Posts by Charlie Clark
1780 posts • joined Monday 16th April 2007 14:57 GMT
Page:
Re: I wonder if the mole has a financial stake in the success of the IPO?
Don't look now because you might see your bank and pension fund in the queue desperate to hand over *your* money on this *sure* thing.
Posted in Vote now for the worst movie NEVER made
Casting error
For me it's got to be Diana in 3D but it looks like someone made an error in the casting: Gary Oldman would be struggle in the role of the Duke of Edinburgh. Surely the role made in heaven for Tommy Weisau?
Re: intel builds a mean fab
Fabless is a great division both of labour and reward: licensees know that while ARM has a good margin it is delivering a good product at a fair price and gives them the chance to make chips for customers at a profit as opposed to Intel's winner takes all model, as PC makers know only too well. Should point out that AMD is no longer a chip maker - it outsourced that to Global Foundries and you missed TSMC from your list.
Nevertheless, at the same time as the commodification of chip design has significantly reduced the prices for such chips, the prices for the new processes and equipment sill continue to rise and there are fewer and fewer companies able to produce the kit (lithography, etc.) necessary to build the fantastically complex designs. It is a paradox that Intel's prowess in this area is driving up costs at the same time as chip costs are falling. Intel has made great progress even with the Atom. Reports suggest that the new phone chip really does come close to the TDP of comparable ARM designs and it has more oomph. But it costs a lot more to make and to put in a phone.
Come on Apple
And stop fucking hiding my folders if I have chosen to display them!
chflags nohidden ~/Library/
Re: During 3 full days in France this weekend...
1) Nobody was forced to bid
2) Damage was limited as the costs incurred could and were offset against tax
No wonder they have problems with the routing
The Recyclebank website has geolocated me to America! I guess it's only the other side of the atlantic so and easy mistake to make.
Re: Google Calling the Kettle Black
Opera Mobile is my default but Maxthon is surprisingly good.
Re: This is entirely different
It's one hell of a precedent and it applies to the Windows operating system, Microsoft would have the burden of proof to demonstrate otherwise. This move has preliminary injunction written all over it if they really go ahead with it. However, I think it's probably just a strawman from MS.
Posted in WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo
Re: No Ethernet or USB 3 ???
Several manufacturers including Western Digital produce Mac-specific versions of their products usually with a distinctive appearance and bundled software and the favoured interface and charge a premium for them. I have one with a FW-800 and USB 2 connection and while the bundled software is toss, it works great with Time Machine: high transfer rates and little impact on the CPU.
Re: Sounds Like...
Should be, but isn't it's just plain ".gov". I do hope they can adopt ".usa" to make up for this. ".us" is the TLD but "USA" is what the citizens are used to shouting.
Re: will this mean
You should check up on your internet history before spouting such shit. DARPA paid for the development of the internet and, as such, got first dibs on the DNS when it was developed: .edu, .gov, .mil, and .com were reserved for US use when they were developed with everyone else supposed to use their country's TLD. Only ICANN and its precursors saw the financial advantage in selling to everyone on a first come, first served basis and the .us domain was effectively "surplus to requirements". Personally, I reckon that ".usa" would get the Yanks back on track.
Posted in Jolly rogered
Bring back Brian Redhead
and the time when the Today programme used to be worth listening to it because researchers had been paid to prepare topics. Now it's just sham nowtrage. Pity for John Humphrys who has elsewhere demonstrated that he is a reasonable journalist. When I am in England I find the only news programme I can bear is Channel 4 News which is now almost anachronistic in its attention to detail and attempts to let people speak.
Back to the whole kids and sexuality and I'm reminded by this misguided resurgence of Victorian mores by something J.K. Rowling said about a letter she received about one of the later Harry Potter books from an older woman concerned by the children going through puberty as they get older. The woman was quite obviously projecting a mythical "water baby" image of children who are supposed magically transform from being little darlings into responsible adults with families. Really quite sad if you think about it: Miss Havisham writ large.
It is precisely this repression of sexuality which causes confusion in children and adolescents whose bodies are being bombarded with hormones. Needless to say Ms Rowling didn't take the woman's advice and continued to make piles of money by playing, admittedly timidly, to the imaginations of her readership. Pity we never got to read the graffiti on the walls of the toilets!
Posted in Jolly rogered
Re: "Dick recognition software, perhaps?"
Really? That's my weekend sorted then. Just off to the chemists for some hand cream.
Posted in Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S III
Re: Apple aren't a manufacturer and rely heavily on Samsung
Samsung and others, notably Foxconn. And, while Sony is still struggling in many departments I think you have a point that Apple's "asset-light" strategy carries its own risks. Apple designs, commissions and oversees the production of fantastic hardware and develops great software for it. But it is also dependent upon the market producing sufficient volume of tweaked commodity items (CPU, memory, screens, etc.). While that volume gives it pricing power - it has been able to produce phones for the same cost as other manufacturers but sell them at a higher margin - it can create resentment in the suppliers, though it would false be and disingenuous to think of Apple simply as a premium vendor of other people's kit.
Samsung, while seemingly happy enough for the last few years to make Apple's CPU and memory chips, it has at the same time been beefing up not only its production capacity but also R&D. Apple has so far managed to be there or thereabouts with technology: the GPUs in the I-phones are significantly better than the compettion, leading to smoother transitions, a slicker and "better" user experience. Suddenly Samsung appears with technology that Apple cannot currently match - quad-core CPUs and enormous OLED screens. Seeing as the G series SII actually contains CPUs from Texas Instruments it's reasonable to speculate that all Samsung's capacity has been given over to the new I-phone and more importantly the new Exynos. While Apple has been very good at convincing the market that the high resolution LCD screen is something special, good AMOLED screens are simply jaw-droppers because of the eye's preference for contrast and colour gamut over resolution.
Beyond the hardware I think the UX advances are possibly even more notable. They show the same kind of thoughtfulness and attention to detail that has so long been a hallmark of Apple's products. And being first to market in these litigious times gives it a considerable advantage,
re: Depending on battery life...
It's a chuffing huge battery. And the new ARM cores are more efficient than the old ones. Obviously running full-screen videos on it will still drain it. As that's not something I do a lot it should suit me fine.
It's my new precious.
Re: Well done...
If they can cut users down to tech-savvy geeks rather than the mainstream, that's a huge achievement for their purposes.
No, that would involve poisoning DNS and/or packet routing and would be a major step towards censorship and the end of the internet or do we all live in China now?
re. Euro xfer rate
Your post doesn't make sense.
FWIW transfer charges within the SEPA (Single European Payment Area) are the same for cross-border as they are for domestic.
Re: It doesn't fix the basic problem..
They make more money selling credit-card insurance than they do through fraud.
Recently. in America I noticed a few people had written "ask for id" on the signature strip. Staff never blinked so I assume they're used to it. I thought it was a pragmatic approach to the problem.
Re: I have a better idea
Does sound a lot like Solaris' resource management, doesn't it?
Posted in America, China go ape for tablets
Getting the numbers right
Europe has more than double the population of the US
I think that comes as quite a shock to statisticians around the globe. 150 %, if you use EFTA + the Balkans as a base, maybe but certainly not at purchasing power parity.
From the horse's mouth
The story's a couple of weeks old:
http://www.tz-online.de/aktuelles/muenchen/sex-sklave-dieter-fuenf-stunden-gefangen-2277597.html (in Jorman of course but includes the name of the pub where she picked the guy up).
What do you do in such a situation? In general, men are able to overpower women but lamp her if you attempt to escape...
Re: Sadly, Wirth's Law will keep on going
It seems to have escaped your notice how much work has been done on compilers in the last few years which do an increasingly good job of removing many of the inefficiencies. That and the ability to shift tasks to hardware implementations (encryption, signal processing, video compression and decompression).
Re: They are already working on Silicon replacements
Yes, the materials and production processes will probably change. The economics of chip development have changed significantly in the last ten years due to the cost of making the machines that make the chips. There are fewer suppliers of the lithography machines than there were ten years ago which is driving up the cost of each new generation. At the same time even Intel's margins are starting to come under pressure as it's designer hardware struggles to differentiate itself from the commodity ARM clones.
The number of companies entering the nano-technology and additive manufacturing to address some of the same problems is increasing following the. If they can get it right printed OLED screens may be the first children of this revolution.
Worth noting that IBM and Samsung may well be right in not having an asset-light strategy in this area.
Re: If IBM acquired Sun instead of Oracle....
IBM likes showdowns as much as the next but it has become extremely adept at that which Oracle is aiming for: leveraging hardware, software and services of each other. That it has a long history of co-operation with open source from releasing its own software as open source (Apache, Postfix, etc.) to contributing actively to existing projects (most notably Linux and Java and OpenOffice), shouldn't distract from the fact that if IBM seems a $ 6 billion opportunity it will go for it. However, such lawsuits can adversely affect customer relationships. It may have been in weighing up the two - costs and benefits of litigation versus affect on sales - that decided IBM against the purchase of another hardware division with uncertain software licensing business attached.
Re: so if APIs are copyrightable...
Google is not attempting interoperability or a "workable implementation" of existing Java platforms
But does the use of the API necessitate that interoperability? The problem, of course, is that Java is both a language and a platform. If the language comes with no strings attached but the platform is encumbered then this is very much like having your cake and trying to eat it. I seem to remember similar discussions years ago when Sun was forced to open the development of the platform as IBM and others threatened to bless a clean room implementation and, thus, deny Sun any future say in matters.
Re: so if APIs are copyrightable...
I'm still not sure what the consequence of that copyright would be. On the face of it, it is legitimate to want to be able to assert the authorship of the API which is just a specification, i.e. no one else can claim to have come up with it. This puts them up there with technical specifications like the HTTP protocol. As only implementations can be patented, it is, er, patently obvious that you cannot patent the specification. Copyright would allow for licensing of the specification for derived works but this might be considered to apply only to extensions of the specification itself rather than implementations of it. As is noted elsewhere, the point of APIs is to guarantee interoperability.
Re: "internet TV" button
From the department of the bleeding obvious:
At approx 1Gb per hour watching BBC iplayer HD content it is very hungry and can cost if you are not on an unlimted deal
You don't say! I guess there will be those unable to join the dots: don't do online video without a real flatrate.
Forget the apps
TVs with network connections should not become e-mail clients and terminals. But they can be quite nice VoD clients* or film rental devices**. That such clients are written to use some form of HTML can be regarded as coincidental.
* avoid the need to have to program or even own a recorder for your favourite programs
** hope to have a decent selection of films in HD to watch and avoid having go the video shop. Lucky here that MaxDome has a good selection in HD and with English soundtracks. Probably only a matter of time until they scrap that luxury and forcefeed dreadful dubbing on us.
Re: Needs more input
Many of the TVs, at least from Philips, can use USB or Bluetooth keyboards. Though, to be honest I don't think keyboards are the right kind of interface for tellies. Be interesting to see what they come up with gesture control. Although that is likely to be another patent minefield: on asking Philips why I am no longer able to hide channels or remove useless "apps" they told me that this was a licensing issue and they had had to remove the function. I guess we're only months away from being automatically logged into one of the identity traders as soon as we switch the machine on, so that "our friends" know exactly what we're watching without us needing to press any buttons.
I've got other problems with DLNA, or more specifically with WiFi - apparently my DLNA server occasionally closes the connection because the telly fails to acknowledge an ICMP request. Yay, streaming over until connection is reinitialised. Philips is aware of the issue but doesn't seem to think it's their problem.
+1 on that
Take my mum. Please, take her. She puts the "Ludd" back into "Luddite" but is probably the world's digi-video-recorder champion!
Posted in Wind farms create local warming
Nothing to see here
So, a power generation plant has an affect on the local micro-climate. How does 0.72° C compare with the temperature increase of around any plant that requires cooling? I'll note in passing that France regularly has to grant exceptions on water temperature limits in order not to have shut down many nuclear plants in the summer and heating water 0.7° C takes a fuck of a lot more energy than heating air because of the density (and, as long as we're willy-waving our knowledge of physics, specific heat capacity). Planting a few trees should neutralise any effects.
Re: Not just Pete Shelley
Yes, but I seem to remember that Pete Shelley actually wrote his own computer program. Buzzcocks rule!
But Alastair, recording from vinyl using a microphone in 1984. Seriously? That's far more embarrassing than your admission to buying the latest shiny shiny toy from Apple.
Time to call RCJ?
Surely someone with Mr Schwartz's vision is exactly what the Magic Roundabout needs to launch Shoreditch into orbit? If so, can I be the one to light the touch paper?
Posted in MIT boffins play BUILDING-SIZED Tetris
re. Performance
Of course, if you wanted to wring the absolute highest level of performance out of it, you’d probably go 10 GbE over copper
This is a very strange assertion as it seems to be prioritising network data speeds over the physical medium, which given the scale of the game might be considered relevant. It's a fact that radio waves travel through air than electrons along a copper wire: the difference is probably measurable at the higher windows. Assuming lights are either on or off you've got a minimal amount of data to send but if you are worried about data speeds and perhaps latency then you need fibre for this kind of stunt. Don't want windows flickering out of sync.
A more impressive but significantly more extravagant display:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sS6FbTDDuo
Re: No dont take Unite Away
Unite is still part of 12 just disabled by default. Opera Dev currently has an article about porting from Unite to Extensions so I suspect that any Unite apps you were using will be reborn as Extensions. However, if you are talking about sync then you may be thinking of Opera Link which is not going away.
Re: A pity
but they can't seem to get Opera Mobile working reliably on Android of late...it's been almost unusable since early March.
I found the first build of Opera 12 mobile to be a bit ropey but the recent releases have improved it a lot.
Nearly right
The more extensions you have the slower your browser is likely to run. And as things stand you don't need many extensions in Opera: content blocking is built-in, as is a great mail-client and perfectly serviceable IRC client and RSS reader. I have just two extensions: NotScripts and YouTube WebM Plus.
Opera's line on extensions, as with so many other things, was to work with a standard to ensure interoperability and avoid vendor lock-in. Extensions, written in HTML and Javascript, are pretty portable between the Webkit crowd and Opera.
Slight quibble
Out of the box Unite allowed you to share music and photos very easily with other Opera users
As it was browser-based other people didn't need Opera to share and it was data protection heaven. Of course, it was dependent on being connected to the net and your uplink speed.
As extensions of the browser never really made sense - but the widget runtime for standalone widgets lives on.
Re: Having followed the line of reasoning in this article as carefully as I can.........
Ofcom has been singularly poor at promoting competition in the industries it regulates. Ownership of BSkyB is of less interest than the failure to break up the rights monopoly on, say, Premier League matches after the collapse of Setanta.
Posted in Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros
Lessons to be learned
We had a ZX81 and using it was such a trauma that it nearly put me off computers for life. I guess it was less the membrane keyboard itself and more the multiple keys for various characters. Still, the price appealed to many wishing to get their offspring interested in computing and generated enough cash for the much improved Spectrum: enough memory to do something without having to drop into assembler and a usable keyboard; colour was the icing on the cake.
Unfortunately, we never upgraded. Indeed, while all around us were playing fun games in colour, one bright spark at school even wrote a game for the Spectrum, we didn't get a colour system until the end of the decade and then only CGA. Sigh, just to goes to show how important some degree of "shiny shiny" and immediate gratification is for getting kids interesting in programming.
Re: Does this guy know anything about Cook?
Cook is the principle reason that Apple is a moneymaking machine today. There is nobody in the industry better at production control and supply chain management...Jobs was a product guy..
Much as I agree that the comments should be treated sceptically I think you inadvertently make the same point: Jobs was responsible for dreaming up new, desirable products and Cook and others for their execution. Of course, that is exactly the kind of dramatic oversimplification that the media loves to speculate upon. Despite his many qualities Steve Jobs was part of a team of dedicated and competent people who were all needed to make the products a success.
Nokia used to be king of the supply chain and look at it now.
Mr Baggaley's problem is that he's a hopeless Utopian; he is as "bien pensant" in his own way as Mr Cellan-Jones. Programming from first principles? No, thanks. One size doesn't fit all; the education system is an inalienable part of the system of division of labour: some people will write rocket guidance systems and others will write the marketing brochures for the rockets.
Within the narrow scope of the web there is merit in an interdisciplinary approach and demystification of the arcane arts of programming. As such I broadly support the idea of people diving into programming without them later becoming master programmers. However, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Orlowski's condemnation of Mr Cellan-Jones attending an opportunistic one day workshop: it's a car-crash waiting to happen.
Regarding the general principle of getting kids interesting in programming I was lucky enough to attend Vern Ceder's presentation of the work he did with a group of schoolchildren over a whole term. It's about Python but the language is secondary to the approach.
http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-python-and-robots-teaching-programming-in-high-school-4898767
Where have you been hiding?
"print" is no longer a statement but a function! For didactic purposes you should use the Python 3 syntax:
print("hello world") # and there's your simple beauty gone
Tsk, tsk. Programmers nowadays! ;-)
Failure is more than an option.
It's nice to see that the FOI page is a 404: http://champions.go-on.co.uk/foi
And that the privacy statement linked to from the cookie thing is the homepage. Informed consent means informing people before asking their consent.
Still, Mrs Fox has a nice dress on.
Enterprise
Seeing as Windows 7 rollouts are currently ongoing I'd suggest that no corporates are planning to touch this before 2014 by which time some of the bugs and the strategy might have been worked out. Can see some people being brave enough to buy a few tablets of whichever variety for road warriors assuming the necessary software is available and enterprise management is possible. But that would be in a sort of "Microsoft demonstrates..." environment.
So, MS have two years to stop wholesale abandonment of their platform in the corporate space. If you put it like that you can see that they still have room for manoeuvre.
Posted in Cellco execs lay into Nokia's Lumia
Where to start
1. Samsung is making plenty money from Android. Like Nokia it's a hardware company. Definitely doable.
2. My own anecdotal survey on the local public transport of what people are using has Samsung at around 75 % with I-Phones about 20 % and the rest. A year ago I would have said around 50 % I-Phones, Samsung slightly ahead of HTC and the rest. With the SII and it's gorgeously large screen Samsung really has cleaned up in the last few months. They're not cheap but they are popular. Skinflints can join in by being the cheaper versions which look like the real deal as long as you don't look at them too closely.
3. People are used to I-Phone and Android UIs - they're close enough that switching between them isn't difficult. Apple knows this which is why they're going so hard after Android. Tough for them that many people to seem to equate Android with a sort of generic version of the I-Phone. Viz. airport security generally refer to my Samsung Galaxy Tab as an I-Pad.
But really it comes down to Every review says if you want a WP7, buy a Nokia. Well, who really wants WP7? Where are the campaigns extolling the virtues of it? I've seen nothing apart from generous reviews on El Reg and elsewhere praising the Metro interface for phones. But I know that the browser is shit: any mobile browser must be able to handle HTML 5 forms to be any use; IE 9 can't.
Re: Samsungs reaction...
Seems to be the default suggestion from "analysts" when it comes to ITLNH (interesting technology looking for a new home). It was the same with WebOS. Samsung has at least two OS of its own (Bada for smartphones and whatever runs on feature phones) plus Android and Windows and Tizen. You can see how they're desperate for more OS... Google or Microsoft as almost pure software vendors would make more sense.
Posted in Toshiba Regza 46YL863 46in Smart TV
Power draw
150 W! Ouch! I could have two of my Philips 46" side-by-side and still use less.
Storm in a teacup
I think the BBC's services are so much more advanced than what's on offer here in Germany.
I've got a lovely Philips 6806, which apart from apparently struggling to maintain a wireless connection (Philips say it's the router's fault for IPMG-Snooping, I'm not convinced), has a fantastic picture. Unlike all the digi-boxes I've used in the UK the additional functions were not available from the word go. I had to activate Hbb manually and it behaves differently if there is a network connection around when it generally takes longer to load and looks a bit shitty. Indeed many channels don't seem to support non-network based interactivity: press the red button and get nothing. Personally, I prefer the idea of side-loading the TV programme onto the TV without a network connection to loading a castrated version of the broadcaster's website. This is probably why I have never once seen a promotion of "press the red button to find out more" since digital TV has been available.
In summary, whatever it is that the BBC uses is infinitely more usable than what we have on the continent. However, if it is to be some kind technological dead end, then it's probably going to go into maintenance. But unless Hbb gets dramatically better it's not going anywhere either.
Re: Meanwhile in Brussels
I believe Germany has in fact ditched nuclear in favour of coal
Then you are ill-informed. Coal has been being phased out in favour of (Russian) natural gas for years. Renewables are ahead of target thanks to the very generous feed-in tariffs we have here and effectively a swap with France with nuclear from them in the winter; and renewable to them in the summer when they don't have enough water to cool the nuclear plants. Though even France is going renewable with EDF busy offering free installation and maintenance of photovoltaic systems on nice new barns and free power to the farmers. Though, if they can get EU subsidies for nuclear then you can imagine the free barn programme being phased out pretty quickly.
Renewable energy might be of questionable value - I am in favour of it; the feed-in tariffs can be seen as a gravy train - but all those installations require people on the ground and I can think of worse government-sponsored employment programmes.
