1. Endless arguments on Talk pages. Apparently more work on Talk pages than actual pages.
Yes, it would be a lot simpler if everyone just agreed with you, wouldn't it?
2. I'm most able to write about what I'm an expert in. That's also a conflict of interest.
What conflict is there?
4. Improving free and open source software is both more visible and important.
Not everyone is a programmer. And writing software usually requires quite a lot more work.
5. Publishing articles in peer-reviewed venues is more important, although less visible.
And you can't do both?
7. Popular topics end up better written than unpopular topics. Many entries on fictional worlds.
Why is this a reason not to edit wikipedia? Sounds more like a reason to edit wikipedia.
8. My work might get deleted altogether.
Usually it remains in the article history. Or do you think it should be impossible to revert edits? Perhaps only your edits?
9. Wikipedia is generally not citable itself. Not reviewed, and contents are not constant.
What makes it impossible to cite wikipedia? (Note: whether it is reliable or not is irrelevant, you can still cite it.) You can link to older versions of pages. And what would be the purpose of a static encyklopedia? Knowledge changes.
10. There is no correspondance between the different language versions of a page.
Yes there is. Granted, they are not immediate translations of each other, but why should they be? The understanding of a text depends on the language and cultural background of the reader.
14. If I'm an IP address, nobody cares. If I use my real name, I have to be careful what I write. If I use a pseudonym and hide my identity, it carries less weight.
How is this different from any other situation in life? What you're saying is basically that you want to be anonymous and careless with what you write, but still have what you say carry much weight.
15. Decentralization. It is doubtful that even a fraction of people take the time to read the relevant guides on editing.
Is this a real problem? It is easy enough to point someone to a guide when it is relevant.
16. Same problems that USENET, mailing lists, and forums have.
Which are those problems, exactly, that are the same?
17. Neutral point of view confounded by fact that most people here are fairly left wing.
Well, left of Fox News maybe. (Again, isn't this a reason for you to edit wikipedia, assuming you're right wing?)
18. Most people editing don't have any formal training in writing beyond high school. Most articles and topics need work.
Considering the amount of articles, I'd be chocked if most articles didn't need more work. (Once again, isn't this a reason to edit wikipedia...?)
20. Almost every other leisure activity I can think of is more rewarding; Wikipedia is just addictive.
Yes, but so what? The point is it's no longer as simple as the quote made it sound -- basically just inserting a cracked disk in a new player and you're done. Of course it's not impossible to retrieve another processing key, but I don't see how you automatically get one for free.
The only thing I hate worse than software patents are genetic patents.
The logic behind patents on genes (or so they argue) is that it requires research to understand and find applications to a specific gene, even though the actual gene it technically not unknown form the start. You know, sort of like the process of searching a software patent database, and figuring out what the patents mean and how to use them. Actually, has anyone tried to patent the application of a specific software patent yet...?
I read somewhere that the trust people place in random strangers is a very important property for a well functioning society. It allows transactions to run smoothly. If you always expect to get scammed, getting anything done would be a nightmare. (Game theory is probably applicable here.) Interestingly, the research also indicated that it is more important that people trust each other than that they actually can trust each other -- that is, it is the perceived ability to trust others that matters. That is why this is a bad thing.
Why not just take away kid's right to buy things. Its much simpler to enforce than figuring whether that advertising is directly targeted or not (c.f. Joe Camel, WWF-anything, or Cartoon Network -- the intersection of things which interest adults and kids alike is pretty wide), accomplishes the same objective, and could also be enforced with 9mm help. Of course, we'd think you were a crazy Communist nutball if you suggested it, but thats only because commerce is a perfectly legitimate thing and that children, have real (if qualified) rights to engage in commerce in the same manner that they have real (if qualified) rights to engage in speech. Oh noes, someone might try to influence the opinions they speak or influence what products they purchase! Well, great news, we have these things called "parents", who have vastly more influence and can deprive the child of this thing called "money" without which advertising is pretty much impotent.
I would have thought it'd be apparent to anyone that the problem with advertising directed to children isn't simply that they may spend their weekly allowance on toys. To begin with, don't you think that children have any influence at all on their parents, with regard to what they want? How many parents resists when they complain that "every other kid" has such and such a toy, and they are the only kid at school without one and are picked on for it? And don't you think they may be affected at all by changed attitudes in the long term?
It is beyond me why anyone would want to raise children in a society where powerful interests are actively trying to brainwash them, on a day to day basis. If the existence of parents were such a bullet proof safe guard, then I assume you wouldn't have a problem with them attending for example Hitler-Jugend -- at least as long as they were paid accordingly. Surely, the parents can set them straight as soon as they get home, and no harm is done.
Also, as I understand, it has been shown that children below the age of around 12 actually lack the mental capabilities to distinguish between entertainment and advertisements on for example TV. (Try asking a young child to explain the difference.) As a parent, you may possibly be able to convince them that TV as a whole is sinister, even though it doesn't seem that way to them, but you will never be able to make them understand the concept of advertisements and how to be critical about it. Not until their brain has developed enough.
Of course there would be grey areas where commercials towards children overlaps with commercials towards adults, if it were to be prohibited. But that is true for any law. I've grown up in a country where advertising directed to children under 12 isn't allowed, and enforcing it hasn't been much of a problem. Except for the fact that some TV stations broadcast from other countries via satellite to get around the law.
This requires the BBC to develop an alternative DRM framework to enable users of other technology [...] to access the on-demand services. (Emphasis mine)
That sounds kind of backwards to me. More like "...to prevent users of other technology from accessing the on-demand services too much.".
Too many powerful people around the world want control of their respective economies, and one way you do that is by manipulating and suppressing technological advancement.
Someone commented that corporations seem to go through three phases: First they are run by engineers, their technology is developed and to the extent that their sales are successful it is due to the technological merits or their products. Then, if they survive long enough, marketing people takes over, and they sell through effective marketing. This initially benefits the company. However, the technological level slowly stagnates, until it hardly moves at all. Finally, when others (newcomers in phase one) have surpassed the corporation, technologically, to such an extent that the products no longer sell well, it enters its third phase: lawyers take over to try to maintain the market position through lawsuits and manipulation of the lawmakers (this is where the record corporations are currently).
I'm beginning to wonder if this could be true also on a grander scale -- for entire countries or large regions. The western world has long been the technological leader in the world. But now, seeing others like China and India emerging as contenders for that position, those in power who benefit from the current situation try to lock it down, and maintain status quo. They do this instead of trying to be even more innovative and move forward, because that incurs a greater risk (at least short term). Eventually the ability to innovate is lost, others take the lead, and the cycle can repeat.
Whether that leads to cheaper better service, I... doubt...
Why do you doubt that? Do you have any information to support that assumption, or are you only basing it on knowledge of the situation in the US? I can give counterexample, where deregulations have resulted in significantly higher prices. (Power prices in Sweden, for instance.)
I'm inclined to suppose that a monopoly of government begets monopolies in commerce.
Care to elaborate on that connection? I'm rather inclined to suppose monopolies in commerce beget themselves.
At least, it seems most logical to expect the system to settle in a state which generates the most profit, since profit is the only guiding force -- that is, in a monopoly. Competition is a disadvantage for those competing; cooperating and sharing generates greater rewards. That is why corporations merge. Of course, one can prevent such cooperation when it doesn't benefit the common good by making rules against it (like we do already), but... that is government regulation.
Also, since each resource (money/market share/power) controlled by an entity is a leverage towards earning more resources, the system is unstable and one should expect resources and power to accumulate in a few entities.
So the scammer just needs the fixed PIN code, plus a few of the one-time codes.
Or, if you have taken control of the user's computer, you can do a man-in-the-middle attack. Since the one-time codes are completely independent of the transaction that is taking place, the cracker can simply wait for the user to transfer money somewhere and substitute the amounts and account numbers.
This is, however, not possible with at least some of the challenge/response systems you mention, because every number then needs be entered "unscrambled" into the key generator. To send money to account number 12345678, you have to enter "12345678" into the token to get a confirmation code. Upon doing that, all but the dullest users would notice if any number was out of place.
Even on a 50Mbit connection, I rarely get more than 900KB/sec on a single torrent.
That could be because those you download from have much slower connections and/or live far away, and might very well change once 50 Mbit and above has become mainstream everywhere. I have saturated a 100 Mbit dedicated fibre connection a couple of times on single torrents (though never the upstream channel).
That is the thing with artificial intelligence research. So long as the concepts are understood only by researchers, people call it AI and regard it as something mysterious, but as soon as it gets useful applications and reaches the public it becomes "just statistics" or "business rule engines" or something similar. What you describe is data mining, a concept on the verge of entering the public mind.
I couldn't have said it better myself. And this is something many people don't seem to realise. It has always been possible for a secret service, or someone else with lots of resources, to track and investigate single individuals, through public sources and some social engineering. Long before the internet or even computers existed. But it has been expensive to do so, and impractical on a larger scale.
In the future, this might very well become so cheap that it is affordable for essentially anyone. And it will be possible to track people on a truly massive scale. Who cares if there are laws against to mapping out and keeping registers on peoples political opinions, religion, sexual preferences and so on, if any such information can be extracted automatically on demand? Imagine a search engine like Google where you can enter a persons name, and get anything on that person extracted through data mining and consolidation of public sources. Far fetched? I don't know, maybe. Technologically impossible? I can see no reason why it would be.
So, you can do something with a computer with NO OS on it?
Well, one thing I can do with a computer without an OS on it is to install and run an OS on it. The OS is no more integral to the computer than the computer is to the monitor. You could equally well have said "I had no idea that staring at a blank screen with the DVI cord unplugged was that interesting". By your logic, since the monitor is useless by itself, the computer and the monitor clearly can't be separate products.
Thousands of products are unusable unless combined with another product: a flash light delivered without batteries; a trailer without a car to drag it; a bucket of paint without a brush; a fridge without food in it. The list goes on forever.
Are current CPUs optimised for physics simulations? No.
For image processing? No.
For data compression? No.
For encryption? No.
Maybe not, but if you have specialized cores for each of these, you will have 4 cores idling when you don't do any of that. The alternative would be to have 5 general purpose cores. Each single one would be slower at a specific task, but the symmetric design would give better flexibility allowing all cores to operate all the time. It isn't a clear cut case which approach is the better, and the general consensus seems to vary periodically over time (see the wheel of reincarnation).
Sentimental attachment to nature for its own sake completely misses the point of nature, which is first, last and only survival.
I disagree. There is no point of nature at all, in that sense. Purpose is a human concept; an emotion if you like. We might equally well stipulate that diversity is the point of nature. Even if the mechanism that has created the diversity can be described, at least partially, as a struggle for survival, the survival in itself doesn't have to be viewed as the goal.
In a sense, one could claim that whatever we choose to do as the dominant species is the goal, and that nature has produced us through survival of the fittest to reach that goal. In that case, we can choose what the point of nature is, right here and now. When making that choice, arguing that nature is all about survival would then be begging the question.
If you don't like it, don't go out. Ever been on the big screen at a baseball game? Try complaining about that.
There is a difference between being filmed once a year in a place you might expect it, and being filmed 10 times a day with the videos published on publically searchable databases. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer.
Look at usenet. As soon as anyone could use it with low barriers to entry there were enough people there to attack spam and trolls and all of the rest of it.
Perhaps, but I think a high technical threshold is far from the ideal filter against spam and trolls. It doesn't really lock out spammers, still it locks out millions of legitimate and good natured users. There are better ways to filter the flow of information and improve the signal to noise ratio. It's just that USENET lacks them.
Or do you think the moderation system on slashdot should be replaced with a higher barrier of entry?
Could it be that patents should only have been training wheels for the industrial revolution until a technological society is achieved
Yes, perhaps. I think the key difference between the 18th and 21th century, with regard to the usefulness of patents, is that today, through the advent of information technology, we have become a network society. It is now more important how information and ideas flow than the thoughts and inventions of each single individual. In the 18th century, a brilliant individual could invent a complex machine all by himself -- today, that is almost impossible.
It is no longer possible to isolate yourself, being secretive and hoarding information while remaining in the technology front. If you disconnect from the network (so to speak), you will die. Therefore, I would say that the incentive to share your ideas no longer needs to be provided by patents. Instead, patents have become an obstruction to the flow of ideas.
What is obvious to a practitioner of the art must be demonstrated to be so to the satisfaction of a court.
What about this: For each patent application that might be considered obvious, a small number of people skilled in the art in question are hired for one day. They are presented with the applicant's description of the problem that the invention is supposed to solve, but are not given any information about the invention itself. At the end of the day, they get to present a number of approaches that one might try in order to solve it. If they come up with something similar to what is in the patent application, then the invention is obvious.
By the way, if any of the hired practitioners knew of the solution already, well then we have found prior art, so that is OK too.
A weak spot of this scheme would be that often describing the problem in the right way is how you find the solution to a tricky problem, so entirely separating the description of a problem from the solution might not always be possible. But that, I think, is a small problem compared to all the ones in the current patent system.
Don't you see that there is a difference between passively reporting a crime you have witnessed and actively conducting you own investigations? The law enforcement certainly shouldn't require others to do their investigations. Sure, the police can disregard crimes that I report, but they better be able to find the criminals I don't report by themselves. Also, depending on the public/society in general is different from depending on a single organisation with its own special interests.
Vigilante justice refers to private citizens making up and enforcing their own law. Microsoft is working within the legal system of each country to bring this about.
But there is a problem if law enforcement depends heavily on Microsofts assistance. Then Microsoft has become an integral part of the justice system, not only by executing limited law enforcement tasks (as in the case with labs etcetera working as sub-contractors), but in a position where they have the power to chose which cases should be enforced and not.
Local government in the UK is not famous for big salaries or sexy projects.
Although they do have really good pension schemes.
So they are gonna be full of livewire employees who are seriously into the latest software?
I would expect the local UK governments not to be full of live wire employees. As with basically every other organisation where the average age of the employees is greater than 25 years. That is where the problem arises. Humans generally dislike too much change after our brain has settled and lost some of its plasticity. One should consider that when planning £500k projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it would be a lot simpler if everyone just agreed with you, wouldn't it?
What conflict is there?
Not everyone is a programmer. And writing software usually requires quite a lot more work.
And you can't do both?
Why is this a reason not to edit wikipedia? Sounds more like a reason to edit wikipedia.
Usually it remains in the article history. Or do you think it should be impossible to revert edits? Perhaps only your edits?
What makes it impossible to cite wikipedia? (Note: whether it is reliable or not is irrelevant, you can still cite it.) You can link to older versions of pages. And what would be the purpose of a static encyklopedia? Knowledge changes.
Yes there is. Granted, they are not immediate translations of each other, but why should they be? The understanding of a text depends on the language and cultural background of the reader.
How is this different from any other situation in life? What you're saying is basically that you want to be anonymous and careless with what you write, but still have what you say carry much weight.
Is this a real problem? It is easy enough to point someone to a guide when it is relevant.
Which are those problems, exactly, that are the same?
Well, left of Fox News maybe. (Again, isn't this a reason for you to edit wikipedia, assuming you're right wing?)
Considering the amount of articles, I'd be chocked if most articles didn't need more work. (Once again, isn't this a reason to edit wikipedia...?)
Yes, like spending time on slashdot... ;)
Yes, but so what? The point is it's no longer as simple as the quote made it sound -- basically just inserting a cracked disk in a new player and you're done. Of course it's not impossible to retrieve another processing key, but I don't see how you automatically get one for free.
Why can't the player just put the key at a random location each time it is run?
The logic behind patents on genes (or so they argue) is that it requires research to understand and find applications to a specific gene, even though the actual gene it technically not unknown form the start. You know, sort of like the process of searching a software patent database, and figuring out what the patents mean and how to use them. Actually, has anyone tried to patent the application of a specific software patent yet...?
I read somewhere that the trust people place in random strangers is a very important property for a well functioning society. It allows transactions to run smoothly. If you always expect to get scammed, getting anything done would be a nightmare. (Game theory is probably applicable here.) Interestingly, the research also indicated that it is more important that people trust each other than that they actually can trust each other -- that is, it is the perceived ability to trust others that matters. That is why this is a bad thing.
I would have thought it'd be apparent to anyone that the problem with advertising directed to children isn't simply that they may spend their weekly allowance on toys. To begin with, don't you think that children have any influence at all on their parents, with regard to what they want? How many parents resists when they complain that "every other kid" has such and such a toy, and they are the only kid at school without one and are picked on for it? And don't you think they may be affected at all by changed attitudes in the long term?
It is beyond me why anyone would want to raise children in a society where powerful interests are actively trying to brainwash them, on a day to day basis. If the existence of parents were such a bullet proof safe guard, then I assume you wouldn't have a problem with them attending for example Hitler-Jugend -- at least as long as they were paid accordingly. Surely, the parents can set them straight as soon as they get home, and no harm is done.
Also, as I understand, it has been shown that children below the age of around 12 actually lack the mental capabilities to distinguish between entertainment and advertisements on for example TV. (Try asking a young child to explain the difference.) As a parent, you may possibly be able to convince them that TV as a whole is sinister, even though it doesn't seem that way to them, but you will never be able to make them understand the concept of advertisements and how to be critical about it. Not until their brain has developed enough.
Of course there would be grey areas where commercials towards children overlaps with commercials towards adults, if it were to be prohibited. But that is true for any law. I've grown up in a country where advertising directed to children under 12 isn't allowed, and enforcing it hasn't been much of a problem. Except for the fact that some TV stations broadcast from other countries via satellite to get around the law.
What if one where to attach two such "imagers" together? Shaping a spot into a donut, then back into a spot.
That sounds kind of backwards to me. More like "...to prevent users of other technology from accessing the on-demand services too much.".
Someone commented that corporations seem to go through three phases: First they are run by engineers, their technology is developed and to the extent that their sales are successful it is due to the technological merits or their products. Then, if they survive long enough, marketing people takes over, and they sell through effective marketing. This initially benefits the company. However, the technological level slowly stagnates, until it hardly moves at all. Finally, when others (newcomers in phase one) have surpassed the corporation, technologically, to such an extent that the products no longer sell well, it enters its third phase: lawyers take over to try to maintain the market position through lawsuits and manipulation of the lawmakers (this is where the record corporations are currently).
I'm beginning to wonder if this could be true also on a grander scale -- for entire countries or large regions. The western world has long been the technological leader in the world. But now, seeing others like China and India emerging as contenders for that position, those in power who benefit from the current situation try to lock it down, and maintain status quo. They do this instead of trying to be even more innovative and move forward, because that incurs a greater risk (at least short term). Eventually the ability to innovate is lost, others take the lead, and the cycle can repeat.
Why do you doubt that? Do you have any information to support that assumption, or are you only basing it on knowledge of the situation in the US? I can give counterexample, where deregulations have resulted in significantly higher prices. (Power prices in Sweden, for instance.)
Care to elaborate on that connection? I'm rather inclined to suppose monopolies in commerce beget themselves.
At least, it seems most logical to expect the system to settle in a state which generates the most profit, since profit is the only guiding force -- that is, in a monopoly. Competition is a disadvantage for those competing; cooperating and sharing generates greater rewards. That is why corporations merge. Of course, one can prevent such cooperation when it doesn't benefit the common good by making rules against it (like we do already), but... that is government regulation.
Also, since each resource (money/market share/power) controlled by an entity is a leverage towards earning more resources, the system is unstable and one should expect resources and power to accumulate in a few entities.
Or, if you have taken control of the user's computer, you can do a man-in-the-middle attack. Since the one-time codes are completely independent of the transaction that is taking place, the cracker can simply wait for the user to transfer money somewhere and substitute the amounts and account numbers.
This is, however, not possible with at least some of the challenge/response systems you mention, because every number then needs be entered "unscrambled" into the key generator. To send money to account number 12345678, you have to enter "12345678" into the token to get a confirmation code. Upon doing that, all but the dullest users would notice if any number was out of place.
That could be because those you download from have much slower connections and/or live far away, and might very well change once 50 Mbit and above has become mainstream everywhere. I have saturated a 100 Mbit dedicated fibre connection a couple of times on single torrents (though never the upstream channel).
That is the thing with artificial intelligence research. So long as the concepts are understood only by researchers, people call it AI and regard it as something mysterious, but as soon as it gets useful applications and reaches the public it becomes "just statistics" or "business rule engines" or something similar. What you describe is data mining, a concept on the verge of entering the public mind.
I couldn't have said it better myself. And this is something many people don't seem to realise. It has always been possible for a secret service, or someone else with lots of resources, to track and investigate single individuals, through public sources and some social engineering. Long before the internet or even computers existed. But it has been expensive to do so, and impractical on a larger scale.
In the future, this might very well become so cheap that it is affordable for essentially anyone. And it will be possible to track people on a truly massive scale. Who cares if there are laws against to mapping out and keeping registers on peoples political opinions, religion, sexual preferences and so on, if any such information can be extracted automatically on demand? Imagine a search engine like Google where you can enter a persons name, and get anything on that person extracted through data mining and consolidation of public sources. Far fetched? I don't know, maybe. Technologically impossible? I can see no reason why it would be.
Well, one thing I can do with a computer without an OS on it is to install and run an OS on it. The OS is no more integral to the computer than the computer is to the monitor. You could equally well have said "I had no idea that staring at a blank screen with the DVI cord unplugged was that interesting". By your logic, since the monitor is useless by itself, the computer and the monitor clearly can't be separate products.
Thousands of products are unusable unless combined with another product: a flash light delivered without batteries; a trailer without a car to drag it; a bucket of paint without a brush; a fridge without food in it. The list goes on forever.
Maybe not, but if you have specialized cores for each of these, you will have 4 cores idling when you don't do any of that. The alternative would be to have 5 general purpose cores. Each single one would be slower at a specific task, but the symmetric design would give better flexibility allowing all cores to operate all the time. It isn't a clear cut case which approach is the better, and the general consensus seems to vary periodically over time (see the wheel of reincarnation).
Would that be BerSerk of Death?
I disagree. There is no point of nature at all, in that sense. Purpose is a human concept; an emotion if you like. We might equally well stipulate that diversity is the point of nature. Even if the mechanism that has created the diversity can be described, at least partially, as a struggle for survival, the survival in itself doesn't have to be viewed as the goal.
In a sense, one could claim that whatever we choose to do as the dominant species is the goal, and that nature has produced us through survival of the fittest to reach that goal. In that case, we can choose what the point of nature is, right here and now. When making that choice, arguing that nature is all about survival would then be begging the question.
There is a difference between being filmed once a year in a place you might expect it, and being filmed 10 times a day with the videos published on publically searchable databases. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer.
Perhaps, but I think a high technical threshold is far from the ideal filter against spam and trolls. It doesn't really lock out spammers, still it locks out millions of legitimate and good natured users. There are better ways to filter the flow of information and improve the signal to noise ratio. It's just that USENET lacks them.
Or do you think the moderation system on slashdot should be replaced with a higher barrier of entry?
Yes, perhaps. I think the key difference between the 18th and 21th century, with regard to the usefulness of patents, is that today, through the advent of information technology, we have become a network society. It is now more important how information and ideas flow than the thoughts and inventions of each single individual. In the 18th century, a brilliant individual could invent a complex machine all by himself -- today, that is almost impossible.
It is no longer possible to isolate yourself, being secretive and hoarding information while remaining in the technology front. If you disconnect from the network (so to speak), you will die. Therefore, I would say that the incentive to share your ideas no longer needs to be provided by patents. Instead, patents have become an obstruction to the flow of ideas.
What about this: For each patent application that might be considered obvious, a small number of people skilled in the art in question are hired for one day. They are presented with the applicant's description of the problem that the invention is supposed to solve, but are not given any information about the invention itself. At the end of the day, they get to present a number of approaches that one might try in order to solve it. If they come up with something similar to what is in the patent application, then the invention is obvious.
By the way, if any of the hired practitioners knew of the solution already, well then we have found prior art, so that is OK too.
A weak spot of this scheme would be that often describing the problem in the right way is how you find the solution to a tricky problem, so entirely separating the description of a problem from the solution might not always be possible. But that, I think, is a small problem compared to all the ones in the current patent system.
Don't you see that there is a difference between passively reporting a crime you have witnessed and actively conducting you own investigations? The law enforcement certainly shouldn't require others to do their investigations. Sure, the police can disregard crimes that I report, but they better be able to find the criminals I don't report by themselves. Also, depending on the public/society in general is different from depending on a single organisation with its own special interests.
But there is a problem if law enforcement depends heavily on Microsofts assistance. Then Microsoft has become an integral part of the justice system, not only by executing limited law enforcement tasks (as in the case with labs etcetera working as sub-contractors), but in a position where they have the power to chose which cases should be enforced and not.
I would expect the local UK governments not to be full of live wire employees. As with basically every other organisation where the average age of the employees is greater than 25 years. That is where the problem arises. Humans generally dislike too much change after our brain has settled and lost some of its plasticity. One should consider that when planning £500k projects.