7-18-15 Hodgepodge

Constrained by Draft

A story explaining why web page loading is often excruciatingly slow (above and beyond any factor on the browser end) reminds me indirectly of a Navy mnemonic for the dayshape that a ship should display at sea when it is constrained by draft. We called it a "beer can".

The below excerpt of an excerpt, comes from the article's point of departure, a rant about a short article taking forever to download, among other things:

I love iMore. I think they're the best staff covering Apple today, and their content is great. But count me in with Nick Heer -- their website is shit-ass. Rene Ritchie's response acknowledges the problem, but a web page like that -- Rene's 537-word all-text response -- should not weigh 14 MB. [links and footnote dropped]

The problem comes from the way providers of "free, as in beer" content sell ads to stay afloat. Amusingly, the result, while we have it, is bloated web pages.

Weekend Reading

"Imagine if any creative genius or innovator in human history had stopped his work and decided, 'It's not what you know, it's who you know.'" -- Michael Hurd, in "What You Know, Who You Know" at The Delaware Wave

"There's a suburban myth that women's brains are inherently suited for multitasking; something men cannot understand" -- Michael Hurd, in "Why Rush-a-Holics Rush" at The Delaware Coast Press

"Every milestone in Hope's life, from his name to his good humor, charity work, show business, property development and vast wealth, is an example of self-made success." -- Scott Holleran, in "Honor Burbank, Bob Hope and Flying History" at The Burbank Leader

Backgrounder

As Holleran explains at his blog, the article linked above is his response to a proposal to rename Burbank's airport, which currently bears Bob Hope's name. I agree that it would be a shame to go through with that proposal.

Computational Snake Oil

Computer researcher Matt Might succinctly explains why any vendor's claim that a file compression program works every time are wrong, period:

If such a magic algorithm actually existed, then it could be applied repeatedly to any file to make it smaller and smaller.

Download speeds would drop to nothing.

Might elaborates a bit more, and notes that he is, "happy to testify as an expert witness in court cases where there is a claim of infinite or guaranteed compression."

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added a clarification.