Posts by IHateWearingATie
223 posts • joined Monday 2nd June 2008 10:29 GMT
Neutral?
I'd go for a 'sell' right now. Price seems over valued so time to take profit and wait to see what happens.
You could use the cash to buy some Apple shares - after the recent fall Tim C will be looking to pull some short term stunt to wow to gullible analysts and get a spike ahead of the iPhone 6 later in the year.
Or like me, you could stick your cash in a bank account because I'm rubbish at gambling on the markets.
Re: I like my aircraft to have metal, not glorified plastic
LUXURY!
When I was young, we had planes made of stone, with no engines and propellers that the passengers had to pedal themselves etc etc
Might be time to try Netflix / Lovefilm again
Tried them both at the beginning of last year on a free trial and the selection available was terrible, so I went back to watching whatever popped up on Sky (£21 a month for just the entertainment package)
However, may have another look soon and see if the Sky subscription is still needed...
BB10 - GET ON WITH IT...
... or you won't have a business left by the time you release it!
How many commentards didn't read the words 'Test Lab'?
I'm not a hardware techie, but it would seem obvious to me that, unless all of the IT shops that you deal with are 100% non-windows, your TEST LAB would need Windows in it at some point.
After all, TESTING would seem to be the point of a TEST LAB., whether or not you agree with the decision to use Windows or not.
Keep up the articles like this - while my professional sphere will never get this techy, its an interesting read all the same.
Words fail me.
One just hopes that Steely Neeily chucks the report in the bin.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing can acquire a life of its own within the EU if one or more commissioners picks it up and pushes it.
Full Disclosure - in my short time as a civil servant I had cause to say 'No' to the EU on a particular issue where powers were to be transferred (nothing to do with IT). It felt very good.
Did chuckle when I read ...
..."There are already early signs that Qualcomm is branding Snapdragon processors, as a kind of Intel Inside'. ", given the page when I viewed it was entirely surrounded by a Snapdragon advert.
Given the amount that Qualcomm advertise their Snapdragon processor on tech websites (I see it a lot on El Reg) I suspect it is a lot more that 'early signs', and more 'definite and absolute strategy'.
Re: Apple did not invent mobile computing, nor even make it real.
I'm no fanboi (having a personal iPhone, a work blackberry and an Android tablet at home), but credit should be given to Apple for pushing things to a new level in mobile computing.
Of course a whole raft of vendors made phones and other pocketable devices before the iPhone (I had a whole number, including the excellent N95), but what they were the first mass market mover, starting a step change in devices that has resulted in even my 65 year old Dad looking at mobile internet on my iPhone (not really specific to iPhone, could be any touchscreen 'smart' phone) and thinking that maybe he could do that. And this is from a guy who only consented to be taught how to send text messages 4 years ago.
The large touch screen phone and simple UI was a great innovation, that seemingly gave others permission to develop their own or release already completed but unreleased products.
Remember, innovation is not invention - the person who gets the credit is the one who makes it a huge success, not the one who invented it (see: Penicillin, vacuum cleaners, theory of evolution (well, partly), calculus etc)
Re: Upgrade to a more useful, sexier, *real* operating system. Linux
Games, games and more games.
Show me battlefield 3 and world of tanks ( or their equivalents in the future) on Linux and I'll move. Until then, Linux has no place on my main desktop.
I for one shall be leaving El Reg...
... unless they up their quotient of Paris Hilton stories.
That or change the icon.
I refer the commentards talking about corporate raiders...
... to the article by Tim Worstall recently:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/11/distie_consolidation/
The best thing for shareholders (the owners of the business after all) may be to milk the cash cow then shut it down, rather than gamble on R&D that may not pay off. You may argue that stifles innovation, but it may be that the shareholders would rather make that gamble in another company rather than this one.
In macro economic terms, as per the article, corporate raiders are the good guys :)
Re: on the other hand....
I was with you until you said 'Volvo'.
I thought owning a Volvo generally showed people you were a middle aged accountant, probably called Gerald?
As opposed to my car (a modified subaru impreza), which generally shows people I'm a semi-literate, fake tracksuit wearing, burberry loving peasant. Mostly right, especially the 'peasant' bit
If only left and right winger politicians had a clearer understanding of this...
... maybe they'd be a little more sensible in their policies.
Naturally the left's argument against shutting down firms relates to the welfare of its staff who are made redundant, even if they are clearly crap and need putting out of their misery (see British Leyland and gov support for Rover before it finally died)
The right loves the idea of bad companies being closed, but expects people to just sort themselves out , sometimes in impossible circumstances (see M Thatcher ref closure of coal mines)
$30,000 a day?
*waves bye bye to ethics, picks up a Learn Russian book and guide to being a script kiddie*
Re: Not in the UK I don't think.
Don't worry, me and my mates all chose to go PS3 and don't ownXboxes so my anecdote evens yours out.
I'd love to know what percentage of the sales figures are replacements - none of my mates still have their original PS3 having all been hit by the YLOD at one point or another.
Why didn't I get any fun letters like this...
... to reply to when I was a civil servant?
£50 are grey
... in my 2001 set.
Oh, and I'm banned from being the banker after one too many 'unathorised loans' by my family, my wife and her family as well.
Cheating, stealing and underhand deals are why its fun!
I'd go further...
.....and, as a user of both iOS and Android, argue that Jelly Bean is a better* tablet operating system than iOS.
*By better I mean that in my qualitative judgement (which is far superior to yours, fellow commentard :) ) I prefer Android as it allows more flexible use of the increased screen space with widgets etc, rather than sticking to the grid of icons and stil-not-great notifications system of iOS.
Growth...
There does seem to be a serious lack of understanding within the general public (of course I'm not counting us commentards amongst the the hoi polloi) on some of the basic concepts of economics, with growth a particular issue.
I would take issues with a couple of things in the article though. One of the paras seems the paras seems to suggest that a lack of regulation is allowing developing economies to better make use of new inventions which has caused their fantastic rates of growth when in most cases it is the cost of established tech, like mobile phones, reducing significantly due to the maturity in developed economies - that and remarkably better education in places like Brazil and China over the last 20 or so years. Its pretty easy to get the rates of growth they have been having when you turn tens of millions of uneducated subsistence farmers in to skilled and semi skilled workers.
Also, as others have said, I'm not sure that I recognise your description of micro vs macro . it seems to be a bit confused compared to my economics modules at uni. I see what you're saying about individual structures typically classed as micro economics causing long term structural harm, but micro isn't just those things, as well as macro not just being medium and short term.
Oh, and quoting Keynes? Don't they expel you from the Adam Smith institute for that?
Re: "ofcom was touting how its pricing methods would ensure spectrum is well utilised"
The Ofcom mantra is based on the belief that whomever offers the most money will make the most economically efficient use of it, as they will want to maximise their profit. Spectrum owners are generally free to licence and resell their holdings, so the idea is that the highest bidder has the greatest incentive to make the spectrum holding work for it.
Unfortunately, the theory doesn't always hold true, for example in the case of large companies using their holdings to create a monopoly and raise barriers for new entrants.
Re: inside information ??
Must be the first time anyone has ever welcomed dealing with BT....anyway...
You don't need inside info to make the assertions Bill Ray has - the scenario he sets out sounds likely to me given the publicly available information . I'd be surprised if BT want to get back into the mobile game through the spectrum auction, given the large capital programme of fixed line broadband upgrades they have set out for themselves for the next few years.
I could imagine them buying a cheaper chunk to use on fixed wireless as a fixed line alternative though (in the 2.6 rather than 800 range).
Re: Yet Still!
Interestingly they are a bit of both (a) and (b), the very epitome of the 'squeezed middle'.
Re: But good code...
So right
My first role was coding C and C++ on a legacy mainframe and I remember the joy of looking at the flow and symmetry of a carefully crafted and well commented code module.
Other people's of course. Mine were more like a toddler's scribble than a renaissance masterpiece!
From what I remember...
... Herefordshire is very sparsely populated in some areas, and has a higher than usual proportion of directly connected lines (i.e. no cabinet). One of the more challenging areas of England.
Grey imports...
How do the figures stack up if all of the grey imports sold over the last few months are included?
Re: Evans Business Park, York
The OP mentioned that it was only a couple of miles from York town centre, so was assuming the £20k would be mostly the ECC (excess constuction charge) that Openreach might apply to extend the cabling that is bound to be around there if it is only a couple of miles from the town centre (don't know York, was going on what the OP said)
Of course on top of that you'd have service charges etc, but my post was about getting service to the site, not then connecting all the businesses up and paying their service charges (they would be responsible for them).
Re: Evans Business Park, York
Surely the owners of the business park should have sorted that themselves ages ago? I think the York exchange is a WBC one, and it can't cost more than £20k to get a nice fibre cable and associated kit to provide a decent service to their customers (i.e. the businesses paying them rent in the business park).
If not, then why do businesses choose to site themselves in the business park at all?
Re: At least thats a valid target
I'd be very surprised if BT was getting public money to compete on a door to doo basis. The EU (whose permission BDUK has recently got) have a concept of Black, Grey and White areas, with (let me get this right) Black areas disallowed as there are already services (such as virgin). BDUK and the EU would not have approved a plan that included Black (or even Grey) areas within the subsidy plan. I suspect they are only subsidising areas that can't get Virgin , although these may be very close to areas that can.
If nothing else its a huge waste of money by the council, as in the bidding process they would have defined the areas for the bidders to upgrade and should have exluced premises that can get Virgin. In cases where some premises connected to a cabinet can get Virgin and some cannot, there may be some overlap or those premises would be excluded - assume it would be on case by case basis (e.g. percentage that could / could not get Virgin).
Re: Is it just a Monday thing...
"And that's the crux, because technically and scientifically you do. not. need. "lots of people" to do genetic typing of Disease X."
Not sure that is correct.
My understanding (to be fair, limited, as I'm not a geneticist) is that you do need a large group of people due to the difficulty of isolating genetic from epigenetic from environmental factors. it's not enough to get a group of, say 10 pancreatic cancer patients with varying responses to a particular treatment, sequence their genes and be able to say "AHA - I see the pattern".
A large group is needed to be able to spot subtle patterns - remember that there are very few cases where a single gene is responsible for a disease. Even with something like breast cancer, where there is a single trait that significantly enhances the risk. Having that trait doesn't mean that you definitely will get breast cancer - so what are the other factors? Maybe there is a subtle interplay of environmental factors that influence the expression of a large group of genes (epigenetics) that could be highlighted. You'll only find that with a large group of patients that do have the disease (and very very crucially) DON'T have the disease but do have some or all of the genes and environmental conditions.
Re: Is it just a Monday thing...
Three things that have not a jot to do with an NHS held database of a 100,000 volunteer samples.
The NHS already hold significant information about you that is computerised, and anonymised & sold to medical researchers. Adding DNA isn't that much extra to me.
Oh, and my wife would probably characterise my emotional range as closer to a ladle, or maybe a large spatula.
Is it just a Monday thing...
... or are there more paranoid privacy commentards around today?
Genetic factor led treatment is probably going to bring about the next really big advance in medicine, which means if you want to benefit (for example, get a personalised cocktail of prostate cancer drugs proscribed) you're going to have to have your DNA sequenced and stored.
And to develop the technology, lots and lots and lots of people will need their DNA sequenced and put into a database for researchers to work on.
You have to trust someone, sometime.
Storage too small for us cheapskates...
... with limited bandwidth in our bundles. Cloud services (such as spotify) are fine, but my paltry 500Mb a month gets eaten pretty quickly (it is however a very cheap bundle)
With a decent amount of music, apps, a couple of Peppa Pig videos for the kids and a bunch of photos I'm already over 16Gb.
Shame really - I was hoping to replace my iPhone with one of these at some point :(
No one ever got fired for choosing to stick with Oracle...
...but they have been fired for screwing up a move between vendors.
If it were me, it'd have to be *a lot* cheaper to risk my career over!
Best ever?
Well on Windows it'd be difficult to be much worse. I've used iTunes for a while in windows and its a hateful piece of crap - buggy, inconsistent and continually freezing and crashing. Apple have never seemed to properly fix the freezes on the windows version; here's hoping version 11 is the one.
Re: 2015?
Assume end of, although I seem to remember 2015 being mentioned originally as it was the end of the parliament...
Well done chaps..
... fascinating article.
More of this type of thing please
Posted in SPEARS fired up for explosive climax
Get on with it!
While I very much enjoy the detailed articles, will you get on and launch the bloody thing!
Typing this in front of my laptop...
... I can see how that might be useful in meetings, presentations etc. A quick swipe to the screen may be more convenient than a mouse pad (or my favourite, the Lenovo style nipple - track pads are evil) or mouse button click when it is perched on your lap
Posted in Nokia HERE iOS maps app review
How do Nokia make any money out of releasing this for iOS
In the past, their map app has been one of the reasons they touted to buy their phones.
The only problem with Bong now...
... is that is has strayed a little too far into the obviously satirical.
I miss the commentards who didn't understand this is a piss-take column...
Posted in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 game review
You forgot to mention...
... the continual releasing of over priced map packs.
I like playing COD online with a group of mates, but it is getting a little tired and this version doesn't seem to address that
Bizarre article written in a bubble
I'm usually a fan of Matt's articles, but this one seems to have been written in a weird bubble where facebook and twitter matter to people's work.
In the real world, the only people who need this info are in the press office / media team. The other 95% of the work force have NO need for facebook/twitter/other social media stuff for their work.
Honestly, what weird bubble was this written in?
There are Knowledge Management issues within even medium sized organisations on how employees generate, share and find information, but I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with social media (though I accept that technical solutions and approaches for one may be applicable to the other).
The first rule of the black list...
.... YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE BLACK LIST
Blood amateurs.
I obsessively read Battle..
... and had every comic except the one with the last episode of Charley's war in. Never did find out how that finished...
Sort the troll icon
... it's rubbish. Needs to be far more troll-like (take inspiration from The Hobbit)
Average is meaningless...
... as they have been on a variety of full time, part time and fixed term contracts. And at different levels of seniority.
As for using consultants, you don't expect the ministry of fun to have a ready pool of commercial & technical experts to work on a project like this do you?
Remember Mike Kiley (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/03/whistleblower-sacked-bt-broadband) was one of the consultants... El Reg commentards had nice things to say about him.
Not interested in the climate change topic...
... but very interested in the abuse of the FOI legislation. Does the tribunal and Information Commissioner have some kind of BBC blind spot? There's usually pretty good at holding other areas of the public sector to task over a strict interpretation of the Act.
Very disappointed that the BBC Trust also hasn't weighed in on this - of course the managers at the beeb will be tempted to try not to disclose things that may be awkward for them (had to deal with the odd awkward FOI request when working in central government myself), but that is the point of the IC and Tribunal - to stop them taking the piss.
Yes, yes, yes,
.... but what FPS will I get on Battlefield 3?
You've not met anyone from CESG have you...
... they've been genetically altered to be incapable of saying 'Yes' to anything.
The best you'll ever get is "well, I won't set the dogs on you just yet if you choose to store or transmit your sensitive electronic information in that way."
To get this grudging statement on iOS6 means that they've repeatedly put it through the penetration test wringer and were mightily disappointed that it didn't fail for the level of impact (i.e. degree of difficulty of penetration) they've specified.
Posted in Ten gaming headsets
PX5
They have a button that switches between PS3 and Xbox mode. When you switch them on they handily tell you which mode they're in as well.
