@Micky 1

...you can create as many straw men as you like, but my worry was that we suck at major contracts (which is why I said "any major UK contract"). Almost without exception, every major contract any modern UK government has tried has gone massively over-budget and been a total shambles.

Individual components are all well and good, but when they are put together by monkeys you get garbage like our two new carriers (one to be moth-balled, one to barely carry and planes, budget through the roof and they're not even nuclear!). Or Failtrack. Or the Metro Line. Or....

To give you straw-man some actual body; at a consumer level, the last semi-decent UK product I can think of was the Dyson Vacuum cleaner - but that's now made in China.

@Micky 1

Hovercraft was invented here - but not pursued. Taken up by the USA and other nations. Killed by the suits (who I am railing against)

EuroFighter - an Europe-wide project, over-priced and crap. We are spending billions on something that can't even do ground-attack without significant modifications (many will sit mothballed an unused). We would have been better off with a clutch of F16s and keeping Harrier going.

Jet Engine - yup, 60 odd years ago. But then that was one team, so a small project not a big contract managed by suits. And when the suits saw it, they wanted to cancel it.

Concord - glory of the 70s.

The UK does do some good engineering, but we are run buy morons. Nimrod, the new carriers, our trains, EuroFighter, Snatch Landrovers, various NHS projects. And thus we suck balls at big contracts.

Question

I thought (and I may be wrong) that publishing in UK terms of the web was interpreted as the act of seeing it in one's browser (the bits get jiggered around and "published" to the screen).

If that is true, does it mean that the mere act of viewing a foreign site that says "X bunga-bunga avec Y" when in the UK is a breach of the super-injunction?

Of course, there is an easier option to all this; keep yer snake in yer pants.

Maybe they would

Why don't we ask Andrew Marr?

@AC

"If they are going to have backwards compatibility on an ARM chip then the ARM chip will have to emulate an x86 chip to run it."

Really? I'm no Comp.Sci. grad, but surely it would be up to the kernel to translate whatever calls were coming through into what the CPU can deal with and back again? Or if not the kernel, then the virtual machine that is translating the byte-code.

And if something like that is not going on - how the heck does Linux manage to support AMD and Intel at the exact same time?

Even then, emulation/virtualisation would allow you to isolate the executing code from the underlying hardware.

Almost

They're the ones still use in the Enterprise. Y'know, the folks who still use IE6 because they got systems coded to proprietary standards that can't be easily upgraded/migrated.

To be fair...

...MS has been pretty good at maintaining backwards compatibility. Have you seen the video going from Windows 1 to Windows 7? I thought it was pretty amazing to be honest.

I'm pretty sure that one could not do that with OS X and as for any given Linux distro I don't think it would work either (downloading source and re-compiling is cheating. :-P)

@RAMChYLD

So a PS3 can't be used without a 'net connection? Glad I didn't go through with buying one a month or two ago! I was planning to use it as a Blu-Ray player, maybe to stream content off my home network and to maybe play games.

But it if needs an Internet connection to do that - forget it.

@pitagora

If the platform changes its model too much and breaks plugins too often then users will leave as its unstable and developers will quit it as there is too much re-work. If that happens, then the platform will die. Simple.

If what people are saying here is true, then Mozilla and Firefox should be dying. It does not seem like they are.

If one is using a piece of software that *IS* essential, then one should be paying for support. And if not then, to be blunt, one is also part of the problem.

From my experience, the only add-on to not work is TinyURL Creator. Hardly essential. But that is just my experience.

@Sentient

I don't think its politics to be deeply concerned about the possibility of MS patent-bombs lurking in the Linux eco-sphere.

The question is, what itch is Mono trying to scratch, why were none of the existing technologies deemed viable and what can be done to improve them?

Yes

There's Banshee, the default music player in Ubuntu.

@NoneSuch

Have you asked the devs of the plug-ins to make them compatible?

Have you offered to sponsor the work?

@AC

Buy bike armour. Well insulated, waterproof and you'll need it when some BMW/Volve driving ass-hat smashes into you. Cost to be fully suited and booted in something half-decent £500-£1,000.

Sort of

I am sick and tired of El Reg only discussing Azure, when the likes of OpenStack, EC2 et al are tearing MS a new one.

Cloud is a bit like REST, it's an architectural idea and it probably won't scratch all your itches. But to ignore it is a bit naive.

Also, markteers should be taken into a small room by the techs and have the true meaning of "cloud" beaten into them.

Yup

If it was sold at the "true" price (which would have been about £213). Oh wait, tax. Make that about £256. Still pricey, but easier to swallow. But no, same deal as always. Rip-off the Brits.

There is a simple answer - don't buy.

I know the units in question

With 4gb RAM and a HDD to match, they will even manage virtualisation. half-Life etc will also run (and that was also on Ubuntu 10.10). The only problem is these units have a reputation for blowing capacitors.

And looking at the site...

...only a £3 diff between Ubuntu and Windows? Really? Sod the PC, where can I get Windows 7 and Office for £3?

Something stinks.

Ah

I did eventually find the Remploy Store on eBay, just a few crappy Dells really. That they're ones known to have dodgy capacitors.

Skype on Linux...

...was never really a big project from Skype. You can be sure that MS will kill it stone-dead to ensure that the only real option is MS-centric

Err...

...Conan was Schwarzenegger. "Copland" was good, "Rocky I" too.

@Giles

MS already have an alternative, OCS. It is one of the few things MS has managed to do right (although only allowing you to store conversation in Outlook is a PITA). Want multi-party video conferencing? Done. You do need to run a server though.

I agree - this is just about buying the user base.

Easy solution

Change the law to make you liable for what happens on your network.

Not saying that's a nice thing to happen, just saying it's something that could happen.

@Marvin

WTF? I did learn how an engine actually works when driving, it gave you an understanding of the noises, why gear changes were important, why oil is important. It also gave you knowledge of when to break the rules (e.g. pulling away in second).

You to not need a PhD in electronics to run a PC, but knowing enough to know that increasing your ram to 32gb with one shitty HDD and a weak controller isn't going to speed things up *IS* important.

And as for cars, it is getting harder but many parts are still user-replaceable. I have often thought that road-side maintenance should be taken into the type approval e.g. "It my be possible to change any bulb on the vehicle within 10 minutes and without requiring tools."

@AC

Yeah....sure you are. Sure.

Apart from...

...the fact the Windows will apparently run on ARM too.

So not only will users get low-power and portability, but also the rich experience of *the* standard environment.

Pffffttt............giggles

I have found...

...Indesit to be very good (just don't buy the cheapo models). Miele do have a good rep., as do Bosch.

Has already happened...

...Boston area I think.

So why the downvote?