Re: Where's the advantage?

> JS-interpreters are so amazingly fast these days,

My experience of google docs spreadsheets would disagree with that and JS is relatively hard to code for if you've grown up with C.

A lot of the benefit is in application delivery. The idea is to devalue microsoft on the desktop by making apps cross-platform and delivered via http, which cuts out the wintel support team and reduces the cost of trials and roll-outs. It replaces the windows interface libraries with a browser one, which is an easier direction to take than to do java on the desktop or find some other reason to drop win32 interfaces.

I like the idea.

Re: Now we might have a comparison

Really? Does HP pay MS for each android device?

Are you sure about that?

Re: PC shipments ffailing for ONE reason

True, but I would add that PC manufacturers keep thinking we want more power, whereas phones and tablets suggest we want more access.

Now the costings are all messed up. A case and power supply can easily outstrip the cost of the high tech. New Atom systems cost more than recycled core2's. Core2-i3 isn't much of an upgrade that most people would notice. Sandy-bridge to ivy-bridge isn't a noticeable upgrade to most people. I'd bet most people would hesitate if you asked them if their new i5 laptop is that much faster than an old core2 work laptop.

I'd rather have a home server than a new desktop. I'd rather have a pi strapped to the back of every tv than a new desktop. I'd rather have ac wireless than a new desktop.

I'd prefer new things to upgraded things.

Re: @TheVogon

It actually can make sense, but it has little to do with MS.

Lots of nix boxes are running Oracle, but Oracle is going the appliance route and taking the hardware business with them. It makes sense for IBM (and HP) to push their own iron and leverage FLOSS as an alternative. The trick is to know the FLOSS db's etc as well Oracle know Oracle on Solaris. They need to make it better than x86, not cheaper.

Once IBM are in, there is a chance to up-sell to AIX/HPUX for better troubleshooting than Linux provides. Linux on Power makes Power seem a little less scarey than AIX and segments the market nicely, as being an intro to Power.

Personally I think it would be fun to see linux desktops running off power servers, with citrix handling the windows side. A curiosity perhaps, but fun.

Re: What on Earth is the point?

Its worse than that, Jim.

Has anyone else noticed that profitability used to be an indicator of economic productivity, but now its mostly an indicator of how well you can juggle various aspects of a report.

Re: Do these guys not understand copyright?

> The state grants authors the right to decide who has the right to copy their works.

Unless of course, it decides to revoke that right. Copyright is an artificial assignment of control. It may be a good one, but if you ask for state intervention to allow you to make money, the state is in control.

Re: I want control

You can use android if you strip the googley bits.

I'd like to have android and pay nokia for the maps, perhaps wrapped in my monthly fee.

Encrypt and mirror all my mail from home to a google imap or AWS and off we go.

For me, google is mostly about always on email and contacts, but I see no reason why AWS couldn't be convinced to run an imap server.

Re: I think of google more as a little sister.

I was thinking more along the lines of Bioshock...

Re: So much for the EU

I refuse to accept that we can't manage our own affairs and should therefore hand over power to people other people voted less for.

I'd rather have a bad policy for a little while than cede powers to Brussels forever.

Re: What do people do on these OS's?

Debian is about the only maintained thing which runs on my G5. It does: web proxy, DVR, file server, webserver, time-machine server, DNS & DHCP, PXE boot for DVR clients and PXE boot OS installs.

Suse or OSX on the desktop for work, with Windows for games and Chief Architect. Suse and Ubuntu desktop for playing with Steam on Linux.

I found it a little too easy to break debian sid in horrible ways - suse saves me from myself there.

Re: Price - are Intel willing to compete?

Price is key here.

Apple and Samsung et al vertically integrate to extract the profit from all bits of the vertical stack. Which of these megacorps wants to give Intel a slice of profit?

The code for phones has to be rewritten because the gui form factor is different. So there's little portability to be gained there - not much incentive for devs to pick it up.

Windows tablets could be a target market, with RT dying off, and x86 W8 going everywhere. Low-end CPUs are a problem for MS but perhaps they could license by CPU speed. Their problem will be the loss of business desktop revenue if things move to VDI where MS are currently double-dipping on desktops.

The other biggie is low-power stuff. The home server would be a great market, running x86 on low power systems, though I doubt its cheap enough to beat the Pi taped to the back of the telly as an access device.

Moonshot-type devices are also an option but massively parallel cpus are a significant architecture change, Windows is probably not an option without a major licensing change and unit price counts more when you're scaling up. With such devices being custom-made, I can't see HP deciding to give Intel more cash for atoms. Atom would have to be not just better, but an order of magnitude better.

I still want to see a home-based blade system with a low power server blade and a high-power desktop blade in the same box. I want to be able to power off my i7 and GPU card without affecting my always-on media and sync server, while both are on, the PCIe 3.0 running as a network between them would be great.

Creative Destruction?

If the system becomes wildly popular, there will be pressure for cabbies to commission their own software and cut out the services which take a cut.

How difficult could it be to create something which punts your GPS location onto google maps and invites a cabbie to respond? Funnel it through gateway which logs the details (cabbie number, customer number) and records the voip stream and off you go. Delete the voip after a month unless a complaint has been made. Or you could just gps track not-in-use and soon-to-be not-in-use cabs, overlay on gmaps and let punters click to talk to one.

Re: Bullshit

Which is why BYOD boils down to citrix.

You bring your own dumb terminal.

Re: Long tradition of bring your own tools...

Contractors, yes, employees, not so much.

And the client never gets to "manage" your tools.

Re: Theft

Put your TV out on the kerb for all to see and yes, people might watch it and it would be difficult to charge for it. If they deprive you of it, then they would be in trouble.

A brutal question would be whether we are a net importer or net exporter of such items.

I'm getting some popcorn and waiting for someone to reskin Windows and strip the titles from a Hollywood film.

Re: bring back 'save as'

With the size of hard disks these days, there is absolutely no reason not to take the auto-version feature from VMS for manual saving of office documents, especially when auto-save is switched on and you aren't manually saving every five minutes.

Re: The music itself is the problem

You forget that there is nothing so disastrous in marketing as a fantastic product which so satisfies the customer they they never come back and buy again.

The music industry knows what its doing when it makes products it knows you'll get bored with shortly after buying.

Re: @Triggerfish "Music" is the problem

I have to agree with Vlad on this one.

The tunes are often there mostly to support the drums.

The strong beat, single-level, high-volume (encouraged) and almost exact repetition seem designed to disengage the brain. It appears to be the audio equivalent of alcohol - numb the senses and blot out thought.

While classical music uses repetition, its (usually) done with enough variation on the theme that the change stimulates the brain into registering and engaging with the alterations found through the piece.

Re: Installation easier with Linux

> So about the same amount it takes to install Suse 12.x when you need some stuff from external/commecial repositories.

External repos like packman update the kernel far more often than the main distro. Kernel updates will always need a reboot.

What I don't understand is why W7 needs to reboot when apps like lync or IE are updated.

Re: Elephant in the room?

> Choosing ARM fixes those.

Yes, but not the need for speed.

How about ARM and x86 on the same silicon, both running dalvik with some power management, freeze/thaw code and a very high-speed virtual network between them to allow process migration?

I think I might go for that kind of convertible.

Re: Good news

You shouldn't trust any of them.

But Google are evil while they allow me to do things, whereas Apple and MS are evil and stop me from doing things.

Re: Good news

No, MS are going after a maker of android hardware who want to be the maker of xbox hardware too.

Re: …And we still have no idea what these patents are

> IMHO the patents would not withstand a legal challenge, perhaps a good reason why MS have tried to keep specific details away from the public where it would face broader analysis and discussion.

Even more likely, "You sign a patent license deal and we will sweeten the xbox contract."

The aim is to to set precedents.for licensing and to keep alive the illusion of risk associated with android.

Re: Tough stance?

An obvious PR stunt perhaps, but that doesn't mean that it isn't useful to more than just mozilla.

If criminals want to use SSL they can generate their own, non-snoopable certs. "Lawful interception" with or without TeliaSonera won't get you the cleartext for that. Indeed, most corporates do that internally because they can't be bothered to pay for certs.

The interception comes in where people are accessing "public" infrastructure, such as gmail, banks etc and the government wants to do man-in-the-middle spoofing. The hardened criminal will so sensible things like deleting all root certs and making an exception for that service from a "safe" net connection. However, as a general "let's snoop on the populace" tactic, skeleton root keys come into their own.

The problem is that TS is setting itself up selling security systems to keep things secret. If it then goes around selling imitation vaults, it can hardly expect vault users not to kick up a fuss.

Re: And who didn't know this?

I think the editors of Nature said that 75% of what they print turns out to be wrong.

That's rather the point.

Hopefully, when you've completed the work, you have a good understanding (or at least memory) of the material.

Interleaving is key. It gives time for the students to catch up and have a bit of a think about what they are looking at.

Education is about learning knowledge, skills and thought processes. Computers are used to remove the need for most of that.

Writing on a bit of paper provides the chance to scribble notes, scrawl arrows, underline and so on. Yes a computer can do all that, but not as quickly and rarely in such a free-form manner. Typing is generally faster, but typing is about presentation, not learning.

Re: How can my data be protected and compliant

Not everyone holds cc or healthcare data, and the cloud isn't the be-all and end-all of computing, so that's a relief!

Actually, I'm not sure why you'd hold healthcare data in a flexi-cloud. If you don't know target data size in those markets, you've got bigger problems than governance!