Posts by Britt Johnston

like the content, but...

productise - trad. GB spelling, to boot - is a tough word to journalize.

aye of customer

Does this cloud thing upload several of my flat tables, match key columns with point and click, and assemble the data in a consolidated and more useful way?

You might have hit on a killer app for SAAS - customers won't care so much about how it works. There could even be humans coordinating the automatons in the background.

unintentionable?

What is ElReg's term for collateral damage on the internet?

spreading the cost

<The result is that IT and the business often compromise and adopt an average charge per user that can bear little resemblance to reality as different types of users have wildly divergent usage patterns.>

It is the heavy users who are increasing your system's value above that of scrap iron. There is a lot to be said for such a subsidy, beyond its simplicity. I've done something similar in the past when charging back on data use while subsidising data entry.

Great name

<Commissioner of Irish Lights>

I'd work for them at 1$ a year, given a title like that.

Payment by results

Information is such a big area, it needs all the commissioners it can get: How about?

- an SMS commissioner, who looks into abuses of less than 140 characters

- the electrical information commissioner, who looks at transmission over power lines

- one for official secrets abuse, who looks into espionage, but does not publish any results

- the freedom of info man, to help public officials redefine their information to be either outside public domains, or valuable and therefore covered under the freedom to charge laws.

But wait! We seem to have people responsible for all these problems - it's just the results that are missing.

staying practical

Could try sub-letting cym.ru from www.eurodns.com/Domaneregistrierung for a handful of Euros.

Vodafone?

"Hello, this is a message from your toaster, we're all out of sliced bread. Warning: Because your GPS informs you are on a carribean beach, the roaming charges for this call will be <£100 "

status symbol life cycles

True status is accompanied by underpowered modules providing a small part of the functionality you might rationally expect: in the 50's the car, 60's the record player, in the 80's PCs, in the 90s laptops. Once they are readily produced, they lose their value as a status symbol. The mobile phone may be last decade's weak link, the next one might be a tablet, ... or health insurance.

Isaac Newton..

..was an alchemist, a politician (MP) and civil servant cum central banker (lord of the mint).

These unsavory occupations just give boffinry a bad name

best, not most moral

Meissen copied china, bringing the technology to Europe. There were countless European knock-offs, but the finish line came when the chinese started selling copies of Meissen wares.

Google has so much room for improvement that Bing can't become the best by copying it. Maybe they could do a deal with Baidu?

IT patent swamp drain

As mentioned in a few posts, the best fit to continuous innovation was HP. Their new manager is announcing an innovation drive. It will be interesting to see if they can find anyone with the engineering and project skills to change the world - their last effort I found interesting was writescribe on disks.

But all innovation is >90% copying - the IT patent swamp needs draining first. It seems the main reason for purchasing companies today is not new ideas, but old patents.

cloud backup = rain recovery

It is easy to get wet, but difficult to predict or control.

Icon = recovery button

logical elimination

< Disk-based backup also entirely eliminated the problem of unreliable tape media. >

... and replaced it with unreliable disks?

biggest rip-off?

Last month I saw a BBC Classic music mag, nominally £4.50, on sale for CHF 22.50 = £15. If I had bought 3 in England, I could have paid for the flight, but I didn't want to face that bad weather.

Seriously though, you are right about the internet exposing price differentials. Both sides are not good Europeans, and keep goods out with Customs terror. (A special hello to the British officers who wanted £60 for a box of chocolates we sent our daughter last Christmas.) Rumors are that this will be lifted between the Swiss and Europe later in 2011.

quick is another alternative

There may not be a permanent lucrative future in a commodity market, but in the pharmaceuticals area the generics are doing fine at present.

In the IT space, CA comes to mind.

times change

This was all true before there were computers (and after telephones). What has changed is the [REG?] public sensibility to records policy, potential misuse, and ability to correct wrong or disputed information - probably as a reaction to Labour and Civil Service insensitivity.

It sounds like a worthy pilot case to bring up to date - it is clearly of value, should be easy to realign, and there are currently no other teacups with storms in.

smart or better?

wow, when we pay, we can get ads on our credit cards for the special offers on badgers paws on the 4th floor of the shop we are in!

fun times

for the first time in a while (?) AMD and Intel are diverging, over their solutions to the energy-wasteful and costly GPU add-ons in laptops. Both will bring improvements over today's machines, and I look forward to my share of amazing computing experiences.

soon, one in every home?

I've always thought (well, since 1985) that low-voltage DC output should be part of domestic rewiring and new house plans. If we have a micro-USB on each socket in 2025, what extra goodies would be possible?

The last mile

One other thing that makes Windows essential are the stack of hardware drivers. However, if manufacturers can hook up printers, scanners, external drives, USB sticks etc to my smartphone, then I'm ready to drop Windows.

True, but...

What should the British Government do about foreign companies copying? I can't imagine them wanting to prosecute on behalf of British industry. That would be an even quicker route to national bankrupcy than supporting bankers.

I had a friend who patented a squash referee's chair, which had legs long enough to place it around the court entrance. Predictably, he spent more maintaining the patents than he made from sales. Patents are not intended to make money for small companies.

The IT patent field is a particular mess, which additionally favours rich large companies. Here, SMEs aim should be to protect themselves from gratuitous legal attacks, by publishing their inventions (e.g. open source), or by working in secret (e.g. use compiled code). These methods cost nothing.

cheap electricity: nice while it lasts

Meanwhile, engineers are working on a way to count wheel rotations, in order to back-charge the fuel taxes you saved.