Posts by Charlie Clark
1703 posts • joined Monday 16th April 2007 14:57 GMT
Page:
Google is not full stack
What you suggest may suit Apple which wants complete control but not 100 % market share. They are simply not interested ARPU of less than USD 100 which is way above what you can expect from mobile phones at the moment - last check I made was about USD 30 and still falling.
Google wants to be on everyone's device all the time so one network just isn't enough. As it is they are on pretty much everyone's network for the relatively cheap investment of 4 years Android development. T-Mobile would cost around USD 30 thousand million just to purchase and requires extensive investment to remain competitive, which is why it's being sold in the first place.
Standard units
What's with all this "feet, metres, pounds of thrust" malarky? No one on the Reg can understand a word of what you mean! Please rephrase using standard units, ta.
"Extra levels"
Sounds good. Do you get special ammo and stuff? And what do we do with all our XP?
What limit? Or are you referring to the minimum required in order to be considered safe in charge of a vehicle.
As for the ISO designation - it has to be a Yeltsin memory of a toper of outstanding, er, qualities!
Why in China?
If the things are all made in machines then the cheapest source is that closes to the point of distribution. So, basically, I don't believe the assertion that all these factories are in China.
Totally misleading
Elsewhere El Reg has posted stats on needing to be in the Top 50 or 100 to make any cash. Quite a lot of those are developers for multiple platforms. Good luck to all those in niche markets able to make a buck!
Nevertheless, I think app pricing is an interesting example of the discovery of fair pricing in action. Quite obviously the fruitbats are extending their over spend on a physical device to its ornamentation much in the same way that people used to buy new covers or ringtones to, ahem, "personalise" their phone. I suspect that Android's sheer size and momentum will encourage a reversion to the mean.
Trading Standards
I just wonder whether she is entitled to sue Groupon for advising her on something that was obviously against her own self-interest, particularly if they helped her come up with the sale price.
That word
Don't trust anyone who says "incentivised".
The legal situation is fairly clear - the "supplier" is liable for any damages incurred as a result of failing to repair a known fault. It may take a couple of court cases to change attitudes. However, their is no onus on manufacturers to supply users with the latest and greatest version of their firmware.
Posted in Breaking news: Man lands on Moon!
Does anyone still care about Facebook?
El Reg seems have fallen to the same trick - so 2010.
Sid James Voiceover
Or the laugh at least for the reconstruction!
America is not the world
Anecdotally speaking and having just equipped myself with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 I can say that in Germany Apple's court room strategy has definitely increased awareness of the Samsung brand, at least among the tech crowd with whom I frequent - "is that the one that is banned?" and it is getting very appreciative comments regarding the screen and weight - I can hold it using an "untrained" wrist for more than two minutes! ;-) Reading books is about the only thing that doesn't work too well give the lack of height, everything else is very funky. Oh, and it has a file system! Having seen the hoops that fanbois have to go through to swap pictures and audio between devices I can see that becoming *the* stick with which to beat them.
Posted in Punctured Google+ leaks bored users
Signal to noise ratio
Is pretty good on Google and that might be what it needs for the long term. I think I log on a couple of times a week, mainly to check what some close friends have been up to. My home page is usually spammed by one or two people who I'd like to have as opt-in. I mainly read only friends and family which doesn't take long.
I suspect that treating the whole thing as a neural network as opposed to a data mine, where the distance between nodes and the frequency of communication, may be the way to monetise things, albeit indirectly. Let's not forget that Google's cash flow is extremely positive so unlike "the social network" it doesn't need to worry about ROI for a while*. Filling the site full of ads would be a instant turn-off and I like to flatter myself to think that I belong to a desirable target group for advertisers, well if the ads in The Economist are anything to go by.
* There is, of course, a whole industry with invested interest in a successful IPO for Facebook - journalists, ad execs, etc.
Firewire
IIRC Apple used to collect 1% or USD 1 for every Firewire chip sold.
As others have noted "fair" in this context is "about what the (cross-licencing) competition is paying". If Apple doesn't like it they should cross-licence. OTOH they can just stick another 10 % on the price and get the fanboys to pay for it - Iphone 4S = Iphone for Samsung.
No loophole required
Just picked up my Galaxy 8.9 from the post office bought legally as "EU goods" - anything imported anywhere in the EU can be (re)sold in any other member state. Noticeably lighter than the Ipad which is important to me, though I do think Apple probably has it right on the aspect ratio. Looks like accessories are going to be a bit of a faff.
LTS
Where's the LTS in Chrome's stealth auto-updating? FWIW Opera provides paid support and doesn't quite release at such breakneck speeds, though 11.6 beta includes a heap of new features and some UI changes in preparation for hardware acceleration in 12.
As for what the enterprise wants - we're rapidly entering the age of bring your own equipment and the migration to browser-based services (depends heavily on which your country you're in) so companies are going to have to come up with a better strategy than FF 3.6 and IE 8 as at one large company I know.
On-off switch?
The next version of the Iphone is probably named HAL - "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that".
Wot he said!
GSM communications have remained remarkably secure since their introduction when you consider just how many of us are rabbiting on the things and the physical aspect of the security model - the SIM card - has played no small part in this. Giving Apple the secrets is tantamount to giving them to all government agencies and the mafia/triads/yakuza.
Simply not true
"leaner, quicker, more energy-efficient HTML5"
Apart from Steve Jobs doing some smoke and mirrors no one involved in HTML 5 has ever claimed that it is leaner, quicker or more energy-efficient than Flash or Silverlight. In fact, Flash is arguably quicker and more efficient than many nascent HTML 5 / Javascript implementations because it has had the advantage of many iterations of optimisations, something that simply cannot be said of HTML Canvas and I'm waiting see announcements of hardware acceleration for WebM.
HTML 5 is based on a deep-rooted desire for openness and level playing fields. By promoting audio and video to the DOM, developers and users have more control over what's happening. CSS transitions, HTML Canvas and SVG animations bring to the mainstream effects that are commonly seen but not transferable. And putting everything in the browser makes security testing easier but then it also increases the risk of a single point of failure.
Pricing
The impact of shale gas on the gas price is not directly determined by its price of extraction* - gas from non-war-torn Libya was pretty cheap to extract - but because it is sold on the spot market and, thus, not coupled to the oil price as most large gas deposits are. This applies to any non-conventional sources like shale and bio-gas or gas manufactured by catalysis on windy, sunny days.
IIRC gas exploration and discovery has not yet hit the same kind of problems that oil has - tar sand extraction or those incredibly deep wells of Brazil - which drive up the price of exploration and extraction and, thus price. The gas price was historically tied to the oil price which kind of made sense when there were few suppliers and gas was less fungible. That arrangement makes less sense today when the price of extraction is so much lower in comparison and there are sufficient suppliers to guarantee a market even if the price falls.
Fundamentally the problem remains that, until we understand that the cheapest energy is the energy we don't use, we're making ourselves dependent on one supplier or another.
* I've yet to see anything covering the full costs of shale gas extraction over time - insuring against groundwater pollution and subsidence claims.
Sounds a lot, isn't really
1.3 million worldwide? So, one for every 5,500 people. Even going up by a factor of five that's not impressive.
WiFi is cheap but it is also technologically challenged with the spectral efficiency of a "top Whitehall department" and the energy efficiency of Rusatom as anyone will know who's ever run one in a block of flats with a lot of geeks around.
Bill seems have to avoided it but I guess the reason for network operators wanting to offer WiFi hotspots for data is because they can save money on infrastructure bay having less of it and by not having to worry so much about QoS or by having signal towers close enough to provide a signal in people's homes. Any numbers on what will happen to signals in the 2.4 GHz band as unmanaged contention continues to rise? I think I'm going to apply for a job writing excuses "the reason you can't get a connection is because it was the wrong kind of website", "you're holding it wrong", "they told us home entertainment systems in the same band wouldn't be a problem", etc.
Precedent
The key is the reference to "doing business in the single market". This is where the EU is the 800lb gorilla and why it took on Microsoft and won and why Paypal had to set up a subsidiary in Luxemburg and apply for a banking licence.
The law only seems to be uniting the disparate privacy and data protection laws of the various member states. It is already the legal position in Germany. It should also be noted "click through" notices do not count as providing informed consent which is why Microsoft and Apple EULAs are not valid in Germany.
Aigner seems to be on a personal vendetta against Facebook but Reding has a good track record of taking on the mobile industry and forcing through max charges for mobile roaming. Cheers, Viviane.
Tea leaves?
Where do they come up with these numbers?
Given Apple's corporate encroachment I suspect that might well be the new battleground. I guess that is what Microsoft is betting on but where niche solutions such as Citrix might be key. Apple's AppStore is a heap of pain for any corporate with a lot of inhouse application development or data.
Guilty by omission
Hi Andrew,
as noted above whether the FiT for solar makes great deal of sense for most of Britain should be considered separately to the level at which it is set. That aside, it is disingenuous to assert that it is a wealth redistribution tax from the poor to the rich (such as VAT) because you omit the cost of capital investment required - manufacturers and installers stand to benefit initially, owners possibly over time. If you're against that then you must be against any investment that can be set off against tax. There may be a price rise as a result of the tariff but this is also because of increased generating capacity and can be offset by subsidies to the less well-off, though grants to house-owners for improved insulations (paying for "negawatts") is probably the most efficient way of dealing any imbalance and probably the best way for Britain to reduce its energy bill quickly.
Returning to the level of tariff - salutary lessons from Germany and elsewhere do apply. In Germany it was the solar energy lobby itself that pressed for a faster than planned reduction in tariffs due to excessive demand. Again the suitability of FiT for solar in Germany is debatable, South of the Main is deemed to suitable, but the aim of this kind of cross-subsidy was to kick-start investment in the technology and it has been an undoubted success in this area with jobs being spread across Germany and China - boosting capacity, reducing prices and transferring skills; if anywhere needs a leg up with environmentally friendly energy it is China.
Solar is still a small player in the energy market but Germany is already ahead of target in reducing emissions and the share of energy provided by renewable sources. At the same time I think we're onto the third round of subsidies for building insulation. Having just moved from a poorly insulated flat into a modern one I can confirm that my heating bill is on a downward trend. The rise in renewables is generating renewed interest in the spot market and escaping the clutches of Gazprom which supplies the vast majority of Germany's gas.
If you want to go kicking a country for its energy policy then Spain is worth a look: it keeps energy prices artificially low with the state paying for any shortfall (usually of Oliver Reed proportions), exports dirty energy to the Maghreb (distorting the market and reducing the incentives for efficiency) and has horrifically high FiT in a country destined to be as covered in photovoltaic cells as it is in polytunnels which seek to make economic value from the same abundant source of solar energy.
Posted in German website offers custom cow killing
Reasonably priced
Depending on the cut beef in Germany is always > € 20 per kilo. Double that for the organic stuff. As for stress and taste I thought was established or was it just for rodents? Stress releases some hormone that makes the meat bitter? Maybe just another urban myth I'm unwittingly perpetuating.
Pump and dump on an epic scale?
I guess this is what you get when the fed prints oodles of dollars and gives them to banks who could be lending them to people and businesses instead. Nothing like a post-launch rally to drag the suckers in. P/E on this one, anyone? My calculator broke down trying to do it. Maybe this is just sour grapes because I didn't "get in" on this one. I'm just very worried that my bank might have done so for me. :-/
Target audience
Who buys the Ipad? Business or consumer? AFAIK it's both so why is only a problem for Motorola?
Are you listening Stockholm?
This is what the Nobel Prize was invented for! Sod fundamental research and jeanomes and all that, blinking lights is where it's at
"Carlos Roca drinks White Lightning!"...
Not true. Accidents spike around the changeover but particularly in the spring as lots of sleep deprived people and children converge. Article on the BBC about a couple of years ago but I'm too lazy to Google for it.
They are, that's where UTC comes from. But there's a catch - that should be TUC but they came up with UTC as a nice Franglais fudge.
Ditch clocks "springing" forward in the spring and "falling" back in the autumn. Only a proper Victorian bureaucrat could have come up with such well-meant bollocks.
Posted in iPad 3 to debut Q3 2012 as iPad 4
The next generation AMOLEDs should be available then - 10" and larger so I think you may be right. Can't see Samsung selling them in great numbers to competitors, especially the bendy ones.
Dubai in particular
It seems you can fly to anywhere in the world in an A380 from Dubai. That offers pretty compelling economics for the hub & spoke system for the majority of long haul flights. Some wag has also coined "pilgrim class", standing room only, for stripped down A380s bringing the masses to Mecca for the Haj or to Europe for a football match.
Point to point connections between second tier airports still have a part to play which is why Airbus is playing catch up on the Dreamliner just like Boeing is planning a composite version of the 747 to match Airbus.
Back to the technology - additive seems to be the future with Airbus investing in those Bristol boffins who've already made a bike frame. Mix of materials always required as you want to blend stiffness with elasticity. For my money steel alloys still provide the best ride though the bamboo bike sounds worth a try.
@Mr Worstall - the sham French spelling behoves you not and worse than that adds nothing to the article. Airbus is a truly global company and you even refer to the a wing under test somewhere Germany. Save the Euro-bashing for the Torygraph.
Non-competitve clause
If there isn't one in the contract then, oh dear.
Waiting the GroupOn Fail Whale to open the season whilst at the same time worrying about the possible deals banks and insurance companies have got going on something that at least at some point promised to be a nice little earner.
Posted in Zuckerberg's HTML5 Trojan horse play
It does indeed read a bit like that, doesn't it.
I can't really say much about Facebook as I've never used it but it did strike me recently that most of my contacts on Google+ are a marketer's wet dream. Will be interesting to see how Google makes that kind of information available to advertisers and what they propose to subject us to to make it pay. I suspect that if they get it right the advertising stream currently flowing into Facebook may dry up quickly. Network effects aside it's not all about the numbers - you need customers with sufficient disposable income - surely that was the lesson of the dot.com bubble?
Amazon looks like it is going to have a head start milking the sheeple in its walled garden. As with Apple who cares about the technology once they have the source of instant gratification in their hand.
Power
Using the radios (wifi or UMTS) will give the screen a run for its money when it comes to running down the battery. And, while there is hope that screens may be at some point be able to use ambient light to reduce their power draw, I think it's pretty nigh impossible to reduce the power consumption of the radios. Isn't there some direct relationship between data transfer rates and power consumption? There is definitely a direct (square) relationship between the distance the signal has to travel and power required to send it. Unless it turns out that CERNs neutrinos have something to teach us on this!
Posted in Are IP addresses personal data?
Accepted interpretation?
FWIW it seems you are catching up with what is the Accepted interpretation in Germany: IP addresses are personal information. AFAIK there is not yet a uniform position across the EU but it is likely possible that this will become consensus which puts not just statistics* but more importantly ISP logs into the spotlight - EU law requires that ISPs log user accounts for six months - as a potential breach of data protection law, one of the reasons why the EU law is not in force in Germany because it is unconstitutional. A round of legal beggar thy neighbour is probably due.
* For the purpose of statistics it seems reasonable to randomise non-reversibly the last octet of the IP address which is exactly what Google is rolling into the German service of Google Analytics.
Eat that fanbois!
Finally, an application demonstrating how superior Samsung phones are in comparison with fruity ones.
Willy waving
I had a screen comparison with a Phoney the other week. Whilst I agree that pixel density is important for text it hardly matters for anything else. I recently watched VHS video on my 2500 x 1600 screen and at more than a metre away it really didn't matter that much. The human cares much more about contrast and movement and while the Iphone's IPS does give better colours than my Super AMOLED (the Samsung has a notable blue shift when viewed obliquely), it's black is shit in comparison. Plus I can actually use my phone in bright sunlight. I prefer pictures on my phone. As you might imagine the discussion was inconclusive - many people seem to have bought into pixel density as the Holy Grail of screens. Great marketing but poor science.
I would expect Apple to be addressing the daylight usability of their slabs in a next release. Or maybe just launch law suits against the Kindle Fire which is going to define at least price expectations from now on.
Posted in Dell signals Windows 8 fondleslab range
Hot News: Dell touting to be Microsoft's and Intel's bitch
You rush out some ill-thought models built by Quanta or Kopal or Foxconn against the Ipad find they don't sell and you blame the OS? Well failed Mr Dell. Samsung and HTC are showing what can be done with Android if you are prepared to spend your own money on hardware and software development. You can't expect Google to give you it al, can you?
Run off to Microsoft and Intel for a big marketing budget incentive and everything will be better. Don't forget to turn off the lights when you leave.
Go Slacktivists! Go!
With you all the way. Send me a tweet when you've won and we can have a virtual meetup to congratulate each other...
On a serious note, nice to see America developing any form of political culture and a reasonable counterpoint to the Tea Party Luddites. This feels a bit like some of the enthusiasm that Obama was able to conjure up that soon led to disillusionment.
Deliciously simple.
Looking forward to seeing this in a labs build or even Opera Next.
Their own worst enemy
I guess the site is mainly trying to encourage IE 6, 7 and 8 users to "upgrade" to the latest and greatest version of IE, seeing as that has been such an utter fail so far (stats on international sites are approx 5% IE 6, 10% IE 7, 15% IE 9. 30% IE 8). Well, no shit Sherlock! By not providing a reasonable upgrade path for IE users, ie. forcing them to change their operating systems in order to change their browser, Microsoft has caused this fragmentation.
Solution: backport IE 9 to XP and Windows 2000 or get out of the browser game.
Gartner again
Take this with the usual pinch of salt. People I talk to generally think that the social media hype has peaked and that companies are looking for other ways to "engage" customers. Anecdotal, small sample so not worth taking seriously unlike Gartner's extremely well-researched stuff, of course.
The Economist's Special Report on "post-PC" stuff is worth reading despite it being full of Gartner crystal-gazing.
I like the idea of OS protection being necessary because of the piece of brain crap that is ActiveX, you know the way IE runs plugins.
Nice typo
Have the batteries run out on yours? ;-)
Ulm as centre of software development? Can't get my head around that except that Nokia is always good for a new surprise.
Posted in Oracle rolls its own NoSQL and Hadoop
NoSQL
Oracle already has BerkelyDB. What do the other toys bring to the party.
Point of order Mr Prickett-Morgan - there is no such thing as "unstructured data". That is what we call noise A point that the social media fire hose is only happy to prove. You have to sift it for stuff that fits a schema before you can call it data. The elision serves only purveyors of either whatever streams from the hose or of the snake oil that supposedly makes sense of it all.
Apples and oranges
FTTH isn't really an option for Germany at the moment but it is doing very well with ADSL with 50 MB/s (as long as you do without IPTV) offered in most parts of most towns and 6 Mb/s the baseline. This is the result of an open market which encourages investment so that companies don't just depend on Deutsch Telekom reselling bandwidth wholesale but actually install their own DSLASMs in the exchanges which are connected by fibre to their own backbone. FTTC is also being rolled out but to a much lesser extent - the demand for > 50 MB/s isn't that great.
My understanding of the UK market is that it favours wholesale reselling over investment which is why services are more expensive and shoddier, at least when compared by El Reg.
All software is vulnerable
Flash's ubiquity across platforms makes it an attractive target for hacks. That is primarily used on the internet makes it even more attractive - people don't click on a link to download something but open a page hoping to watch something. This is more attractive for hackers than say office because it is one less hurdle.
But being a popular target does not necessarily mean that the software is more or less badly written than other stuff. As the browsers' own runtimes expand we can expect to see a return to targeting them, ie. poisoned h.264 or webm files, XSS, etc. Just wait for "online" office suites to become really popular for whole new problems to appear.
Simply bashing individual programs and vendors for software displays considerable ignorance about software development. Best power off your machine and pick up a book.
Simplistic assumptions
Andrew, the article makes several simplistic assumptions: on how much Google is spending on Android; on how much Microsoft is actually making; what is at stake legally.
1) Motorola purchase aside we don't know how much Google spends on Android. Is it less than Apple spends on the Iphone OS or Microsoft on the farce that Windows mobile was?
2) As others have noted all licensing deals with Microsoft have confidentiality agreements. Given that most of the manufacturers, Motorola notable here by its absence, also make Windows mobile phones it's hard not to imagine some kind of cross subsidy here. Essentially Microsoft is trying to make up for lost licence sales to said manufacturers and stop them jumping ship "because the next version will be so much better and no, Nokia, isn't going to be privileged." Yeah, right. Symbian - gone, RIM - going down fast, Windows Mobile - only Microsoft's equally deep pockets have given this one a second chance.
3) As for indemnifying the licensees - nobody forced them to use Android. Why didn't they press Google for indemnification? Or maybe, as far as Dalvik goes they already have? Anyway I can't see HTC or Samsung really complaining about their market share. Samsung may well overtake Nokia in total sales this year something that was unimaginable a few years ago.
4) Google likes to sit things out. Just look at the Youtube vs. Viacom case. Serial copyright abuse on Youtube since day one. Oh, there'll be an agreement in time but by sitting things out Google has managed to game; disrupted it as it were. I think they picked this up from how Microsoft ran the US department of justice such a merry dance of its licensing policy and that the agreements are made between the survivors who usually divide the spoils rather than worry about right and wrong.
5) Android is good enough. Other systems are faster or use less power but Android is usable and the hardware is fantastic. How long have people put up with the inverse: either great software with shit hardware or great hardware with shit software?
6) Android isn't search. Google now has millions of potential users of premium services - e.g. Google Apps - as well as potential advertising buckets. It's also worked out how to monetise its promiscuity: let the hardware manufacturers make some money and the networks as well, with the volumes now shifting Google can live well just from the crumbs.
Posted in Amazon revamps E Ink Kindle line
Let the price wars commence
Looks like Apple have been going after the wrong people - Ipad mini for USD 199? They'll probably sell like hot cakes and then Amazon will have them.
