported by the US National Institute for Health. (The UK authorities recommend a relatively modest 7.8mg.) But still, I seriously doubt if any child in the history of the world has ever followed these dietary guidelines. Which kind of makes me want to see the research, if any, behind them.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Ten years
I remember exactly where I was on "9/11". I was at work, labouring joyfully in pleasant company at work I was good at. It was Carol, our systems administrator, who came into the room and asked "Has anyone been following the news?"
No-one had. It wasn't until I was driving home with the radio on that I learned the full extent of what had happened. (There was also, which is easy to forget now, the nervous undertone of what might happen next. Was it all over, or was this just the beginning?)
Part of me was shocked, and part of me was scared. But a large part of me, and I quickly learned never to discuss this part in the hearing of Americans, was deeply impressed. At last, someone had figured out a way to attack America on its home turf.
Nobody had ever done that before. Barring some minor incidents involving a handful of private nutjobs - not once, in the history of the United States, had a foreign enemy landed a first-strike attack on the homeland. (Indian nations, and Confederates, don't qualify as foreigners, and Pearl Harbor is an imperial outpost.) Indeed, not within living memory had an enemy successfully struck the American homeland at all - even when its defence budget was tiny. And now some enemy - we didn't know who - had bypassed the largest and most sophisticated military in history, shown up the military-industrial complex for the colossal boondoggle that it is.
Well, we all know what happened next.
For the record, I thought the invasion of Afghanistan was foolhardy (the Taliban were bad, but they were willing to co-operate in arresting Bin Laden; and as every student of history knows, invading Afghanistan is the easy bit). And the invasion of Iraq was, also, a potentially just war (Saddam was a monster), fought for all the wrong reasons.
But the worst of it was what America did to itself.
As luck would have it, in late December 2001 I was passing through Los Angeles on my way from London to New Zealand. LAX is, I have been reliably informed, a hellhole at the best of times, and three months after 9/11 it was carnage. In between two 12 hour flights, being forced to stand in queues for three hours and interrogated by unsmiling officials about why I was entering a country I didn't, in fact, have any desire to enter at all, was not my idea of hospitality. (When I booked the flight, the rule was that transit passengers didn't have to go through immigration and customs proceedings. To this day, I don't know how that change was supposed to improve security.)
In 2002 President Bush announced the formation of a "Department of Homeland Security", and I knew they were in deep, deep trouble. You just don't come up with names like that, if your overriding priorities are peace and freedom.
In 2004 they instituted the policy of arresting all foreigners on arrival in the country, and I sadly concluded that I would never set foot there again. And since then, they have shown no sign of returning to the hospitable, free country I like to remember. Both parties have taken to demonising foreigners, even more than they loathe each other.
This juxtaposition of headline and picture, from the BBC today, says it pretty well. "US ideals" are dead. We may remember them, we may mourn them, but we can't bring them back.
And that's why, even if he didn't win his stated objective, from my perspective at least, Bin Laden won his war. "America" is gone.
No-one had. It wasn't until I was driving home with the radio on that I learned the full extent of what had happened. (There was also, which is easy to forget now, the nervous undertone of what might happen next. Was it all over, or was this just the beginning?)
Part of me was shocked, and part of me was scared. But a large part of me, and I quickly learned never to discuss this part in the hearing of Americans, was deeply impressed. At last, someone had figured out a way to attack America on its home turf.
Nobody had ever done that before. Barring some minor incidents involving a handful of private nutjobs - not once, in the history of the United States, had a foreign enemy landed a first-strike attack on the homeland. (Indian nations, and Confederates, don't qualify as foreigners, and Pearl Harbor is an imperial outpost.) Indeed, not within living memory had an enemy successfully struck the American homeland at all - even when its defence budget was tiny. And now some enemy - we didn't know who - had bypassed the largest and most sophisticated military in history, shown up the military-industrial complex for the colossal boondoggle that it is.
Well, we all know what happened next.
For the record, I thought the invasion of Afghanistan was foolhardy (the Taliban were bad, but they were willing to co-operate in arresting Bin Laden; and as every student of history knows, invading Afghanistan is the easy bit). And the invasion of Iraq was, also, a potentially just war (Saddam was a monster), fought for all the wrong reasons.
But the worst of it was what America did to itself.
As luck would have it, in late December 2001 I was passing through Los Angeles on my way from London to New Zealand. LAX is, I have been reliably informed, a hellhole at the best of times, and three months after 9/11 it was carnage. In between two 12 hour flights, being forced to stand in queues for three hours and interrogated by unsmiling officials about why I was entering a country I didn't, in fact, have any desire to enter at all, was not my idea of hospitality. (When I booked the flight, the rule was that transit passengers didn't have to go through immigration and customs proceedings. To this day, I don't know how that change was supposed to improve security.)
In 2002 President Bush announced the formation of a "Department of Homeland Security", and I knew they were in deep, deep trouble. You just don't come up with names like that, if your overriding priorities are peace and freedom.
In 2004 they instituted the policy of arresting all foreigners on arrival in the country, and I sadly concluded that I would never set foot there again. And since then, they have shown no sign of returning to the hospitable, free country I like to remember. Both parties have taken to demonising foreigners, even more than they loathe each other.
This juxtaposition of headline and picture, from the BBC today, says it pretty well. "US ideals" are dead. We may remember them, we may mourn them, but we can't bring them back.
And that's why, even if he didn't win his stated objective, from my perspective at least, Bin Laden won his war. "America" is gone.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The politicians we deserve
The irony is strong in this one. Quite apart from the prospect of talking about "Colin Craig's Conservative Party" ("CCCP" seems an eerily appropriate acronym, for this instinctively statist social-conservative), there's the fact that he's breaking the law in order to campaign for tougher sentences.
This story should be funny. It's certainly embraced as funny by the big New Zealand bloggers.
But for me, the humour is overshadowed by sadness. Colin Craig sums up everything that is wrong with New Zealand. He's "a businessman" who made his money, not by making anything or providing any useful service (like a taxi driver or a hairdresser), but by renting apartments - in other words, by owning land and taxing people who do earn an honest living for the use of it. He's insular (proud of the fact that he never travels) and has no idea of what he really wants (his party platform is self-evidently incoherent). And he honestly believes, simultaneously, that he's better than the great rabble who aren't millionaires, and just as good as people who have comprehensively beaten him whenever they've contested.
On the back of these qualifications, this moron runs for office and sulks when he loses.
How will New Zealand ever drag itself into the modern world, if this is the calibre of our grassroots activism?
This story should be funny. It's certainly embraced as funny by the big New Zealand bloggers.
But for me, the humour is overshadowed by sadness. Colin Craig sums up everything that is wrong with New Zealand. He's "a businessman" who made his money, not by making anything or providing any useful service (like a taxi driver or a hairdresser), but by renting apartments - in other words, by owning land and taxing people who do earn an honest living for the use of it. He's insular (proud of the fact that he never travels) and has no idea of what he really wants (his party platform is self-evidently incoherent). And he honestly believes, simultaneously, that he's better than the great rabble who aren't millionaires, and just as good as people who have comprehensively beaten him whenever they've contested.
On the back of these qualifications, this moron runs for office and sulks when he loses.
How will New Zealand ever drag itself into the modern world, if this is the calibre of our grassroots activism?
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Mugged
In the face of extreme provocation from the media, I've refrained from venting my opinions on the astonishing implosion of western civilisation as it's unfolded, over the past month, in the USA, Europe and the UK. There's no shortage of people closer to the action who are doing quite enough commentating for all of us.
But just so's you know it's not just you...
Last Wedneday was the bondholders' meeting, at our local racecourse, for those who'd lent money to Blue Star Print Group.
(A brief diversion here: Auckland has several racecourses. Where I used to work, in Epsom, was just down the road from a racecourse. Where I now live, in Ellerslie, is just round the corner from a racecourse. Gambling is big. Sadly we don't have British-style betting shops; even more sadly, we do have the tallest freestanding building in the southern hemisphere, and it belongs to a casino.)
And since it was just round the corner, I thought I'd go along and cast our vote in person.
My first impression was - familiarity. As a magazine editor in the 1990s, I attended scores of press conferences by well-heeled consultancy firms, and those events looked very much like this. I saw a phalanx of spotless business suits. The occupants, none aged over 35, clustered in groups based on what was clearly, among themselves, a well established pecking order. With my years of journalistic training, it was the work of moments to elbow my way through the crowd to the coffee dispenser.
This crowd, however, was not what I expected to see. There had been much talk of "mum and dad investors", and my mental image had anticipated that the suits, and the bodies inside them, would be rather more worn. Clearly, these were accountants - either here as representatives of the auditors or the consultants, or simply drawn to the smell of blood in the water.
Ah, there they were - beyond this antechamber in the main conference room. A scattering of middle-aged, middle-class people, all smartly dressed. I took a moment to wonder why they troubled to dress up in order to be robbed. Must be a colonial thing. I sat down next to a red-faced gentleman in his 50s, who looked fit for a bit of barracking, and waited for the entertainment. After all, I was paying for it.
Proceedings kicked off with an opening statement from the referee - sorry, chairman - who invited some preliminary questions from the floor. Of these, the only controversial one was "will you tell us how many proxy votes you're holding?", which he twice refused to do. Looking back, we should have pressed him on that. He was, he explained, on solid legal ground - but when you're asking people to trust you, surely it's no time to hide behind legalities. He added that he didn't want to prejudice our votes, then went on to introduce a series of presentations plainly designed for no other purpose.
The presentations were slick and, up to a point, persuasive. They pointed to a glowing future for the company, if we would just help them over this little temporary difficulty. But what struck me was that they didn't really seem to be aimed at us. We, the bondholders, still wouldn't get our money back even if this rosy future came to pass. There was a clause specifying, in so many words, that even if the company was sold for its weight in uncut diamonds we still wouldn't get more than about half our money back: the shareholders would keep it.
A few people explored this clause in their questions, but it didn't get much attention, because everything we heard was designed to massage our expectations into a very narrow range - the range in which we would get about half our money back. The chairman said that he'd opposed the clause, but negotiations had been bitter and bloody and in it stayed. (So why would the shareholders fight for a clause that would not be triggered under any plausible scenario? - is just one of the questions that didn't occur to me until some time later.)
For the most part, questions and answers were predictable. Would management and board be taking pay cuts? (No.) Is this really your best offer? (Yes.) Will the banks really call in the receivers if we turn you down? (Yes.) There was a surprising lack of passion, but I was cheered by much talk - and applause - for "voting on principle". Surely, I thought, they can't muster 75% agreement from this crowd unless the proposition includes lynching the shareholders. (It didn't.)
After a couple of hours of this, the crowd dispersed more or less peacefully, and I went home to await the announcement of receivership.
Instead, about 2.30 in the afternoon, I saw the news that the offer had been approved.
I was stunned. I would suspect dirty work in the counting, but that was the job of those nice accountants, and surely if they were going to jeopardise their good name for a quick buck, they'd take it from someone who was more solvent than this? Surely...
Still, the message went out from that meeting loud and clear to the New Zealand exchange: "We small-time bondholders know our place, and will gratefully accept whatever crumbs our betters deign to throw us. There may be such a thing as an offer that is too unfair or treats us with too much contempt, but you haven't managed it yet. Try harder next time."
So there you go. If ever you're tempted to lend money to a New Zealand company, don't. You might as well take it to the races.
But just so's you know it's not just you...
Last Wedneday was the bondholders' meeting, at our local racecourse, for those who'd lent money to Blue Star Print Group.
(A brief diversion here: Auckland has several racecourses. Where I used to work, in Epsom, was just down the road from a racecourse. Where I now live, in Ellerslie, is just round the corner from a racecourse. Gambling is big. Sadly we don't have British-style betting shops; even more sadly, we do have the tallest freestanding building in the southern hemisphere, and it belongs to a casino.)
And since it was just round the corner, I thought I'd go along and cast our vote in person.
My first impression was - familiarity. As a magazine editor in the 1990s, I attended scores of press conferences by well-heeled consultancy firms, and those events looked very much like this. I saw a phalanx of spotless business suits. The occupants, none aged over 35, clustered in groups based on what was clearly, among themselves, a well established pecking order. With my years of journalistic training, it was the work of moments to elbow my way through the crowd to the coffee dispenser.
This crowd, however, was not what I expected to see. There had been much talk of "mum and dad investors", and my mental image had anticipated that the suits, and the bodies inside them, would be rather more worn. Clearly, these were accountants - either here as representatives of the auditors or the consultants, or simply drawn to the smell of blood in the water.
Ah, there they were - beyond this antechamber in the main conference room. A scattering of middle-aged, middle-class people, all smartly dressed. I took a moment to wonder why they troubled to dress up in order to be robbed. Must be a colonial thing. I sat down next to a red-faced gentleman in his 50s, who looked fit for a bit of barracking, and waited for the entertainment. After all, I was paying for it.
Proceedings kicked off with an opening statement from the referee - sorry, chairman - who invited some preliminary questions from the floor. Of these, the only controversial one was "will you tell us how many proxy votes you're holding?", which he twice refused to do. Looking back, we should have pressed him on that. He was, he explained, on solid legal ground - but when you're asking people to trust you, surely it's no time to hide behind legalities. He added that he didn't want to prejudice our votes, then went on to introduce a series of presentations plainly designed for no other purpose.
The presentations were slick and, up to a point, persuasive. They pointed to a glowing future for the company, if we would just help them over this little temporary difficulty. But what struck me was that they didn't really seem to be aimed at us. We, the bondholders, still wouldn't get our money back even if this rosy future came to pass. There was a clause specifying, in so many words, that even if the company was sold for its weight in uncut diamonds we still wouldn't get more than about half our money back: the shareholders would keep it.
A few people explored this clause in their questions, but it didn't get much attention, because everything we heard was designed to massage our expectations into a very narrow range - the range in which we would get about half our money back. The chairman said that he'd opposed the clause, but negotiations had been bitter and bloody and in it stayed. (So why would the shareholders fight for a clause that would not be triggered under any plausible scenario? - is just one of the questions that didn't occur to me until some time later.)
For the most part, questions and answers were predictable. Would management and board be taking pay cuts? (No.) Is this really your best offer? (Yes.) Will the banks really call in the receivers if we turn you down? (Yes.) There was a surprising lack of passion, but I was cheered by much talk - and applause - for "voting on principle". Surely, I thought, they can't muster 75% agreement from this crowd unless the proposition includes lynching the shareholders. (It didn't.)
After a couple of hours of this, the crowd dispersed more or less peacefully, and I went home to await the announcement of receivership.
Instead, about 2.30 in the afternoon, I saw the news that the offer had been approved.
I was stunned. I would suspect dirty work in the counting, but that was the job of those nice accountants, and surely if they were going to jeopardise their good name for a quick buck, they'd take it from someone who was more solvent than this? Surely...
Still, the message went out from that meeting loud and clear to the New Zealand exchange: "We small-time bondholders know our place, and will gratefully accept whatever crumbs our betters deign to throw us. There may be such a thing as an offer that is too unfair or treats us with too much contempt, but you haven't managed it yet. Try harder next time."
So there you go. If ever you're tempted to lend money to a New Zealand company, don't. You might as well take it to the races.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Financial analysis
We got a nice chunky package in the mail yesterday.
I was quite excited. After all, nobody takes the trouble to send a chunky package for bad news, do they? A single sheet of paper - that's a rejection letter. An acceptance contains all kinds of inserts - contract, conditions, instructions for your first day, occasionally even a complete employee handbook. A bulky package must be good, right?
Turns out, not so much.
The package is from Blue Star, a troubled printing company in which we invested some money a few years ago. (Mind you, I don't recall anyone using the word "troubled" back then.) We bought bonds. Now - stripped to its essentials - the company wants us to trade in those bonds for new ones that will be worth considerably less. If we don't, they threaten without much ceremony, they'll go out of business and we'll get nothing.
Well, first thing to note is that times evidently aren't so hard that they can't afford to put together a 150-page, glossy, full-colour prospectus for these new and improved bonds. Mind you, it's a printing company, they probably got a good deal on that.
But something stinks about this offer. How can a company renege on its debts, and continue trading? Surely that's the definition of 'insolvent'. If they offered to renegotiate the debt, that's one thing - but this isn't negotiation, this is blackmail.
See, while we bondholders are being asked to take a scalping to the tune of at least half of our investment (and absolutely no guarantee that it won't yet be 100% - in fact, the de-ranking of our debt makes that even more likely), the shareholders aren't being asked to give up squat. On the contrary: one shareholder in particular, Champ Funds, is offering a loan of $15 million - at an interest rate way higher than we've been offered - in return for getting higher ranking among the company's creditors.
Seems to me, that's not the sort of terms you would offer if you had much faith in the company's future.
I was taught, way back in economics class, that it's shareholders who take the risks - when the company thrives, they get the profits, and when it sinks, they take the hit. Bondholders get a smaller return for a smaller risk. But that's not what's happening here. We, the bondholders, are being asked to bail out the shareholders. (Well, one shareholder in particular, but others will obviously get a renewed window of opportunity to dump shares that would be worthless if the company folds immediately.)
The company's own 'independent advisor' - KPMG - endorses the offer in the weakest possible terms. I paraphrase, but the gist of it is: "on the strength of the information we've been given, we can't be sure that this is a complete ripoff, so we don't quite have sufficient grounds to prevent it from being put".
I say the hell with it. If the company is insolvent, let it fold now. If it isn't insolvent, then it can come up with a better offer than this. Worst case, I'm willing to lose a few grand to uphold the principle that shareholders don't get to just take money from small investors.
It may seem irrational to choose nothing over something, but if the price of 'something' is that your economy is to be run by bandits - I'll take a big ol' handful of nothing, thanks.
I was quite excited. After all, nobody takes the trouble to send a chunky package for bad news, do they? A single sheet of paper - that's a rejection letter. An acceptance contains all kinds of inserts - contract, conditions, instructions for your first day, occasionally even a complete employee handbook. A bulky package must be good, right?
Turns out, not so much.
The package is from Blue Star, a troubled printing company in which we invested some money a few years ago. (Mind you, I don't recall anyone using the word "troubled" back then.) We bought bonds. Now - stripped to its essentials - the company wants us to trade in those bonds for new ones that will be worth considerably less. If we don't, they threaten without much ceremony, they'll go out of business and we'll get nothing.
Well, first thing to note is that times evidently aren't so hard that they can't afford to put together a 150-page, glossy, full-colour prospectus for these new and improved bonds. Mind you, it's a printing company, they probably got a good deal on that.
But something stinks about this offer. How can a company renege on its debts, and continue trading? Surely that's the definition of 'insolvent'. If they offered to renegotiate the debt, that's one thing - but this isn't negotiation, this is blackmail.
See, while we bondholders are being asked to take a scalping to the tune of at least half of our investment (and absolutely no guarantee that it won't yet be 100% - in fact, the de-ranking of our debt makes that even more likely), the shareholders aren't being asked to give up squat. On the contrary: one shareholder in particular, Champ Funds, is offering a loan of $15 million - at an interest rate way higher than we've been offered - in return for getting higher ranking among the company's creditors.
Seems to me, that's not the sort of terms you would offer if you had much faith in the company's future.
I was taught, way back in economics class, that it's shareholders who take the risks - when the company thrives, they get the profits, and when it sinks, they take the hit. Bondholders get a smaller return for a smaller risk. But that's not what's happening here. We, the bondholders, are being asked to bail out the shareholders. (Well, one shareholder in particular, but others will obviously get a renewed window of opportunity to dump shares that would be worthless if the company folds immediately.)
The company's own 'independent advisor' - KPMG - endorses the offer in the weakest possible terms. I paraphrase, but the gist of it is: "on the strength of the information we've been given, we can't be sure that this is a complete ripoff, so we don't quite have sufficient grounds to prevent it from being put".
I say the hell with it. If the company is insolvent, let it fold now. If it isn't insolvent, then it can come up with a better offer than this. Worst case, I'm willing to lose a few grand to uphold the principle that shareholders don't get to just take money from small investors.
It may seem irrational to choose nothing over something, but if the price of 'something' is that your economy is to be run by bandits - I'll take a big ol' handful of nothing, thanks.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Microsoft: digging holes since 1997
For a while there, I was almost starting to like Internet Explorer.
When my bosses told me to "slick up" our website, with scrolling headlines and graduated tints and rounded corners and shadows and all that tired old tat, I rubbed my metaphorical hands gleefully and settled down to learn the very latest web languages (by which I mean, HTML 5 and CSS 3). That didn't take long. But then, as I'd expected, the hard part began: learning how to make these gimmicks work in each type of browser.
I'll spare you the ins and outs of that - the stylesheet is kinda messy, and at almost 600 lines it's about three times as long as it has any business to be, but it works. (It's even technically valid, at least according to w3.org.)
When I handed my designs over to my bosses for feedback, they loved them. The pages, though I say so myself, look pretty cool when viewed on PC, Mac, tablet or notebook. For good measure I even checked them on my Nintendo DS. Lovely. My only negative feedback came from - what else - Internet Explorer 9.
But how? I've got IE9 myself. The same version, on the same platform, looking at the same pages - yet the results are completely different. (For instance: my version of IE9 has no problem with supporting
It took me a whole afternoon to work out the answer to that.
Microsoft, rot their vile souls, have built "handy" features into Internet Explorer called "browser mode" and "document mode". Which means that the same browser can apply completely different sets of rules to interpret the same code.
On paper, like most of MS's output, it's not a bad idea. In practice, also like most of MS's output, the implementation is awful beyond description. See, the thing is: there's no way to control which settings someone else's browser will apply.
Oh, in theory there is. There's a tag you can put in your page header to tell it "This page is meant to be rendered in IE 9". That's annoying enough in itself - why would a browser need to be told not to pretend it's something else? And obviously it doesn't work if the client isn't using IE 9. But what's really winding me up, right now, is that it still won't work even if they bloody are using bloody IE9.
For a partial explanation, look at this unholy monstrosity. But even that is only a small part of the horror. See, while the page author has some minimal control over the "document mode", they have no control at all over the "browser mode", which overlaps with and partly overrules the "document mode". The browser user sets that at installation time - usually without even realising what they're doing, because it's disguised as a question about "how would you like to view the web?". And if you've downloaded the page in "IE7" mode, and then tried to apply "IE9" layout to it, the result is an ungodly hybrid that would make Doctor Moreau blench.
To add insult to injury, the mode that sometimes gets applied without realising it is "IE7". So I have to hack the design to work in IE7, despite the fact that nobody in the entire world actually uses IE bloody 7. (Well, okay. To be strictly accurate, according to our website logs, about 10% of IE users do - although I'm guessing most of those are really using later versions that are just pretending to be IE7.)
What people do still use, in their droves, is IE6, which is an entirely different pain in the fundament.
So now I'm having to insert four, count them, four separate stylesheets - for IE6, IE7, IE8 and (every other browser including IE9). And just hoping to goodness that IE10 works acceptably with the IE9 design.
Keynes, famously, is supposed to have argued that in times of recession, it would be worthwhile to pay the unemployed to dig holes only to fill them in again. That's about how useful I've been feeling this week.
When my bosses told me to "slick up" our website, with scrolling headlines and graduated tints and rounded corners and shadows and all that tired old tat, I rubbed my metaphorical hands gleefully and settled down to learn the very latest web languages (by which I mean, HTML 5 and CSS 3). That didn't take long. But then, as I'd expected, the hard part began: learning how to make these gimmicks work in each type of browser.
I'll spare you the ins and outs of that - the stylesheet is kinda messy, and at almost 600 lines it's about three times as long as it has any business to be, but it works. (It's even technically valid, at least according to w3.org.)
When I handed my designs over to my bosses for feedback, they loved them. The pages, though I say so myself, look pretty cool when viewed on PC, Mac, tablet or notebook. For good measure I even checked them on my Nintendo DS. Lovely. My only negative feedback came from - what else - Internet Explorer 9.
But how? I've got IE9 myself. The same version, on the same platform, looking at the same pages - yet the results are completely different. (For instance: my version of IE9 has no problem with supporting
display:table-cell, whereas yours evidently thinks it's the work of the devil.) What goes on?It took me a whole afternoon to work out the answer to that.
Microsoft, rot their vile souls, have built "handy" features into Internet Explorer called "browser mode" and "document mode". Which means that the same browser can apply completely different sets of rules to interpret the same code.
On paper, like most of MS's output, it's not a bad idea. In practice, also like most of MS's output, the implementation is awful beyond description. See, the thing is: there's no way to control which settings someone else's browser will apply.
Oh, in theory there is. There's a tag you can put in your page header to tell it "This page is meant to be rendered in IE 9". That's annoying enough in itself - why would a browser need to be told not to pretend it's something else? And obviously it doesn't work if the client isn't using IE 9. But what's really winding me up, right now, is that it still won't work even if they bloody are using bloody IE9.
For a partial explanation, look at this unholy monstrosity. But even that is only a small part of the horror. See, while the page author has some minimal control over the "document mode", they have no control at all over the "browser mode", which overlaps with and partly overrules the "document mode". The browser user sets that at installation time - usually without even realising what they're doing, because it's disguised as a question about "how would you like to view the web?". And if you've downloaded the page in "IE7" mode, and then tried to apply "IE9" layout to it, the result is an ungodly hybrid that would make Doctor Moreau blench.
To add insult to injury, the mode that sometimes gets applied without realising it is "IE7". So I have to hack the design to work in IE7, despite the fact that nobody in the entire world actually uses IE bloody 7. (Well, okay. To be strictly accurate, according to our website logs, about 10% of IE users do - although I'm guessing most of those are really using later versions that are just pretending to be IE7.)
What people do still use, in their droves, is IE6, which is an entirely different pain in the fundament.
So now I'm having to insert four, count them, four separate stylesheets - for IE6, IE7, IE8 and (every other browser including IE9). And just hoping to goodness that IE10 works acceptably with the IE9 design.
Keynes, famously, is supposed to have argued that in times of recession, it would be worthwhile to pay the unemployed to dig holes only to fill them in again. That's about how useful I've been feeling this week.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Poisoning the cloud
A lot of Europeans seem to have got their knickers in a twist over Microsoft's plain speaking on data protection. Stripped to its essentials, the CEO of Microsoft UK said that Microsoft doesn't do data protection as required by EU law, because US law explicitly forbids it.
I can see why this causes some consternation, but legally it seems quite straightforward to me. Microsoft, by its own account, can't provide a "safe harbor" for personal data on European citizens. Therefore, any European company that tries to store such data in a Microsoft-provided "cloud" service is opening itself to legal action from its European customers (and/or European governments, prosecutors or regulators, depending on the individual country's law). Those companies, in turn, might sue Microsoft for misrepresenting its service (before last week, at least), and they and Microsoft might sue the aforementioned governments and regulators for losses arising from negligence in applying their laws.
All of which could get messy, sure, but it's hardly the gutters-running-red-with-the-blood-of-the-aristocracy.
The interesting question is, why has Microsoft gone out of its way to declare itself incompetent to serve European data storage?
Simple answer: it doesn't want the business. Much better for Microsoft if people don't store data in clouds, but instead spend tens of thousands of dollars on licenses for SQL Server, and training on how to administer it. That's where the profit is.
Of course, in poisoning its own cloud, MS has also poisoned Google's - and every other US company, for that matter, but Google is the one it cares about. And to Google, the cloud isn't a low-margin fringe activity - it's a whole business model.
So what does Google have to say on this story? Not a word, as far as I can tell. Google is just waiting for the whole thing to blow over.
I wonder if a European, at this point, can take out an injunction to prevent companies she does business with from storing their data outside European jurisdiction? Seems to me that the prospect of a jail term for contempt of court would give CEOs more pause than the distant threat of a corporate fine.
Just something for you Europeans to mull over.
I can see why this causes some consternation, but legally it seems quite straightforward to me. Microsoft, by its own account, can't provide a "safe harbor" for personal data on European citizens. Therefore, any European company that tries to store such data in a Microsoft-provided "cloud" service is opening itself to legal action from its European customers (and/or European governments, prosecutors or regulators, depending on the individual country's law). Those companies, in turn, might sue Microsoft for misrepresenting its service (before last week, at least), and they and Microsoft might sue the aforementioned governments and regulators for losses arising from negligence in applying their laws.
All of which could get messy, sure, but it's hardly the gutters-running-red-with-the-blood-of-the-aristocracy.
The interesting question is, why has Microsoft gone out of its way to declare itself incompetent to serve European data storage?
Simple answer: it doesn't want the business. Much better for Microsoft if people don't store data in clouds, but instead spend tens of thousands of dollars on licenses for SQL Server, and training on how to administer it. That's where the profit is.
Of course, in poisoning its own cloud, MS has also poisoned Google's - and every other US company, for that matter, but Google is the one it cares about. And to Google, the cloud isn't a low-margin fringe activity - it's a whole business model.
So what does Google have to say on this story? Not a word, as far as I can tell. Google is just waiting for the whole thing to blow over.
I wonder if a European, at this point, can take out an injunction to prevent companies she does business with from storing their data outside European jurisdiction? Seems to me that the prospect of a jail term for contempt of court would give CEOs more pause than the distant threat of a corporate fine.
Just something for you Europeans to mull over.
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