Posts by Britt Johnston
488 posts • joined Tuesday 11th April 2006 15:28 GMT
while we are bashing companies...
why would the CIA want to use a notorious tax minimizer like Amazon?
Like, like
"the hundreds of times they used the word "like" in their sentences."
Facebook and like are oxymoronic, aren't they?
Windows 8 is good for something
The initial screen warns every customer without a touch sensitive screen that Microsoft doesn't care about customers. Not enough to even give you an XP-retro option, and certainly not enough to design features to help you.
My question for 2015 is, who can come up with a one-button solution on a USB3 stick to overwrite my outdated Win7.
good sound is possible
As commenters like peter gathercole mention, quality of sound has been a problem since Edison. But I'm happy with my current sound from my laptops, and use these in preference to mobile devices. The laptop signal feeds to a USB soundcard, and from here into the AUX channel of a bedsit Hifi.
- so yes, tinny laptop speakers are the worst problem
- the two laptops differ in signal: an Acer being noticeably better than a non-Beats HP
- I do attach sound-compensating headphones, to filter out house noise and let others sleep, but they would be unsafe in traffic.
- Youtube is interesting, also because of the range in quality of uploaded music - a valuable discipline of its own, as previous comments have mentioned.
Re: Compelling reasons for reviving the ether
It IS the ether, we are just arguing about its weight and pervasiveness.
bet the company?
"Apple is thus going to be forced into more “bet the company” launches. It can easily survive an iWatch failure, but to deliver high percentage growth it will need to bet a high percentage of the firm. "
The art of portfolio management is to have a number of projects of differing size and risk. This helps avoid the military dilemma of repeatedly betting on all-out-wins, until your army gets hammered.
Even then, given Apple's size, it may not be possible to find one project big enough to force them to bet the whole company's fortunes.
Re: galactic sized accelerator mechanism
I think you have touched on the cause - at the rate accelerators are getting bigger, in a billion years or so, one will fill the known universe, so forcing an alternate universe to bubble into existence.
An alternative could be to stop Moore's law for accelerators.
does the code run on my raspi?
see title
screen size
Thanks to John Robson for the good analysis. Disagree about screen size, though - I can only get a fraction of a page on the machine at big enough to read so I'd really like a larger screen. This may push my standard reader from my laptop +monitor to a tablet in time.
Re: Regulation crazy
new regulations, and their fees, are a major source of GDP growth in an imploding financial services economy like GB.
Re: So...
Alternatively, if Ofcom charged the same fees, and spent it on solving problems, then there would be less worry about whether a problem should be outsourced or not.
Another rule
The rule I know is hat your fist at arms length should cover the screen. It probably maps closely to the other one but saves you using the TV as a ruler.
It comes from your brain being uncomfortable with too much movement if the angle of viewing is too large.
Re: Very strange stuff, that heat
The heat is a side-effect of the Blish drives, plus the air conditioners...
data science - the alchemy of the 21stC?
I appreciated the article and see the target, the terminology is secondary. I don't like the wiggle room in the bridgebuilder analogy between engineer and statistitian, though, as
1) They said that about Velikowsky between egyptologists and archeologists
2) many statistitians are mathematically competent and practical enough to run toolkits - maybe they are confining their curiosity to a currently saleable set of problems.
I'd be interested in your proposed toolkit as captured in your course - could you provide a link, please?
Re: Hmm, iPads?
The most important contribution of the iPad was to suppress the development of 10" smartphones
Cross-platform apps
It is surely only a matter of time until someone has a cross-platform compiler, or at least an appsource converter, then we move on from asking who has the most apps.
Microsoft might even be chasing that goal now.
RE Bluish-Green (R97, G171, B162; #61aba2) = petrol
Fashion likes more fanciful names for colour nuances:
try searching in google.de pictures for "petrol hose"
Google could raise the stakes, and patent French on the internet.
Black Friday
< [I'm]buying one on Black Friday if Apple knock 5% off or so >
3.5% knocked off the share price this week, charge up your credit card...
can't give them away?
I smell a marketing plan here.
The US allows A-L give away their products free to save the free world from Huawei and LZE.
All producers go bust, but at least the free world is saved.
consistently reliable source at a high-profile US retailer
that'll be the bar where employees leave their prototypes?
scientists and citizens
she clearly meant ''boffins', who transcend state boundaries.
that's life
When I get too fed up, I use http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/. I can't find an equivalent for Bing - 'one man's poison is another man's meat' seems to be the Microsoft way to strengthen immunity.
Search numbers are currently 66% Google, 28% Microsoft. The interesting thing is that the attempts to manually improve search (Yahoo, AOL) are not being honoured, as their percentages are dropping.
I'd like a Syria add-on, to contribute to the free world.
Any chance of real drone connects?
Seriously, now
Excuse me for interupting the frivolity of Friday afternoon to pick out a serious point in this.
Surely Apple will get slower IT support from large firms if they don't provide timelines, betas, and coming features well in advance. These are firms now upgrading from windows XP to 7, with a turn-around of several years? And being asked to deliver apps for home log-in, KPIs on the go, cloudy teamrooms,...
Not unrelated, today a colleague rolling out HR IT modules on SAP showed me the iphone he had replaced his Blackberry with.
Re: a two week course on how to use Google is just as good for 90% of jobs
Hey AC! That endangers all who still believe thinking is free. Next week there'll be a Googletax of £9000 p.a.
Reminds me of my wife, then 18, being served a bill for schooling via her parents after she skipped an East European country.
Re: What about iCloud?
Thanks for the partial answer. She has a website with an embedded map, that recently stopped working. I'm trying to find out if that is normal wear and tear, or if others know of a general problem, and/or whether there is anything left to fix, or better just start over.
What about iCloud?
My wife, a non-expert, is complaining about her web site, which is on a mac on iCloud.
It recently lost its link to the google map insert used to show the way to her business premises, and does not appear to have a way to get it reinstalled..
Is this an unlucky coincidence, or is there something conspiratorial going on here?
re “PSUs areThe main cause of failure'
More of my personal losses have been due to on/off switches.
One cause is the useful but philosophically disturbing idea of a PC controlling its own power supply, a power grab that swaps robustness for functionality.
Posted in Who cares about Big Data
example of cross-consolidation of data domains
http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/ is a database that makes me cringe. The data is clearly manually driven, and incomplete. A larger data scope, which could include data from university rolls, and publications, would stabilise the original concept and increase the usefulness of all areas.
Is anybody looking for a Friday research project?
a rise, by any other name
+ve: no expensive cables, no non-standard connectors
-ve: Can it do voice commands, or ring my utility co for a recharge? Does it even have a microphone or bluetooth?
Driver-free cars
Once Google's vision becomes accepted, we will have herds of carbots that on Zero-Day are all reprogrammed to drive to their pick-up point.
Re: I'm missing an argument in all these 'copy' lawsuits
and Apple makes the gadgets with incompatible plugs
freedom from data mining
Seems that someone dug up the road and hit a cable in Florida...
Interesting that Amazon and Wikipedia went on the same day though. Is that Fate or Murphy dropping a hint?
Perhaps, once a year, we should establish a net-free Sunday?
@vic - how else can we get our data across ...?
Remember those programs that share a small amount of your CPU capacity?
Perhaps clouds will hook into spare MBs on one of your drives.
Have you no feelings?
It's just that the official stealers of orange juice from kiddies like to be taken seriously.
What next, RetrOS?
Okay, the windows monolith is flaking. Each iteration takes longer for large firms to adapt to, as they try to control functions which add power but could be misused. Our sissies have recently recaptured the task manager - how dare users shoot down applications that are infinite-looping!
So we need a different split: a draconian low-functionality system for corporate IT security, and a modern lean OS for private users -whether screen diagonal is 4in or 115in. Could be Windows 9 and 8 respectively.
Luckily, by next time, you'll be able to run any corporate RetrOS on VMware in a corner of a mobile phone.
Slightly related question
Isn't it important to track the particles' fate in detail, to pay and reclaim VAT every time they cross the French/Swiss border? Some of these particles are quite expensive.
Vacuum cleaner model
The arguments why no more PCs are needed are similar to those for vacuum cleaners 20 years ago. Everyone has one, they work longer, etc.
The post-saturation era for vacuum cleaners has worked out as selling specialist machines - one for the car, one driven by batteries, and so on (equivalent to, say, ARM processor proliferation?). Also the cyclone technology came along (ssds?). What nobody is asking for are gold-plated Wintel machines.
works just fine
I typed in "hershey bar" into Google maps, and the nearest one is 200 km away in Munich.
re: Conspiracy theory, like iTunes
Apple are planning to monetise, then take over the electricity suppliers - 500mA/h at a time?
Looking in the wrong place
All the melted ice from Antartica is in the Maldives.
Posted in Flame gets suicide command
honey swat key...
That is really friendly of them to tidy up afterwards.
Posted in Still buying CDs?
Back-up
I recently lost a computer and the back-up drive. However, I was able to restore my transcribed records from my mp3 player.
Mit Basic in den Mac App Store
According to Heise you can easily port Real Basic programmes as applets, too.
http://www.heise.de/ct/inhalt/2012/13/176/
Who needs anything more?
(Aside: The title of the German article displays the state of linguistic decay in the IT area).
Posted in How to put "Stuxnet author" on your CV
Re: What do you call 'malware' working for the good guys?”
White-hattery?
Coupons, not cash
Give a replacement, not a refund is the trade dogma.
How much are a million likes on Facebook worth?
Re: Trinity powered Ultrthins will sell like hotcakes
I expect so, too. I'm interested in reasonable laptop performance, good battery life and price. Also, as my last laptop got fried by the graphics chip, low heat build-up is an issue. The thinness/lightness is not a key selling point for me, otherwise the HP dm1 would be good enough.
Strange units
@Howe - while you're at it, we need a rewrite of Grimms (replace ell with 50cm) and Stevenson (pieces of ten).
Maybe I shouldn't mention money, the Talers, Dubloons, Batzen, Kronen, Libra and of course Drachmas are well unified under the Euro, and that just made the real problem more transparent: that is too many politicians addressing the wrong problem too late.
