Even before that, there were folk moaning that "Mosaic has ruined the web with its pesky IMG tag - images should be opened in a user-specified viewer app rather than inline!".
Similarly, there were people who complained about forms and buttons at roughly the same time and, a few years later, img maps, frames, layers (okay, with good reason), and CSS.
They (or their spiritual heirs) always pop up on Firefox threads, for some reason. For those people, I want to point out that Lynx is right here and is as usable as it's ever been: https://github.com/ThomasDickey/lynx-snapshots
The BBC News website was actually a relative latecomer - an early variant of the platform was used for the May 1997 general election (parts still online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/ ) and reused for the coverage of the death of Princess Diana that August, but the full service didn't go live until the end of the year.
I agree that a lot of this nostalgia is unrealistically misty-eyed. The window during which independent sites ruled the web was extremely narrow, essentially the time between the release of NCSA Mosaic 2 and the launch of Hotwired.
Consumer internet hype took off from the beginning of 1995, and by the end of that year the web was already overwhelmingly commercialised.
"During the period from 1924 to 1929, there was a general rise in stock exchange values, the average level at the end of 1929 being 18 per cent. above that of 1924. The setback in 1930 has carried the average down to 8 per cent. above the 1924 level, and the decline has been accentuated by the break in Wall Street. The present situation is uncertain, but hopes are entertained of a recovery."
It also knows about Smoot-Hawley, predicting that it will "stimulate home production and expand employment" - and when pressed for potential downsides says only that "consumer prices may rise a little more than otherwise".
We're used to thinking of the inter-war years as a single period, but there were actually two distinct phases: rising optimism during the 1920s, followed by economic rentrenchment and turn towards authoritarianism in the 1930s. The dividing line is fuzzy - somewhere between Kellogg-Briand in 1928 and the first 1931 Sterling crisis.
The pre-1931 cutoff date for this model is probably as close to the end of the optimistic age as it's reasonable to get. I'd love to see a 1936 variant for comparison!
The US public domain currently covers up to the year 1930, which is probably the reason it cuts off at that year. To get a 1936 variant you will have to wait until 2032 for them to be able to legally train the model.
Garmin measures "photoplethysmography-derived respiration" (using the optical HR sensor). Error rates are under 1 breath per minute during sleep or at rest but rises during exercise, up to 4 bpm above the lactate threshold.
Impedance pneumography is more consistently accurate, but requires a chest (not bicep) strap.
Even if they don't die from a directly smoking-related cause, smokers experience more chronic illness than non-smokers, and it tends to start earlier in life. Non-NHS costs include sickness benefits, absences from work, and reduction in lifetime earnings. And then there are the opportunity costs from whatever else they might have spent the money and time on, not to mention what they might have achieved in life had they not developed emphysema in their early 40s.
It's certainly possible to argue about the exact figures, and ASH are hardly a neutral third-party. But it's more dishonest than not to pretend that they don't exist.
What cost is "loss of lifetime earnings" because you die early while still of working age? And cost to whom? (You're dead).
How can you add that like-for-like to actual financial cost to NHS? (Which was the otiginal issue of the discussion, remember?)
Shifting the topic and trying to add random things as "cost" is fudging the numbers, so dishoneest, indeed. It is obvious and I am hoping you see it, too.
Bottom line is that smokers do pay for the cost of their healthcare so this is a fair system and people can then make their own decisions regarding their own lives (which is what a free, liberal society is about).
Well, no, the cost of their own smoking-induced illness isn't the only cost, as mentioned before what about the healthcare costs of people who pick up 2nd or 3rd hand smoke?
I think the point we are making thay you don't want to acknowledge is that the cost to society, healthcare or otherwise, simply cannot be made up for with sin taxes on cigarettes. If we tried that, a pack would need to cost like 10x or more of what it does now, and even then it's debatable.
Unless we have finer data, I would assume that 2nd and 3rd hand smoke is included in "smoking-related" so in the cost figure. It has also to be much less than actual smoking so will not massively change the NHS cost.
We have already established that healthcare costs are more than covered by existing tax.
Arguing and trying to make up additional "costs" is, again, just fudging the numbers and clutching at straws at this point...
And if you really must target enterprise customers, then it might be better for an SMB to pitch Design, Build, and Operate consulting engagements rather than traditional finished software products or services.
Or perhaps even partner with a larger consultancy who could be relied upon for the "operate" phase, leaving to you concentrate on the (generally more interesting) design & build parts.
I suspect that OP may have advanced knowledge of their fate thanks to the copy of a certain encyclopaedia which fell through a rift in the space-time continuum from 1,000 years in the future.
reply