oracle is safe.

Until Google can make make a reliable high performance db which you can run on your own hardware l think Larry can keep counting his income in billions.

Yes Google has big table, but it only runs in Googles data centre and is not acid.

If you own a mobile phone you probably update an Oracle database about 500 times a day. Everytime you change base stations you will update at least three databases and probably as many as ten. Most telcos use Oracle for this because its fast and doesn't lose data.

Re: beyond a joke

Actually its the other way around. A pretty decent piece of software running on a county, plasticky poorly build lump of hardware.

I was thinking of buying a 920 until I picked one up. Overweight and flimsy at the same time -- quite an achievement.

Some one needs to explain to Nokia that one really good phone is better than a range of 50 c*** phones.

Re: One key difference between 8 and Vista

There ate several start button add ons, and I would suggest its the first thing to install after you hook up to the internet.

The other real pain is that everything that used to be a neat sub menu entry is now an effing great tile. I mean a simple install of gvim gets you six new totally useless tiles on the start screen.

Still on a touch screen the new UI makes a lot of sense. Time will tell whether having one OS for itsbitsy phones and mega workstations is inspired or merely "brave'.

Re: It's not even locked in really

It ain't necessarily so.

You can copy your books to and from a pc and on to other devices. You just need your amazon account to unlock it.

DRM done right, not as annoyingly restrictive as Apple , and, gives reasonable protection to the copyright holders.

Re: Sales??

Probable muted by android every helpful spelling munger.

Re: Resizeable/groupable tiles - meh

On my xp box I have 382 files in 144 folders. How any serious user could migrate to windows 8 without a decent start menu is a sign of micrisoft's insanity

As it is I have to waste time removing useless tiles every time I install anything on my touchy feel slab.

why xp is ubiquitous

Its the same price as Linux.1$ on a cd 2$ on a dvd.

Not so much Windows 7, as the activation is riskier, and, no Vista because even for 1$ nobody wants it.

Also Asian language support in xp is superb, while Linux is just OK.

Re: The class still exists

So all those. People state king shelves in Telcos, tarmacing the roads, installing your cabling etc are just an annoying illusion.

Re: Fossil fuel costs us more than we think.

And where do you suppose all those kilowatt so inefficiently stored in the battery were generated?

Unless you live in France it Switzerland they were most likely generated using coal or gas.

Re: Argh!

You can rent a reasonably powerfully VPS for as little as 12 quid a month, and load it with the software of your choice.

It probably has a noisy fan, but as its in a sub basement in another city this should not bother 'we indoors. An added advantage is there are no cables for your significant other to trip over. It's so unfau when you get an ear bashing when they just crashed your system.

Re: Dear USA: You make your laws; we'll make ours.

I already did. As far as I know the only item I own which was made in the USA is the Intel chip inside the Chinese laptop I. Bought three years ago.

You Americans make nothing the rest of the world wants.

The core skill is branding and marketing third world manufactured goods. These would fall outside any trade embargo. Worse if the EU got really nasty it could just stop enforcing intellectual property rights for US based companies.

kodak print center?

Didn't Kodak have n thousand franchisees doing exactly this? I know they started out with Ian and chips. But the last one I used offered wireless and web upload as options.

Re: He is right.

Well firstly it doesn't come with a manual and the gestures are supposed to be intuitive -- so fail 1 for MS.

Secondly it wasn't him who had the problem -- but nearly all of his 20 guinea pigs (which included some very experienced techies) who had the problem -- he was merely observing their experience.

I will avoid the UI formerly known as Metro for as long as I can, which shouldn't be too hard as the Firms PC is still running XP, and, I use UBUNTU for preference.

Also for anyone put of by the UBUNTU UNITY interface, my advice is stick with it for a couple of weeks and you won't even miss gnome.

Re: The good old days...

If the article is right (15 seconds for a divide) then it was running at 0.066666 FLOPS, 6.6666 microFLOPS or 6.6666666666666666666666666666667e-14 petaFlops .

Re: I remember ...

You rise in consulting and management by telling the boss/customer what they want to here.

Eventually this results in an echo chamber where only good news and predictions bright sunny futures are heard. Plus a smattering of "lets reduce headcount" so they can feel macho as well as brilliant.

This all works splendidly until the innocent lad asks why the emperor is naked, or, the shareholders ask to see the money.

Anyway serves the septics right, They unload there Sub-Prime mortgages on our banks, we unload our super-hyped startup on them.

Re: Notes is great just not at email

Webster has nothing to do with notes and never has.

Websphere started of as a COBRA broker called CBseries which had a java skin tacked on.

Thankfully the COBRA components have more or less disappeared under the mass of JEE.

Re: Brits love it?

I think you are suffering from some delusion if you think this is a purely British problem. Nearly all EU countries have a Curry equivalent with a local near monopoly on consumer electronics.(FNAC,MediaMarkt etc.).

Re: Lucas.....

Joseh Lucas , prince of darkness.

Re: Users were not so much won over to new versions

I never came across any one who was won over by Vista. Perhaps MS should stick to two letter acronyms like NT or XT which seem to work for them.

Re: "Could it be simply because they don't know Lua?"

Not really even if you have never seen piece of lua code before, the syntax is so beautifully clear and simple any half skilled programmer could work out what was going on.

Re: Hmmm

Amazon actively supports lone. Authors and has a helpful easy to use system to allow authors to upload their books and sell them for whatever price they choose, including free.