Posts by Graham Wilson

Re: +1 -- Seems Bill's now regretting he bailed Apple out.

"Aug. 6, 1997: Apple Rescued — by Microsoft

Microsoft rescues one-time and future nemesis Apple with a $150 million investment that breathes new life into a struggling Silicon Alley icon.

In a remarkable feat of negotiating legerdemain, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs got needed cash — in return for non-voting shares — and an assurance that Microsoft would support Office for the Mac for five years..." etc. etc. [Wired Mag excerpt]

[Sorry El Reg - couldn't find the El Reg headlines for that day but it'd have been similar.]

Most of the tech media had something similar to this headline on that day (I remember it as if it were yesterday).

A quick search of the net now show Bill to be overtly dismissive of Jobs' comments, it's worth a search.

Anyone who has ever been bushfire fighting knows it's the bit you don't kill off that'll flare up and get you. Presumably, Bill thought Apple was even too far gone for that.

A salient lesson, perhaps.

@irish donkey - - Right.

Right, but trying and being effective means lots of people complaining. To the average Joe, 'actor' and 'ACTA' may as well be the same thing. One has to admit that even to people who read these columns, this stuff is pretty boring.

Those who push such laws/treaties rely on this stuff being boring, even most politicians who vote such legislation in do so because their party tells them to vote that way. If you are a vested interest group and you are determined enough, it's pretty easy to get the law changed because of the apathy of the rest of us.

In the end, I think the only thing Anonymous will achieve is notoriety. 'Notoriety' may get everyone interested, if this doesn't happen then nothing will happen--other than that the ACTA mob will win easily.

P.S.: Even if one or two countries hold out, in the end they'll be blackmailed--threatened by the majority--by not getting some other matter through the EU. This is how bully-boy diplomacy works within the EU. Oh, and those countries who vote against measures, their diplomats don't get to go to in-group parties (simply, it's hard to be outside the group).

@irish donkey -- Sure write, but I reckon the problem's now too big.

The problem of politicians promising one thing then doing another has been around forever but for English-speakers, it's reached a highly refined art form since 1774 when--AFTER he was elected--politician Edmund Burke gave a speech to the electors of Bristol.where he defended representative government over just being an electors' delegate (to convey wishes to parliament).

This was the greatest cop-out speech of all time for politicians, it meant they didn't have to represent electors directly but they could represent their own views on national interest grounds which overrode local parochial interests. Fine in theory, but....

Today, what this translates into is that business, international interests and lobbyists take precedence over the concerns of electors. Effectively, your votes probably only amount to about a third of what they should.

Democracy isn't working well for the little person--we've seen this all to often when governments change as it's business as usual with, at best, a new paint job.

For English, speakers (UK, US, Aust., Canada, NZ etc.) it's been a case of too soft for too long, we've now lost the ability to protest effectively. But Eastern Europe has much more recent memories.

Frankly, in the current political climate, I don't think we've either the will or guts to fix it.

I hope I'm wrong.

@Anon. C -- Right, increasing antenna gain by 20dB is no mean feat (all else being equal).

On the other hand, if your antenna is buried underground or inside equipment, just putting out in free space may give you even more than 20dB improvement.

It's pseudo science, or he's discovered how to violate the laws of physics.

Unless real info and specs are made available, then we'd best put this one in the 'perpetual motion' bag!

@Lewis Page 1 -- If you really want drama that'll impress, then...

If you really want drama that'll impress and which is less fraught with ideology than one in which guns feature, then just run over the laptop with a forklift.

The results can be quite spectacular, especially if one takes some care to place the laptop on a slightly uneven surface (uneven surfaces will not only see the device squashed to smithereens but also the unevenness will often cause it to tear apart part into many pieces).

Same happens with hard disk drives. (I'm reliably informed this is a very quick way of discarding unwanted information when the taxman is knocking at the factory door.)

>;-)

@Vladimir Plouzhnikov -- Re loss of control.

"My reading of this whole situation is he feels helpless, having lost control of the situation."

Perhaps so, but as I've said in other posts to this story, the 'modern' ethos--brought about by the do-gooder brigade--stops parents disciplining their kids in a time-honoured traditional manner. Moreover, empowering kids to report on their parents to authority leaves parents even further disempowered.

It's little wonder parents have to resort to such unorthodox methods to cut through the politically correct minefield that's engulfed the English-speaking world--US, UK, Canada Australia etc.

Society ought to consider such incidents as a wake-up call that modern methods of discipline and training just aren't working and that we're producing a world of spoilt, undisciplined brats who'll have little true resilience during demanding times.

@bob 46 -- eBay would work now, methinks.

It's almost certain that defunct laptop would now be worth a minor fortune on eBay. Reckon he'd easily get his $130 back plus interest and more.

It'd send souvenir hunters into a frenzied bidding war.

@ACx -- Why are people worshiping that? Well, it's really very simple.

As I said here in another post, once kids could be physically disciplined with the strap. Moreover, then schools and parents regularly agreed on the same course of action.

In just a couple of generations, do-gooders and the misguided have put an end to that.

Kids and teenagers need effective discipline and all too often simply reasoning with them just doesn't work (whereas traditional discipline usually does). Of course, this undisciplined approach won't change until the country's gone down the gurgler and we see that those countries who've properly trained and disciplined their kids have shot ahead.

BTW, never let it be said that I'm advocating sadistic level of punishment, far from it. Unfortunately, in the past, there were sadists and others whose punishment was excessive. It was these bastards who allowed the do-gooder brigade to get their toes through the door.

@Fembot -- So no discipline in your world then?

"They're disrespectful little assholes, and you should keep this in mind before you have any. I don't see how her behavior is any worse than when I used to complain about my parents to my friends in school. It's normal teenage behavior and it doesn't lead to worse behavior, it's just a kids way of rebelling."

So no discipline in your world then?

Today, you can't discipline kids by belting them anymore, so what options are left?

When I was a kid and being truly obnoxious, I--along with many others of my generation--was well disciplined into shape with the rubber vacuum cleaner power cord doubled over.

By Jesus, it stung like buggery, but hell it was effective!

"Seriously teens have underdeveloped brains, sometimes I think these people don't realize that all children are just high functioning retards."

Very true! It's why teenagers shouldn't be allowed to join the military--it's a double whammy, they can't fully comprehend the ramifications of doing so and the bravado of youth convinces many they're Rambo (then often they don't learn otherwise until it's too late).

Nevertheless, it's also the reason why physical punishment works and has done so effectively over past centuries. Even young brains have little difficulty understanding and quickly learning that deliberately going against parental/school authority may result in considerable physical pain (and such learning is doubly reinforced when both schools and parents agree on the same course of action, as they once used to do).

@Joefish - - I reckon they're terrible images too.

I was an analog film photographer long before I went digital years ago--and I still use analog film too. Basically, I've no problem switching between the two systems and I've worked on imaging electronics and image sensors.

Many of those who've never owned an analog film camera don't realise how truly effective film is at integrating the limits of fine detail into smooth slightly blurred edges but which still maintains linearity within grayscale, similarly film grain (noise) characteristics had reached a high art long before the end of the film era. In fact, many books were written on these subjects.

Digital sensors are still quite brutal at the edges of linearity, suffice to say they don't handle the bottom and top few pixels of the grayscale well. Whilst there are superb digital cameras, the problem of limited dynamic range in sensors remains, and it's the subject of ongoing research.

In these Pentax Q images both compression and sensor noise are considerable. Compression noise often manifests as washed out transitions (artifacts) between light and dark areas, and when closely inspected one could be forgiven for thinking the transitions were hand drawn by pencil. It's particularly evident in the night image of St Paul's as well as in the Westminster Palace images in the transition between the building and sky.

For me, compression artifacts which limit an image's dynamic range are particularly objectionable (one often sees it in images in PDFs when magnified) and this Pentax Q has it in heaps, moreover, there's also lots of sensor (pixelated) noise too. This camera should have had a much better full-frame [35mm] sensor with a lower noise figure, better noise-reducing electronics and its stored image algorithm should not be compressing anywhere near the degree with which it is.

Frankly, this camera is a great disappointment if you're after good images; alternatively, if you're rich and just want the retro look for your mantelpiece then go for it.

@Anonymous C. -- Who?

Is the first cab off the rank's passenger an El Reg editor perhaps?

@JDX -- Re Linux

I've no problem with using Linux when it suits (and I often do).

Unfortunately, whether I like it or not, in the real world Windows dominates the O/S market and the majority of end users expect to use Windows.

Secondly, the Linux filing system is one place within Linux where there's little practical difference with Windows. Like Windows, Linux offers a hierarchical tree, directory and file structure but it too doesn't include the 'smarts' of a database filing system.

@JC_ -- Precisely!

"you might as well include the entire text of the book in the filename, too."

Precisely, and what's more it's done too. In many instances, all the data you need is also wrapped up within the filename. Sometimes this is of considerable advantage for managing information, at other times it's inappropriate or useless.

Even though this method is actually used, it's outside the box for most traditional Windows users because Windows doesn't support such a scheme, so users aren't familiar with it. If Windows used extents as delimiters and then had the facility to separately process information between the extents then such a scheme becomes useful. Similar schemes exist in other operating systems but not Windows.

Essentially, Windows cannot mirror what's been done in paper-based filing systems for centuries. What's more, the Windows filing system is so limited that it's not even a close match. These mismatches have considerable ergonomic implications for normal people (as opposed to programmers and El Reg readers), and they're causing huge problems as we continue to digitise the world's paper-based records.

For starters, in transliteration and hermeneutics there's little agreement with respect to structures, nomenclature etc., so where headings, indexes and such are truncated during digitisation, data is lost, or partially lost, or meanings changed. This why it's important to often keep paper-based records and their digital counterparts the same (mirrored). Microsoft has yet to offer even the vaguest of solutions for this problem.